Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [35]
NA
NA
Scripps-Howard
Scripps heirs
NA
1,400F
Storer
ODs
8.4
143P
Taft
ODs
4.8
37P
Time, Inc.
ODs
10.7
(Luce 4.6, Temple 3.2
406P
Times-Mirror
Chandlers
35
1,200P
Triangle
Annenbergs
Closely held
1,600F
Tribune Co.
McCormick heirs
16.6
273P
Turner Broadcasting
Turner
80
222P
U.S. News & World Report
Zuckerman
Closely held
1762
Washington Post
Graham family
50+
350F
Westinghouse
ODs
Under 1
42P
Sources: P means taken from proxy statements and computed from stock values as of February 1986; F means taken from Forbes magazine’s annual estimate of wealth holdings of the very rich.
1. These holdings include William Paley’s 8.1 percent and a 12.2 percent holding of Laurence Tisch through an investment by Loews. Later in the year, Loews increased its investment to 24.9 percent, and Laurence Tisch soon thereafter became acting chief executive officer.
2. This is the price paid by Zuckerman when he bought U.S. News in 1984. See Gwen Kinkead, “Mort Zuckerman, Media’s New Mogul,” Fortune, Oct. 14, 1985, p. 196.
So is the diversification and geographic spread of the great media companies. Many of them have diversified out of particular media fields into others that seemed like growth areas. Many older newspaper-based media companies, fearful of the power of television and its effects on advertising revenue, moved as rapidly as they could into broadcasting and cable TV. Time, Inc., also, made a major diversification move into cable TV, which now accounts for more than half its profits. Only a small minority of the twenty-four largest media giants remain in a single media sector.30
TABLE 1–3
AFFILIATIONS OF THE OUTSIDE DIRECTORS OF
TEN LARGE MEDIA COMPANIES
(OR THEIR PARENTS) IN 1986 *
PRIMARY AFFILIATION
NUMBER
PERCENT
Corporate executive
39
41.1
Lawyer
8
8.4
Retired (former corporate executive or banker)
13 (9)
13.7 (9.5)
Banker
8
8.4
Consultant
4
4.2
Nonprofit organization
15
15.8
Other
8
8.4
––
——
Total
95
100.0
OTHER RELATIONSHIPS
Other directorships (bank directorships)
255 (36)
Former government officials
15
Member of Council on Foreign Relations
20
* Dow Jones & Co.; Washington Post; New York Times; Time, Inc.; CBS; Times-Mirror; Capital Cities; General Electric; Gannett; and Knight-Ridder.
The large media companies have also diversified beyond the media field, and non-media companies have established a strong presence in the mass media. The most important cases of the latter are GE, owning RCA, which owns the NBC network, and Westinghouse, which owns major television-broadcasting stations, a cable network, and a radiostation network. GE and Westinghouse are both huge, diversified multinational companies heavily involved in the controversial areas of weapons production and nuclear power. It may be recalled that from 1965 to 1967, an attempt by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) to acquire ABC was frustrated following a huge outcry that focused on the dangers of allowing a great multinational corporation with extensive foreign investments and business activities to control a major media outlet.31 The fear was that ITT control “could compromise the independence of ABC’s news coverage of political events in countries where ITT has interests.”32 The soundness of the decision disallowing the acquisition seemed to have been vindicated by the later revelations of ITT’s political bribery and involvement in attempts to overthrow the government of Chile. RCA and Westinghouse, however, had been permitted to control media companies long before the ITT case, although some of the objections applicable to ITT would seem to apply to them as well. GE is a more powerful company than ITT, with an extensive international reach, deeply involved in the nuclear power business, and far more important than ITT in the arms industry. It is a highly centralized and quite secretive organization, but one with a vast stake in “political” decisions.33 GE