| I've been listening to a series of the radio show Deconstructing Dinner called "Packaged Foods Exposed" and they make a very important point. Obviously one of the reasons why media outlets that rely on ads do not like to criticize packaged food companies is because they do not want to alienate their advertisers.
The show on Kraft pointed to Philip Morris' decision to buy Kraft as a means to keep TV shows from criticizing their cigarettes. After cigarettes were no longer allowed to advertise on TV, they had no way to threaten TV networks with the loss of their advertising dollars if they were a tobacco company only - so they went into the food business by purchasing Kraft. Now the TV networks would know that if they criticized cigarettes, they would lose Kraft's advertising money.
This applies beyond the example of Philip Morris and Kraft (and, in fact, they have not owned Kraft for a few years now). Our grocery stores are filled with products by Nestle, Kraft, PepsiCo, Unilever, and a few other companies. The loss of just ONE of these advertisers would be a major blow to any media outlet. That keeps them quiet about reporting on all of the brands owned by these companies. If we didn't allow such consolidation of our food companies, then our news shows would have more freedom to tell the truth about individual brands without fearing the loss of ALL of their advertising dollars. Alternatively, we could move to a new model in which advertising was not needed because our news shows were funded publicly (like PBS and NPR) but even PBS and NPR take money from "sponsors." All of this serves to reduce the amount of information we are getting from our "news." |
