The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 1 -- Preface
 
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"Each year it is more likely that the American citizen who turns 
to any medium... will receive information, ideas, or 
entertainment controlled by the same handful of corporations, 
whether it is daily news, a cable entertainment program, or a 
textbook." Thus writes author Ben H. Bagdikian in the 1990 
preface to his book.
 
Bagdikian declares that the difference between our government and 
the corporate entity of business is getting harder and harder to 
delineate. "Corporate news media and business-oriented 
governments have made common cause."
 
A historical parallel between the current situation and something 
similar from the past is cited by the author. "The mainstream 
news media postponed for more than fifty years full public 
awareness of the hidden dangers of the medically known threat to 
public health from tobacco... They did [this] to protect a major 
advertiser." And they are doing the equivalent obfuscations 
today, but this time on a grander scale.
 
The increasing control of the media by a handful of corporate 
entities means that more and more it is they who control "what 
the average American reads, sees, and hears." And yet "...there 
is a close to total silence in the mainstream news on the social 
consequences of this concentration [of media control]." Our 
access to information is being controlled by persons whom we do 
not know, persons who are pulling the strings of the corporate 
puppet. "When the central interests of the controlling 
corporations are at stake, mainstream American news becomes 
heavily weighted by whatever serves the economic and political 
interests of the corporations that own the media."
 
One of the dangers in all this is that "...the new corporate 
ethic is so single-minded about extreme fast profits and expanded 
control over the media business that it is willing to convert 
American news into a service for the affluent customers wanted by 
the media's advertisers instead of a source of information 
significant for the whole of society. The rewards of money profit 
through market control by themselves and their advertisers have 
blinded media owners to the damage they are doing to an 
institution central to the American democracy."
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 1
 
 
 
The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 2 -- Introduction
 
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"The dream of every leader, whether a tyrannical despot or a 
benign prophet, is to regulate the behavior of his people."
                -- Colin Blakemore ("Mechanics of the Mind")
 
 
Today we live in a world which is changing so rapidly that 
receiving the best information possible is indispensable. If we 
are not getting the *entire* picture, if we are not getting 
unbiased information, then we are unable to make *informed* 
decisions. Bagdikian declares that "...ignorance of economic and 
political change is destructive of democracy and fatal to 
intelligent decision making."
 
More than at any time in our history, we depend on the mass media 
to inform us about what is occurring, about the "news." It is the 
mass media which decide what *is* the news. "The mass media 
become the authority at any given moment for what is true and 
what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy, what is 
important and what is trivial."
 
"Authorities have always recognized that to control the public 
they must control information." Thus, those in power have it in 
their interest to control the information. And yet, for "a 
realistic picture of society there is no such thing as a central 
authority." Reality has many angles and to centralize control 
over information limits our perspective on reality to a single 
angle or viewpoint -- that of whoever has power.
 
"The Age of Enlightenment created a new kind of society... It 
acknowledged that the democratic consent of the governed is 
meaningless unless the consent is informed consent." Thus 
*information* was crucial in a democracy. In the United States, 
the first amendment sought to guarantee a plurality of 
viewpoints, a plurality of information. "Diversity of expression 
was assumed to be the natural state of enduring liberty."
 
But unfortunately, "Modern technology and American economics have 
quietly created a new kind of central authority over information 
-- the national and multinational corporation. By the 1980s, the 
majority of all major American media... were controlled by fifty 
giant corporations." These powerful information czars can easily 
drown out attempts by the less powerful to put forth dissenting 
viewpoints. "The fifty men and women who head these 
corporations... constitute a new Private Ministry of Information 
and Culture."
 
Bagdikian argues that "...while it is not possible for the media 
to tell the population what to think [at least not overtly, 
B.R.], they do tell the public what to think about." The 
permissable range of discussion is defined by the mass media. 
"What is reported enters the public agenda... [Thus,] More than 
any other single private source and often more than any 
governmental source, the fifty dominant media corporations can 
set the national agenda."
 
This control over our information and ultimately of our lives by 
these corporate dinosaurs is not new. "When Fred Friendly 
resigned as president of CBS News in 1966 because the network 
refused to cancel a fifth daytime rerun of 'I Love Lucy' for a 
crucial Senate hearing on the Vietnam War, he was told that the 
loss of revenue from a delayed episode of 'Lucy' was intolerable 
to shareholders, who would not accept any decrease in net 
profits."
 
Or again, more recently the chairman of the board of the largest 
newspaper chain, Gannet Company, told an interviewer, "Wall 
Street didn't give a damn if we put out a good paper in Niagara 
Falls. They just wanted to know if our profits would be in the 
15-20 percent range."
 
[When we see "commercials" on television, it becomes harder and 
harder to distinguish them from outright propaganda. Witness, for 
example, the string of Dow Chemical commercials ("Dow let's you 
do great things"). As Abbie Hoffman once said, "You see these 
commercials and you feel so relieved!" You want to exclaim, Wow! 
Thanks for helping, Dow!] B.R.
 
"News and public information have been integrated formally into 
the highest levels of financial and nonjournalistic corporate 
control. Conflicts of interest between the public's need for 
information and corporate desires for 'positive' information have 
vastly increased."
 
Although it is true that within the dominance of the fifty 
corporados controlling the media there still is *some* mixture of 
news and ideas -- still "there are also limits... The limits are 
felt on open discussion of the system that supports giantism in 
corporate life and of other values that have been enshrined under 
the inaccurate label 'free enterprise.'" Sure, these slaves of 
mammon will allow a controlled range of debate. But "when their 
most sensitive economic interests are at stake, the parent 
corporations seldom refrain from using their power over public 
information."
 
"When fifty men and women, chiefs of their corporations, control 
more than half the information and ideas that reach 220 million 
Americans, it is time for Americans to examine the institutions 
from which they receive their daily picture of the world."
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 2
 
 
 
The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 3 -- The Endless Chain
 
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"For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also."
                                           -- Matthew 6:22
 
 
"Corporate leaders predict -- that by the 1990s a half-dozen 
large corporations will own all the most powerful media outlets 
in the United States." This is scary because of, among other 
things, "the striking similarity in the private political and 
economic goals of all of the owning corporations."
 
Bagdikian gives numerous examples of the trend toward centralized 
control of the media. He cites the fact that "At the end of World 
War II... 80 percent of the daily newspapers in the United States 
were independently owned, but by 1989 the proportion was 
*reversed* [my emphasis], with 80 percent owned by corporate 
chains."
 
[This centralized control over our information gives enormous 
power to what is essentially a *thing*. A corporation is not a 
human being. It is not several human beings. It is rather a 
technology whose only purpose is to make more and more money. A 
corporation has no heart, or rather it displays a "heart" only 
when this suits its primary purpose -- profit. B.R.] The mass 
media "is being reduced to a small number of closed circuits in 
which the owners of the conduits... prefer to use material they 
own or that tends to serve their economic purposes."
 
The chief executive officers of the twenty-three corporations 
"that control most of what Americans read and see... [are] almost 
without exception... economic conservatives." The believers in 
this economic mythology "know which side their bread is buttered 
on." When their corporate interests are at stake "they use... 
[their] power, in their selection of news, and in the private 
lobbying power peculiar to those who control the media image -- 
or non-image -- of politicians."
 
Without unrestricted and accurate information, democracy begins 
to fail. If citizens cannot make *informed* choices they will 
be led to *badly formed* choices. "In a democracy, the answer to 
government power is accountability, which means giving voters 
full information and real choices."
 
"When the same corporations expand their control over many 
different kinds of media... the experience has been that the 
common control of different media makes those media more alike 
than ever... Cable, once thought to be a fundamental alternative 
to programs on commercial television... is increasingly an 
imitation of commercial television."
 
Big Government and Big Corporations are increasingly intertwined. 
"The history of Big Government and Big Corporations is more one 
of accomodation than of confrontation... [Nixon and Reagan] both 
made extraordinary moves to support corporate concentration and 
increased profit-taking in the media; newspaper publishers 
overwhelmingly endorsed both Nixon and Reagan for reelection, and 
while in office President Reagan received stunningly uncritical 
coverage by the Washington news corps."
 
The author stresses that this concentration of media control into 
the hands of a few CEOs of a small group of mega-corporations is 
a topic that is *verboten* in the mass media. "...the public, 
almost totally dependent on the media... has seldom seen in their 
newspapers, magazines, or broadcasts anything to suggest the 
political and economic dangers of concentrated corporate 
control." The corporados can especially exert a subtle control 
over our information by emphasizing some items more than others. 
"Most owners and editors no longer brutalize the news with... [a] 
heavy hand... More common is something more subtle, more 
professionally respectable and more effective: the power to treat 
some unliked subjects accurately but briefly, and to treat 
subjects favorable to the corporate ethic frequently and in 
depth."
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 3
 
 
 
The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 4 -- Information as a Corporate By-Product
 
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"One hand washes the other."
              -- Old Country Saying
 
 
In the early 1970s Warner Modular, a minor subsidiary of Warner 
Communications, had as their publisher one Claude McCaleb. Mr. 
McCaleb was attempting to publish a small book entitled "Counter- 
Revolutionary Violence" by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman 
when, on August 27, 1973, he received a call from one William 
Sarnoff, chief of *all* Warner book operations.
 
Sarnoff was worried that this book might be potentially 
embarrassing to the Warner conglomerate. "Was this another 
'Pentagon Papers' case that would embarrass the parent firm? The 
answer was no, this was an analysis of public material by two 
established academics."
 
Two hours later, Sarnoff called again. He ordered the publisher 
to hand-carry a copy of the manuscript to his office in New York. 
The next day, after Sarnoff had received the copy of the 
manuscript, McCaleb received another phone call. He was ordered 
to report to Sarnoff's office at once. When McCaleb arrived, 
"Sarnoff immediately launched into a violent verbal attack on me 
for having published CRV [Counter-Revolutionary Violence] saying, 
among other things, that it was a pack of lies..."
 
According to McCaleb, "He [Sarnoff] then announced that he had 
ordered the printer not to release a single copy to me and that 
the... [book] would not be published." McCaleb pointed out to 
Sarnoff that "...at that very moment 10,000 of the books were 
coming off the presses." According to McCaleb, Sarnoff responded 
that "...he didn't give a damn." The books were destroyed.
 
"In countries like the Soviet Union a state publishing house 
imposes a political test on what will be printed. If the same 
kind of control over public ideas is exercised by a private 
entrepreneur, the effect of a corporate line is not so different 
from that of a party line."
 
Censorship is not always so explicit as in the McCaleb/Sarnoff 
example. "Most bosses do not have to tell their subordinates what 
they like and dislike. Or if such an explanation is necessary, it 
is not necessary to repeat the lesson."
 
In August of 1982 Earl Golz, a reporter for the Dallas Morning 
News, was fired "...because of a story Golz wrote that offended a 
major Dallas bank, the Abilene National Bank." In his newspaper 
story, Golz reported that "...the bank had loan problems so 
serious that it was in danger of failing." The chairman of the 
Abilene National Bank was enraged by the story and the paper 
fired Golz. Less than two weeks later "...the bank failed and 
federal examiners found that the bank had loan losses far beyond 
its assets." But Golz was never rehired by the Dallas Morning 
News. No reporter on that paper "... will have to be told for a 
long time what the boss expects. There will be no need for 
memorandums or spoken words. Subordinates, to be safe, may go 
even further in self-censorship than the boss requires. But no 
official intervention will show."
 
 
There is a mythology amongst media people that there is no 
problem of intervention of owners into the content of the news.
However this is not the case. "Bruce Ware Roche, in his 
dissertation 'The Effects of Newspaper Owners Non-Media Business 
Interests on News Judgements of Members of News Staffs,' lists 
numerous corporate interventions in newspapers." For example:
 
* -- Walter Annenberg, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, 
"...routinely banished from the news the names of people he 
disliked, including people normally reported."
 
* -- "When the Du Ponts owned the dominant newspapers in Delaware 
they regularly censored news stories or ordered emphasis in 
display depending on how the stories would affect family 
interests, actions so blatant that a distinguished editor 
resigned rather than comply."
 
 
The most long lasting power of media giants is the power to 
create ideas and movements which reflect "...the strictly private 
desires of the media owner. Once public attention has been 
aroused, the media owner can pretend to be reporting a 
spontaneous public phenomena." For example:
 
* -- In 1949, William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce, both heads 
of powerful media empires, were concerned about communism and the 
growth of liberalism in the U.S. They interviewed an obscure 
preacher named Billy Graham and converted him into "...an almost 
instantaneous national and, later, international figure preaching 
anticommunism. In late 1949 Hearst sent a telegram to all Hearst 
editors: 'Puff Graham.' The editors did."
 
* -- The Hearst empire also helped create Senator Joseph 
McCarthy. In 1950, McCarthy made his historic "I have here in my 
hand a list of 205 names known to the Secretary of State as being 
members of the Communist Party" speech. As Hearst's son related 
in a subsequent interview, "Joe [McCarthy] gave me a call not 
long after that speech. And you know what? He didn't have a damn 
thing on that list. Nothing." Did Hearst put this stunning 
information into his newspapers after receiving McCarthy's phone 
call? No. "Instead, he formed a cadre of Hearst journalists and 
researchers... to provide McCarthy with as much help as possible 
to keep the anticommunist hysteria alive."
 
 
This power of the media monopoly caused two negative effects on 
the quality of public discourse:
1) It allowed them to create the national atmosphere that they 
desired.
2) By choosing what issues to focus on, it had the effect of *de- 
focussing* on other issues. It had the effect "...of 
undernourishing society of other news and ideas necessary for 
informed democratic decision making."
 
"The result of the overwhelming power of relatively narrow 
corporate ideologies has been the creation of widely established 
political and economic illusions in the United States with little 
visible contradiction in the media to which a majority of the 
population is exclusively exposed."
 
"Some intervention by owners [in deciding what information the 
public will be bombarded with] is direct and blunt. But most of 
the screening is subtle... as when subordinates learn by habit to 
conform to owners' ideas. But subtle or not, the ultimate result 
is distorted reality and impoverished ideas."
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 4
 
 
 
The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 5 -- Desanctifying the Corporation
 
 
 
"The WORLD has no friends."
           -- Sign in the newsroom of Joseph Pulitzer's 
              newspaper, the *New York World*
 
"It is a great paper. But it has one defect."
"What is that?"
"It never stands by its friends."
"A newspaper should have no friends," Pulitzer replied sharply.
"I think it should," the judge answered just as sharply.
"If that is your opinion," Pulitzer said, "I wouldn't make you 
 one of my trustees if you gave me a million dollars."
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
"The sacred cows in American newsrooms leave residues common to 
all cows. But no sacred cow has been so protected and has left 
more generous residues in the news than the American 
corporation." Since World War I, the media has by and large 
favored corporate life. "Most of the mass media depicted 
corporate life as benevolent and patriotic."
 
However, the truth began to break through in the last half of the 
twentieth century. "When industry's ghost of pollution and 
disease materialized in the last half of the twentieth century 
the problems drew attention... to the organizations that owned 
and operated most of industrial civilization -- the great 
corporations."
 
"Corporate unease became sharper when a president whom 
corporations considered their own, Dwight D. Eisenhower, left 
office in 1961 warning against the bloated power of what he 
called 'the military-industrial complex.'"
 
The truth had begun to shine through the cracks in corporate 
America. But the corporados fought back. Through their power they 
were able to soften the legal consequences of their actions. They 
were also protected by their special positions in government. 
"After laws are passed or before regulations are designed, 
outside advisory committees sit with government leaders to help 
shape official actions." Because the positions on these advisory 
bodies are largely occupied by corporate hacks, they can defang 
reform before it is implemented.
 
"In universities, as in government, corporate values have 
steadily and quietly become dominant... Corporate executives are 
the largest single group represented on governing boards of 
colleges and universities."
 
In the public schools, "Free classroom materials are produced by 
64 percent of the 500 largest American industrial corporations." 
Anyone who imagines that these "free" materials are unbiased is 
in for a shock. "The materials concentrate on nutrition, energy, 
environment, and economics, almost all supplied by industries 
with a stake in their own answer to the problems posed in the 
materials."
 
So, the "ghosts of pollution and disease" were countered by 
massive corporate PR and undue influence on supposedly 
independent institutions.
 
Whatever criticism which does survive corporate obfuscation has 
tended to be short lived. Criticism which survives corporate mass 
brainwashing is either not reported at all by the mass media or 
is neutralized by the media's criticism of the critics.
 
"The standard media... had always been reliable promoters of the 
corporate ethic. Whole sections of newspapers were always devoted 
to unrelieved glorification of business people... in 'news' that 
is assumed to be dispassionate." Corporate causes became 
editorial causes. The most commonly suppressed news items were 
stories "involving corporations... reported in minor publications 
but not given serious attention in the major media. The 
integration of corporate values into the national pieties could 
not have been established without prolonged indoctrination by the 
main body of American news organizations."
 
In the years after 1970, "mounting public anger at some corporate 
behavior does occasionally find expression in print and on the 
air." More and more chinks in the corporate armour began to 
appear. Still, there was "no significant criticism of the 
corporate system, simply reporting of isolated cases, but for the 
first time there was a breach in the almost uniform litany of 
unremitting praise and promotion of corporate behavior."
 
The corporate types fought back. One of their counter-strategies 
was that of donating large amounts of money to help elect/re- 
elect candidates favorable to the corporate line. "[In] 1980 they 
elected a national administration dedicated to wiping out half a 
century of social legislation and regulation of business... But 
the corporations reserved their greatest wrath for the news 
media."
 
Through the use of business connections, through the use of 
massive advertising campaigns, and through the use of threats of 
withdrawal of advertising dollars the giant corporations fought 
back the swelling tide of reality. In addition, "corporate 
leaders could invoke against the media that peculiar American 
belief that to criticize big business is to attack American 
democracy."
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 5
 
 
 
The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 6 -- From Mythology to Theology
 
 
 
"No Gannett newspaper has any direct competition."
    -- Allen Neuharth, chairman of Gannett Company
 
"Neuharth Says 1-Paper Towns Don't Exist"
    -- Headline in a trade magazine
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
The massaging of reality into a mythology which benefits the 
image of a special group is an occurrence as old as history. 
"Turning life's natural mixture of the noble and ignoble into 
unrelieved heroism is done by those who, like editors of the 
'Soviet Encyclopedia,' believe it is their religious duty to 
mislead the public for its own good."
 
However, there is one important difference nowadays in this 
shaping of reality into self-advantageous mythology. "[The] high 
priests who communicate mythic dogmas now do so through great 
centralized machines of communication [i.e. the mass media]... 
Operators of these systems disseminate their own version of the 
world."
 
The special groups which control the mass media are able to 
overwhelm their often exhausted and/or passive audience with the 
constant repetition and reinforcement of certain themes. For 
example, consider the stereotype of the typical journalist as 
being radical and antibusiness. "[The] stereotype of the 
journalist as radical and antibusiness does not match the facts. 
An authoritative study by Stephen Hess showed that 58 percent of 
Washington correspondents consider themselves 'middle of the 
road' or 'conservative' politically."
 
Or again, consider the fostering of the mythology of the 
corporation as all around "hero" and "good citizen." So-called 
"corporate advertising... constitutes printed and broadcast ads 
designed not to sell goods and services but to promote the 
politics and benevolent image of the corporation... [e.g. some of 
the Dow Chemical ads, Commonwealth Edison ads, etc.] The 
ideology-image ads as a category of all ads doubled in the 1970s 
and are now a half-billion-dollar-a-year enterprise."
 
The purpose of these ideology-image ads is to present "... the 
corporation as hero, a responsible citizen, a force for good, 
presenting information on the work the company is doing in 
community relations, assisting the less fortunate, minimizing 
pollution, controlling drugs, ameliorating poverty." In addition, 
corporate dollars are used for "explanations of the capitalistic 
system, including massive use of corporate books and teaching 
materials in the schools, almost all tax deductible."
 
During the so-called "energy crisis" of the 1970s, the Mobil Oil 
Company began running a type of ad known as an "editorial ad." 
These ads by Mobil Oil came to be known in the newspaper trade as 
"the Mobil position." These ads had the format and style of an 
actual editorial but were in fact paid advertisments. One of 
these ads declared in 1979: "Can oil companies be trusted to put 
additional revenues into the search for new energy supplies? 
History says yes."
 
"Sadly [according to Bagdikian], history says no." The top twenty 
oil companies have historically used their profits *not* to 
search for new energy supplies but rather to purchase firms 
outside of oil production and distribution. In the 1970s and 
1980s, Mobil was investing in its so-called "search for new 
energy supplies" by purchasing "...such assorted non-oil 
companies as Montgomery Ward, Container Corporation of America, 
restaurants in Kansas City, [and] condominiums in Hong Kong... 
Mobil today indulges its profits... by printing 'Playboy' 
magazine, 'National Geographic,' and Bantam and Random House 
paperback books."
 
[At this point something strange has happened. I am at page 72. 
The next page says page 105. Pages 73-104 *aren't there*. There 
has been *no* obvious tearing out of pages and I purchased this 
book brand new. Draw whatever conclusions from this that you 
wish. At any rate, I will continue this synopsis in part 7, 
starting at page 105. B.R.]
 
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 6
 
 
 
The Media Monopoly
 
by Ben H. Bagdikian
 
Part 7 -- The High Cost of Free Lunches
 
 
 
"With no ads, who would pay for the media? The good fairy?"
                   -- Samuel Thurm, senior vice-president,
                      Association of National Advertisers
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Newspaper publishers are "...engaged in a strange act. They sell 
their boiled pine trees [i.e. newspapers] for about one-third 
less than they pay for them." The newspaper publishers pull off 
this magic through the help of advertising fees. "Americans do 
not get their newspapers and magazines at less than cost. They do 
not get their radio and television free. They pay for 
everything." Americans pay for the advertising which supports 
these media by paying *extra* for the goods being promoted in the 
advertisements. And ironically, "All of this is never made clear 
to them in the communications they most depend on -- the 
advertising-supported newspapers, magazines, and commercial 
broadcasting."
 
****************************************************************
*               Daily Papers (averages)                        *
*                                                              *
* 1940 -- 31 pages, 12.5 pages ads (40%), 18.5 pages "news"    *
* 1980 -- 66 pages, 43 pages ads (65%), 23 pages "news"        *
****************************************************************
Note in the above chart that most of the "news" pages added 
between 1940 and 1980 "...were not 'news' but were in a grey area 
between real news and ads, an area called 'fluff' in the trade. 
Most fluff is wanted by advertisers to create a buying mood."
 
This blurring of the distinction between "news" and advertising 
is becoming more and more of a problem. More and more, "Revenue 
Related Reading Matter [fluff]" is pretending to be hard news. 
"Heavy sections of newspapers -- like fashions, food, and real 
estate -- were created as advertising bait. Sometimes the 
material in the special sections is genuinely useful and is 
produced by professional journalists. More often it is a mixture 
of light syndicated features and corporate press releases."
 
And, according to Bagdikian, "Fluff continues to spread."
 
You pay money for your newspaper, but publishers are not much 
interested in what type of paper you want. Or rather, they are 
much more beholden in their attitude toward their advertisers 
than they are towards their reading public. "Every serious 
survey, including those by the newspaper industry itself, makes 
clear that readers want more hard news." But publishers have 
consistently ignored their readership's wants in favor of 
submitting to the demands of their advertisers. "In the security 
of their domination of the market, newspaper publishers have been 
converting newspapers into agencies for merchants."
 
 
The history of advertisers' relationship with various media shows 
a consistent pattern. The normal sequence of events is for the 
advertiser to start out having a minimal influence and to wind up 
having a huge influence over the content of what is disseminated. 
For example:
 
*** "Ads in early magazines were segregated in the back pages 
since editors assumed they were an intrusion on the reader. But 
in the 1890s... advertising agencies insisted that ads be moved 
from the back of magazines to the front... The influence of 
advertising on magazines reached a point where editors began 
selecting articles not only on the basis of their expected 
interest for readers but for their influence on advertisements. 
Serious articles were not always the best support for ads. An 
article that put the reader in an analytical frame of mind did 
not encourage the reader to take seriously an ad that depended on 
fantasy or promoted a trivial product."
 
*** "When radio became a nationwide medium in the 1920s it was 
the fastest-growing industry in national history... The most 
popular stations were noncommercial... Millions of Americans were 
tuning in to university lectures, taking correspondence courses 
by radio, and listening to drama, music, and debates."
    "As the 1920s progressed so did commercials." Because large 
quantities of radios had already been sold, the educational 
stations were no longer necessary as stimulants to the sale of 
radio receivers. Commercial stations "...used their influence in 
government to force educational stations to give up popular 
frequencies and broadcast times... In a dozen years the powerful 
system of noncommercial broadcasting in the United States had 
been destroyed... By the 1930s, radio made all its money from 
advertising and created its programs to support advertising."
 
*** "In the first years of mass television, whole programs were 
produced and controlled by single advertisers." These were the 
"golden age" programs, so-called because "...they were coherent 
and had unobtrusive commercials."
    Then, after the spectacular success of a lipstick