Media Squeezed by Oil and Banking

While in the land of Eschaton I happened upon . . . I won’t call it a C-O-N- spiracy. Nope won’t do it. That would cloud the issue. What I will mention is the influence that major energy and financial companies have over two very significant mechanisms of American democracy – legislation and information.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) – Days after financial services giant Morgan Stanley informed print publications that its ads must be automatically pulled from any edition containing “objectionable editorial coverage,” global energy giant BP has adopted a similar press strategy. According to a copy of a memo on the letterhead of BP’s media-buying agency, WPP Group’s MindShare, the global marketer has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward negative editorial coverage. The memo cites a new BP policy document entitled “2005 BP Corporate-RFP” that demands that ad-accepting publications inform BP in advance of any news text or visuals they plan to publish that directly mention the company, a competitor or the oil-and-energy industry. A spokeswoman for MindShare refused to comment on the memo, calling it a “client matter” and referred calls to BP. BP spent $95.5 million in measured media in the U.S. in 2004, according to TNS Media Intelligence. . . One former publisher and longtime magazine industry executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that “magazines are not in the financial position today to buck rules from advertisers” and predicted that such moves will continue. full

With the energy companies drafting our energy policy and the financial services sector drafting our bankruptcy legislation it seems more than suspicious that they are muzzling, through extortion, the press. You do the math. What this amounts to is corporate censorship of the press; being private entities it is their prerogative to spend money with whom they choose. But when the government is in league with these companies and the public’s right to know is compromised by the machinations of a combination of government and private interest then, a critical eye has to be trained on what went wrong that has allowed the welfare of so many to end up in the hands of so few.