The liberty of journalists in countries which consider themselves as having a free press is increasingly coming under stress by global business interests.
Since 1993 the UN has encouraged us to celebrate World Press Freedom Day every May 3rd. This event recognizes the political and developmental role played by journalists. The key theme for the World Press Freedom Day this year is 'Freedom of information' which is a fundamental freedom and a human right, inherently bound up with the broader right to freedom of expression, it is stated on the UNESCO website for this event. The announcement from UNESCO informs that « Freedom of information encompasses in the first instance the right to access information held by public bodies, which is conducive to participatory democracies, sustainable development, and good governance”. The World Press Freedom Day serves as a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered. In our western democracies freedom of the press is often taken for granted without actually evaluating the actual freedom. Limitations to freedom of the press are usually associated with dictatorships and less democratic regimes. Investigative journalism is considered as a distinction of the profession. It relies on the qualities of accurate, in-depth and critical reporting of matters of special public concern. It is associated with a high degree of transparency enabling the audience to better evaluate underlying values of the particular journalistic work. True investigative journalism contributes to enlighten and empower its audiences. But with growing concentration of ownership journalistic performance becomes less transparent and the audience is unable to recognize vested interests, which bias the presentation and often results in a mere recycling of a limited number of ideas, views and facts.
In fact, one of the greatest danger to a free press and thus to true democracy seeking an interactive and empowered civil society is the ownership of the media by transnational media corporations, such as Newscorp, Time Warner, Viacom, Walt Disney Company and many others. In 2011 these four corporations had each annual revenues ranging from 15 to 40 billion dollars. The Walt Disney Company owns ABC television network, eight TV stations, 277 radio stations and numerous other media. Viacom is the world's fourth largest media conglomerate with interests in about 160 television networks with a reach to 600 million households around the globe. Time Warner Inc is the second largest cable provider in the US with more than 12 million cable customers. Newscorp has more than 27 TV stations and the Fox Broadcasting Company. It owns more than 200 newspapers worldwide, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Often non-media related businesses have made investments in these media houses. In the mid-90'ies Westinghouse owned a great part of CBS television. Change of ownership to Viacom did not improve journalistic freedom very much. It is difficult to imagine a CBS journalist would have the courage to produce a critical program on women workers’ conditions, say at the work place of Westinghouse production site, even if working conditions did not satisfy ILO norms. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine journalists at NBC presenting a critical review of the military industry, since that company is owned 49 % by General Electric, which has also investments in the military industry. Media houses change frequently ownership, since their values fluctuate daily, depending on the size and character of the audiences and thus their advertizing attraction. In fact, this impacts significantly on journalistic freedom working for a particular media, controlled by interests, which have other priorities than the advancement of an enlightened audience and the empowerment of women and youth.
Regardless of the type of media, they consider themselves part of the entertainment industry. Even the daily news is nowadays usually presented as a ‘show’. This underlines the commercial orientation of programs which one would expect ought to be presented without bias to an audience seeking understanding and knowledge about particular subjects. In today’s consumer societies, news will not sell unless it is entertaining. In fact they often appear to serve against the public interest, since they rather serve the commercial interests of transnational corporations.
The organizers of the Free World Press Day prefer not to identify any of the corporations or individuals which feed on this commercialization and concentration of ownership of the media, in as much as they increasingly depend on funding from business companies, which in turn looks for ways to improve their image through partnerships with the international aid institutions. Robert Murdoch's Newscorp owned over 800 companies in year 2000 in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion. He has been mentioned as having actively contributed to create public support for the US led intervention in Iraq. One of his director summed it all up, when he stated that “The News is what we say it is”.
The media decide what makes the headlines and what is conveniently ignored in order not to upset the sponsors or those in power. The dismissal of Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, serves to show how an un-free press is unable to empower and inform an electorate, thus making them active participants in the governance of our presumed democratic institutions.
CBS aired in 2004, less than two months before the presidential election, program which showed that W. Bush during the Vietnam war had used his father's influence to dodge the draft. Although the producer had worked on the subject for years, doubts arose as to the authenticity of the supporting documentation. CBS established an independent review panel, consisting of two individuals with strong ties to the Bush family, as well as to the corporate world. One of the ‘independent investigators’ was a former Attorney General to the old president Bush, father to W. Bush. The second investigator was a former CEO of Associated Press, Mr., L. Boccardi, who in 2001 had received the John Peter and Anna Catherine Zenger Award for ‘Freedom of the Press and the Public’s Right to Know’. Paradoxically, in this particular case of the CBS exposure of the US President as a draft dodger, he did not believe that the public had a right to know. On the other hand, CBS and many other reputable media did not hesitate to inform the public about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, although it was subsequently proven to be misinformation and placed by the US government for the sake of justifying going to war. While the independent panel concluded that there was doubt about the authenticity of the documents supporting the CBS program, it never specifically considered whether the documents were forgeries. CBS apologized for its program and fired the producer. Anchor Dan Rather of 60 minutes took early retirement, but never expressed doubt about the validity of the content of the documents, although they could not be authenticated against the originals. The parent company of CBS is the media conglomerate Viacom owned by the multimillionaire Sumner Murray Redstone.
The bias of the media today is underscored by Redstone, former president of Viacom, is reported to have said shortly before the reelection of W. Bush that “from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on (…..), and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one”.
Freedom of expression forms part of the universal human rights declaration. Reporters without Borders have ranked the USA as number 41 among 180 countries just ahead of Burina Faso, but waym behind the Scandinavian countries which top the list.
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