So, doesn't that mean the news organizations effectively lost money covering Trump?Media institutions help set agendas and frame political debates each election cycle. But with Trump, they helped normalize and legitimize a candidate who never should’ve come close to attaining such power.
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Even as Trump attacked the press — mocking and feuding with journalists, threatening to change libel laws, holding campaign events where reporters were corralled and roughed up — he still served major media outlets well. That’s because the news organizations covering Trump, particularly television stations, reaped incredible amounts of money from their election coverage. Cable news organizations’ expected haul this election season? A record-breaking $2.5 billion.
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CBS CEO Leslie Moonves admitted earlier this year: “[Trump’s candidacy] may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” He went on to say: “The money’s rolling in and this is fun . . . this is going to be a very good year for us . . . bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
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One study calculated that, in 2015, Trump received 327 minutes of nightly broadcast network news coverage, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 121 minutes and Bernie Sanders’ 20 minutes. The New York Times reported that Trump garnered nearly $2 billion in free media coverage during his primary campaign. Other estimates place it closer to $3 billion.
Jacobin Magazine
Apparently so.Bereft of well-supported public outlets, the US media landscape stands out among liberal democracies for its acute commercialization.
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Is this really the arrangement — one so beholden to brute market forces — that Americans wanted?
Isn't it always the way?Trump’s screen-to-screen exposure during the campaign season didn’t just reflect audience desires; rather, it served as bait for their attention.
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Audience eyeballs are the coveted product that media deliver to advertisers. And to keep our attention, media must entertain us.
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The history behind the “Trumpification of the media” exposes the underlying commercial logic that ultimately seeks to entertain, not inform.As cheap, mass-circulation newspapers commercialized and began to rely heavily on advertising revenue [in the mid-ninetenth century], sensationalistic reporting (or “yellow journalism”) proliferated [... relying] on advertising for roughly 80 percent of its revenues, much higher than its counterparts around the world.
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The 1934 Communications Act codified the rules of [the] new medium [radio], and set up a permanent regulatory agency for telecommunications and broadcast media: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The FCC was tasked with granting licenses and ensuring that broadcasting stations served the public interest. But programming regulation was thorny terrain because the FCC was forbidden from practicing censorship. [...] Any FCC attempt to establish public interest standards was met with pushback from the commercial broadcast industry, which accused the agency of paternalism and attacking free speech.
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In an environment barren of public alternatives and structural regulation, concentration set in. By the mid-1940s, four commercial networks dominated the industry.
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Most broadcasters viewed their primary role as selling airtime to advertisers who developed programs and promoted their products. [...] Shows like soap operas — the term given to 1940s radio serials due to their frequent soap company sponsorship — granted sponsors free rein to air numerous commercials and even to influence programming.
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The FCC rarely intervened. [...] The inveterate media reformer Everett Parker, recalling the FCC’s close ties to media corporations, quipped that prior to its formation, “four commissioners were vetted by AT&T and three by broadcasters.”
Isn't it always the way?Over the past few decades, government typically has intervened to aid corporations’ interests, not the public interest. Policies girding potential alternatives like cable television and satellite communications put them under sway of the same commercial interests, and the Reagan administration jettisoned public interest protections like the Fairness Doctrine. The deregulatory zeal that characterized 1980s media policy largely continued under subsequent Republican and Democratic administrations.
Continue reading this article,and thank Bill Clinton for deregulation that led to massive mergers and consolidation so that now there are only a handful of media organizations controlling all that you see and hear.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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