Sebastian Jones writes an excellent piece of investigative journalism — The Media-Lobbying Complex — documenting the various (and many) undisclosed conflicts of interest that seem to power much of the media narrative:
President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state’s former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were “modest things” the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to “take his green agenda and blow it out of the box.” The first step, Ridge explained, was to “create nuclear power plants.” Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an “innovation setter” that would “create jobs, create exports.”
As Ridge counseled the administration to “put that package together,” he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren’t told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.
And the lack of disclosure is bipartisan:
Likewise, Tom Daschle dropped by MSNBC on May 12 and July 2, 2009, and NBC’s Meet the Press on August 16, 2009. At each appearance he discussed healthcare reform with no mention of his work on behalf of lobbying firm Alston & Bird, which advises insurer UnitedHealth Group. Only during a December 8 appearance on MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy was Daschle finally confronted, albeit with kid gloves, about how his simultaneous work for lobbying firms on behalf of health insurers and meetings with administration officials on healthcare reform appeared to be at odds. “I certainly want to be appreciative of perception, so we’re going to take great care in how we go forward,” Daschle promised. A month later, on January 11, the former Senate majority leader returned to MSNBC to discuss healthcare with Andrea Mitchell. In the nearly ten-minute interview, his insurance work went unmentioned.
As of this writing, healthcare and financial reform legislation have largely stalled. And although it would be foolish to argue that Daschle’s TV appearances sank the public option or that Dana Perino’s punditry fatally wounded a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, there can be no doubt that there is a cumulative effect from hundreds of appearances by dozens of unidentified lobbyists and influence peddlers that helps to drive press coverage and public opinion.
I fail to see how interviewing people who are paid to push a client’s POV on subjects that are crucial to said clients gets anywhere near this vaunted “objectivity” that media so prizes. It isn’t as though you are talking to Tom Ridge about Homeland Security issues or Pennsylvania politics — he was specifically sourced to speak about a subject near and dear to the people who paid him. And Ridge isn’t the only one. There is a train of argument in this article that more disclosure of the potential conflicts of interest are in order. But I want to know (as does Jay Rosen here) why these people are even a source of information? They are, after all, PAID to have a POV and paid to get that POV into the discussion. How do paid POV’s become real news or analysis of real news? Locally, we have the shills at the Cesar Rodney Institute cranking out paper and opinions that suit the people who fund them — and really, that is the biggest reason for having these guys disclose their funders. You’ll never have any confidence in what they publish or what they say on TV just isn’t a paid for POV. And the local media who pick these guys up ought to be alot more scrupulous in vetting their potential conflicts of interest.
But as the media is less and less trusted, it is clear that they are complicit — again — in their own difficulties. Just stop using people who are paid to have an opinion from opining or acting as a “subject matter expert” and do the work to find people who can give you more objective information.