Corporate Influence On Public Broadcasting Historically--Part 2

Asked by Downtown in 1991 what was the relationship between MacNeil-Lehrer Productions and PBS’s NewsHour, MacNeil-Lehrer Productions’ then-spokesperson, Christopher Ramsey, said that “MacNeil-Lehrer Productions produces the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and WNET co-produces it.” Ramsey also noted in 1991 that his MacNeil-Lehrer Productions company produced other programs besides the PBS evening news, such as a PBS series on the English language and a series featuring the Surgeon General which NBC broadcasted.

Asked by Downtown in 1991 if the NewsHour was then involved in a relationship with Time-Warner, Ramsey answered affirmatively and noted that the relationship with Time magazine involved photo access and purely journalistic concerns.

Asked by Downtown how he would respond to critics who felt that there was a conflict-of-interest involved in the publicly-funded MacNeil-Lehrer Productions operating as a commercial venture, Ramsey questioned whether any such critics exist and said:

“All of the producers on PBS are independent contractors. And all the programs are contracted. There’s nothing wrong with a production company for public television making some small profit like any other business. Otherwise, you become dependent on just one funding source.”

Asked how he would respond to those critics of public broadcasting who worry about the dangers of “clandestine commercialism” within the public broadcasting system, Ramsey replied:

“That’s part of a much broader issue. We don’t have any kind of pure public broadcasting system in the United States. Maybe some commercialism can be avoided elsewhere. But even in the BBC they pay a salary or contract out on the basis of a production fee that insures a fair and reasonable profit to program producers.”

Downtown then asked Ramsey how he’d respond to critics of public broadcasting who argue that commercial funding of the NewsHour leads to commercial editorial control.

“We have a line in the sand drawn between our corporate funders and our editorial decisions. Corporate funders like AT&T have never tried to influence our program,” Ramsey said.

When Downtown noted that some people felt that the NewsHour doesn’t report on issues involving AT&T because AT&T funds the program, Ramsey replied in 1991:

“We’ve done quite a lot on AT&T. I can show you the transcripts of many programs on AT&T.”

Downtown then asked Ramsey whether he could recall if the NewsHour had ever done a show about the Gannett Company?

“I can’t off the top of my head. But Gannett is a low-profile company. And we tend to focus on issues of public policy and are less involved with issues related to companies like Gannett.”

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Corporate Influence On Public Broadcasting Historically—Part 3

Corporate Influence On Public Broadcasting Historically--Part 1

Asked by Downtown in 1991 if there was any connection between WNET and MacNeil-Lehrer Gannett Productions, a WNET spokesperson replied:

“We are one of the presenting stations of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. We don’t have any input in MacNeil-Lehrer Productions. MacNeil-Lehrer is an independent satellite, not a part of WNET.”

Asked by Downtown in 1991 whether WNET thought there might be a conflict-of-interest in its NewsHour also operating MacNeil-Lehrer Productions, the spokesperson answered:

“Not at all. The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour is a program funded separately, funded by public television and there is a station editorial board which helps run the program.”

But in 1979, the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting published a report, titled A Public Trust, in which it noted that as early as the 1970s:

“Many public groups, once staunch supporters of public broadcasting against the blandness and vulgarities of commercial broadcasting, began to express disappointment about the record of public broadcasting on programming for minorities and women, public participation in station governance, equal employment opportunity, clandestine commercialism via corporate underwriting and the use of so many British imports.”

Asked by Downtown in 1991 if she felt that the presence of somebody from a commercial network like former CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite on WNET’s board in 1991 seemed to back-up the concern expressed by the Carnegie Commission’s A Public Trust report about “clandestine commercialism” in public television, the WNET spokesperson insisted:

“We are noncommercial and nonprofit. There are no commercials on public television. We are chartered as a nonprofit corporation.”

She then expressed suspicion about Downtown’s line of questioning, wanted more information about exactly what Downtown was going to write about “her” public broadcasting station and requested that she not be publicly identified in this article. Instead, she suggested that Downtown speak with Christopher Ramsey at MacNeil-Lehrer Productions if it had any more questions about possible conflict-of-interests or clandestine commercialism at Channel 13.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Corporate Influence On Public Broadcasting Historically—Part 2

Discrimination At Gannett Historically

As might be expected, 91 percent of the general managers at Gannett-owned television stations during the early 1990s were male and 82 percent were white. At Gannett-owned radio stations during the early 1990s, 80 percent of the general managers were white and 70 percent were male. Of the local publishers who supervise the operations of Gannett’s 81 daily newspapers in the early 1990s, only five were African-American, only two were Latino-American and only two were Asian-American. In 1978, according to The Media Monopoly, an African-American media group had protested that Gannett’s history of hiring women and minorities was “worse than the industry average” and that in Rochester, New York the Gannett media conglomerate’s newspapers “had refused to print Urban League reports of supermarket price discrimination” in African-American neighborhoods “for fear of offending advertisers.”

Twenty-two percent of Gannett’s local newspaper publishers were women in the early 1990s (as was the then-publisher of USA Today). But, according to the book Press Concentration and Monopoly by Robert Picard, “the mean circulation of the Gannett dailies headed by women” in the early 1990s was “25,000, compared to 56,000 for Gannett papers headed by men.” In other words, in the early 1990s Gannett apparently tracked its female “local publishers” into the management of its least influential local newspapers. In his Confessions Of An S.O.B., former Gannett Chairman of the Board Neuharth did not indicate what percentage of Gannett’s managers were gay men, lesbians, people with disabilities or people who were under 30 years of age.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Corporate Influence On Public Broadcasting Historically—Part 1

Gannett's Historic Brokaw And Carter Connection

Former NBC Evening News Anchor Tom Brokaw also had a historic Gannett connection. His wife, Meredith Brokaw, sat on the board of directors of the Gannett Company media conglomerate during the late 1980s. Tom Brokaw, himself, was a good friend of Gannett’s former board chairman, Al Neuharth. In his Confessions Of An S.O.B. book, Neuharth noted that Brokaw is “a South Dakota buddy, and his wife, Meredith, is on the Gannett board.” The book The Making of McPaper also revealed that on at least one occasion “Neuharth had given Tom Brokaw a lift back from South Dakota on the Gannett jet, and Brokaw had mentioned he couldn’t find the paper (USA Today) in Missoula.”

During the late 1980s, the wife of former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn Carter, was also a director of the Gannett Company media conglomerate.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Discrimination At Gannett Historically

Gannett's UK Media Subsidiary & Post-1999 Media Monopolization Activity

Since 1999, the McLean, Virginia-based Gannett Company media conglomerate also has begun to exercise a more powerful special interest in the world of UK newspaper publishing across the Atlantic Ocean. Its wholly-owned subsidiary in the Britain, Gannett U.K. Limited, acquired 11 daily newspapers in England with a combined circulation of approximately 460,000, for example, after Gannett purchased one of the largest regional newspaper publishers in England, Newsquest plc., in 1999. Then in the following year, the eighth-largest regional newspaper publisher in the UK, Newscom, was purchased by Gannett, giving the U.S. media conglomerate control over another four daily UK newspapers.

After Gannett U.K. Limited turned Newscom into a division of Newsquest, Gannett’s Newsquest became the second largest regional newspaper company in the United Kingdom. And when Gannett’s Newsquest division purchased SMG Publishing in March of 2003, three Scottish regional newspapers, The Herald, The Sunday Herald and the Evening Times were also added to the Gannett media conglomerate’s stable of UK newspapers.

Within the United States, the Gannet media conglomerate continued to purchase more U.S. daily newspapers after 1999. In 2000, for example, Gannett acquired 19 daily newspapers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Louisiana, Maryland and Utah from the Thomson Newspapers Inc. chain, as well as the Arizona Republic and the Indianapolis Star from Central Newspapers Inc., at a cost of $4.5 billion.

Yet (although you’d never know it from watching the PBS news program of Gannett’s old business associates) there are many people in the United States and the UK who, historically, have not thought that USA Today was worth losing a half-billion dollars over—or that the cause of economic and political democratization in the United States and the UK was helped by the Gannett media conglomerate monopolizing so much newspaper publishing power around the United States and in the United Kingdom.

In his 1980s book The Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian, for example, observed:

“Gannett Company, Inc. is an outstanding contemporary performer of the ancient rite of creating self-serving myths, of committing acts of greed and exploitation but describing them through its own machinery as heroic epics. In real life Gannett has violated laws, doctrines of free enterprise and journalistic ideals of truthfulness”.

Bagdikian also noted that chains like Gannett are able to control the editorial policy of their various newspapers by hiring and firing their local editors and local publishers, controlling their newspapers’ budgets and transferring the bank deposits of local papers, beyond daily operational needs, to the parent company’s home office bank account.

The Media Monopoly book also observed that “as the chain mushroomed in the 1970s, complaints of monopolistic arrogance threatened Gannett’s image.”

Next: Gannett’s Historic Brokaw And Carter Connection

The Gannett Media Conglomerate's Hidden History--Part 4

(The following (slightly updated) article originally appeared in the May 8, 1991 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown).

The Gannett Company has long been interested in the promotion of conservative politics around the United States. It was started in 1906 by a politically conservative, anti-liquor prohibitionist named Frank Gannett after Gannett purchased a daily newspaper in Elmira, New York for $3,000 in cash and $17,000 in borrowed money. Secretly financed by the International Paper and Power Company, a private power utility company in the first third of the 20th Century, Frank Gannett then purchased additional U.S. newspapers until he controlled a chain of newspapers that “were inflexibly conservative,” according to The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian. Given the special influence that the International Paper & Power Company obtained by financing the growth of Frank Gannett’s media operation, it is not difficult to understand why “the Gannett papers were enthusiastic supporters of the power trust and scathing attackers of public ownership of generating plants,” according to The Media Monopoly book.

In the 1930s, the Gannett Company founder decided to form the anti-New Deal “Committee To Uphold Constitutional Government,” which successfully lobbied for the defeat of several proposed New Deal liberal reforms and attacked such New Deal liberal reforms as social security and increased taxation of the Ultra-Rich. According to the 1945 edition of Current Biography, Frank Gannett’s anti-New Deal lobbying in the 1930s “earned for him from New Deal Supporters the label of economic royalist.” Prior to his death in 1957, Frank Gannett was also a Cornell University trustee, as well as a lord of the press. Frank Gannett also used much of his Gannett newspaper chain wealth to finance an unsuccessful 1940 campaign for the U.S. presidency on an anti-liquor, Prohibitionist platform.

Consistent with the Gannett Company’s history of promoting political conservatism, it chose to feature then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan at the Sept. 15, 1982 Washington, D.C. launching of its USA Today national newspaper. And in 1985, Gannett chose to let USA Today be an official sponsor of President Reagan’s second-term inauguration festivities. According to The Making of McPaper, Reagan’s “inaugural planners were given $336,000 worth” of free advertising space in USA Today by the Gannett Company. The Jan. 22, 1985 issue of the Wall Street Journal also noted that one of the free USA Today ads printed to celebrate Reagan’s second term inauguration was a testimonial to Reagan from the former U.S. Senator and Republican Party Majority Leader Howard Baker—who had become a Gannett Company director in October, 1984.

In 1986, the Reagan Administration was able to grant a special favor to Gannett for Gannett Director Baker’s testimonial and for the media conglomerate’s providing of free ad space to inauguration planners. After Gannett purchased the Detroit News, Fortune magazine noted in its September 11, 1986 issue that:

“In Detroit a lot hinges on whether the News gets approval from Attorney General Edwin Meese III to enter a joint-operating agreement with its competitor and fellow money loser, the Free Press owned by Knight-Ridder. If it does, Detroit should turn out to be a big winner for Gannett.”

Needless to say, the Reagan Administration approved the joint-operating agreement between Gannett’s Detroit News and Knight-Ridder’s Detroit Free Press, despite local community opposition in Detroit to the joint-operating agreement.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Gannett’s UK Subsidiary & Post-1999 Media Monopolization Activity

The Gannett Media Conglomerate's Hidden History--Part 3

(The following (slightly updated) article originally appeared in the May 8, 1991 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown).

Around the same time Gannett decided to go into the television production business with PBS’ MacNeil and Lehrer, it also decided to use its windfall newspaper chain profits and Wall Street money to launch a national newspaper, USA Today, in the early 1980s.

Gannett began publishing USA Today in September 1982. The newspaper was primarily sold in 135,000 USA Today vending machines around the United States. Despite the opposition of some urban environmentalists, Gannett “stormed the city and bolted three thousand vending machines to the sidewalks of New York,” according to Neuharth’s Confessions Of An S.O.B. book.

Since the journalistic quality of its new national newspaper was not considered too great by most literate news junkies, Gannett was forced to spend huge sums of money promoting USA Today before it could be converted from an annual money-loser into a profitable media operation. It was also necessary to offer potential advertisers six-and-a-half months of free advertising in USA Today to induce them to advertise in the new national newspaper. And wherever it could, the multi-billion dollar conglomerate always sought to hire cheaper non-unionized workers to distribute USA Today to its vending machines and to newsstands.

According to The Making of McPaper: The Inside Story of `USA Today’ by Peter Prichard, USA Today’s managing editor in the 1980s, when Gannett started to distribute the newspaper in New York City in April 1983, USA Today spent $100,000 on its launch party—including $70,000 for food and liquor—and “saturated local television, radio, billboards and newspapers” with a USA Today ad campaign. Gannett also worked out a deal in 1985 with General Mills in which consumers who sent in proof-of-purchase seals for eight of 12 General Mills products could receive USA Today free for six months—at a cost of $12 million to Gannett. Only 93,000 of the 512,000 people who chose to sample USA Today for free, however, chose to take out paid subscriptions after six months of evaluating the Gannett national newspaper.

Despite the huge sums of excess profits that Gannett spent to push USA Today on people in the United States, as late as 1986 it was still a big money-loser for Gannett. Between 1980 and 1986 (including pre-publishing years), Gannett’s total pretax operating losses from its USA Today national newspaper operation exceeded $458 million, which was “by far the greatest deficit any newspaper had ever run up,” according to The Making of McPaper book.

Yet despite the initial unprofitability of its new national newspaper, Gannett found it politically useful to continue to circulate millions of copies of USA Today during the politically conservative Reagan Era of the 1980s. And by 2008, USA Today’s current daily circulation was around 2.3 million, making it the largest-selling daily newspaper in the United States.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: The Gannett Media Conglomerate’s Hidden History—Part 4