http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0624-25.htm
Big media interlocks with corporate America
Thu 23 June 2005
By Peter Phillips
Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of
big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that
the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the
mainstream population-the majority of people living in the US. Mainstream
media include a number of communication mediums that carry almost all the
news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word
media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources.
However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream
population-nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead it is more
accurate to speak of big media in the US today as the corporate media and to
use the term in the singular tense-as it refers to the singular monolithic
top-down power structure of self-interested news giants.
A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting
a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media
organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise
the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. This
is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom.
These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national
and international corporations. In fact, eight out of ten big media giants
share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and the
Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P.
Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have
members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family
of interlocks and shared interests. The following are but a few of the
corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:
a.. New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson,
Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi
b.. Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet,
Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody's
c.. Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark,
Starwood Hotels
d.. The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco
Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo
e.. News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments
f.. GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola,
Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter &
Gamble
g.. Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx,
Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo
h.. Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge
North America
i.. Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs,
Prudential, Target, Pepsi
j.. AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive,
Hilton
Can we trust the news editors at the Washington Post to be fair and
objective regarding news stories about Lockheed-Martin defense contract
over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe that ABC will conduct critical
investigative reporting on Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq? If
we believe the corporate media give us the full un-censored truth about key
issues inside the special interests of American capitalism, then we might
feel that they are meeting the democratic needs of mainstream America.
However if we believe - as increasingly more Americans do- that corporate
media serves its own self-interests instead of those of the people, than we
can no longer call it mainstream or refer to it as plural. Instead we need
to say that corporate media is corporate America, and that we the mainstream
people need to be looking at alternative independent sources for our news
and information.
Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and
director of Project Censored a media research organization.
www.projectcensored.org Sonoma State University students Bridget Thornton
and Brit Walters conducted the research on the media interlocks.
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