At Philadelphia Inquirer, Citizens Bank Crushes the Illusion of Objectivity
There was a time long ago when reporters sided with the folks on the other side of the tracks.Why?
Because often the reporters themselves were from the other side of the tracks.
When Wall Street stumbled, reporters cheered.
Now, journalists are bought into corporate America.
With pension funds, and real estate, and kids on the Ivy League track.
When Wall Street stumbles, they fret for their collective futures.
It’s rare to get a corporate journalist to even visit the other side.
To admit that the other side exists.
But even with the consolidation of corporate journalism, there still existed an imaginary wall separating the editorial from the advertising side of most corporate newspapers.
It has kept alive in the public mind the illusion of objectivity.
Now, that wall too is crumbling.
Earlier this month, the Philadelphia Inquirer announced that the front page of its business section will be sponsored by Citizens Bank.
According to the Inquirer, a Citizens Bank ad will appear across the bottom of the front page of the business section – and another smaller ad in the top corner.
And a front page business column will appear in green – the bank’s color – and will be paid for by the bank.
“In a more unusual arrangement, a Citizens Bank label will run with a new column produced by Inquirer writers and editors,” the Inquirer reported earlier this month. “Some of the revenue from the ads will be used to hire an editor for the column, which will focus on short news items about local, publicly traded companies. The new feature will be boxed in green, Citizens Bank’s color.”
Inquirer editor William K. Marimow said Citizens Bank will have no control over the content of the new column.
It will be “100 percent based on our news judgment and prerogatives,” Marimow said.
We eagerly await critical reporting from the Inquirer on redlining in Philadelphia.
On the downside of mergers in the banking industry.
On enforcement actions brought against the company or its subsidiaries.
On how big corporations flex their civic muscle by buying naming rights to a new ballpark. It’s not the Philadelphia Phillies ballpark – it’s Citizens Bank Park.
On how bank credit card companies rip off consumers with outrageous fees.
On how bank ATM’s rip off consumers with out-of-network fees.
We won’t hold our breath.
But at least we now can say – no more illusions.
Or as Upton Sinclair put it bluntly in his 1919 classic The Brass Check, “The thesis of this book is that American journalism is a class institution serving the rich and spurning the poor. . .Politics, journalism, and big business work hand in hand for the hoodwinking of the public and the plundering of labor.”
Bought and paid for.
© 2007 Corporate Crime Reporter
It’s obvious that the media has joined up with the military-industrial complex to help guarantee that policy of the government is the editorial philosophy of the main stream media.
Hoa Binh
The media has never been objective. The difference was a century ago they laid there views on the line. Now they pretend to be objective but there still selling you a line. I’ve heard people decry the rise of infotainment. WRONG it has always been entertainment and only entertainment. The only people truly looking for the truth are propagandists like this site or townhall.com on the right. Only an ideologue will speak against the $$$. Every story I’ve ever known anything about personally the news got wrong. Take whatever input you can find from as many sources as you can find and YOU be the reporter. Fuck all talking heads even the good ones.
AMEN Kerry . . . To bad 80% plus of the population still watches network news . . . The sheep will never know . . . I have heard it so many times . . . “I saw it on TV, so it must be right” . . . Sigh
Well, we can either “sigh” … or we can keep working to try to enlighten one or two more people every day to turn the crap off and not to listen to it any more.
I’ve always thought the idea of one source providing a “balanced” report was BS. One report always has the preconceptions and assumptions of the writer in it, even if they are trying to be balanced … which is rare in itself these days. To really get to the truth, you need multiple reports from multiple perspectives.
And trust only facts. The second they switch from reporting facts to telling you what to think, turn the TV off. That means turn off every single pundit\talking head out there.
But mostly, keep spreading the word that they lie. Keep pointing out how wrong they were on Iraq. Keep working it, one person at a time.
“On how bank credit card companies rip off consumers with outrageous fees.
On how bank ATM’s rip off consumers with out-of-network fees.”
One more thing you might want to add to the list:
On how banks make a fortune on students who default on their loans because they can’t find jobs that pay enough to give them the expendable cash they need to pay off these loans. Have you ever looked at the default rates that banks charge on personal loans? With compounded interest, students who can’t find high-salary jobs will be in debt their entire lives.
This corporate-controlled government which would include most Republicans and Democrats, needs to be replaced, and fast!
Prostitution has many faces.
Citizen’s bank says “they are not like other banks.” How so? I have been a customer of theres since Mellon bank sold out to them. Before that I was a customer of Fidelity. I have never bounced a check or incurred an overdraft fee.
I asked them for overdraft insurance and they decided my credit was too bad.
I think they saw I was having financial difficulty and hoped I would bounce a lot of checks. More money in the bank for them-at payday loan rates and excessive fees. Banks and credit card companies must hire people to sit around and come up with the ideas for fees.
That is just like any other bank. The customer is only good so they can be fleeced. Yet if we decided to take out a loan and disappear overseas we would be criminals.
No, news was never objective, but it was upfront.
A long time ago, we had the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Daily News, when I was a child.
One clearly billed themselves as a “conservative” newspaper. The other clearly billed themselves as a “liberal” newspaper. Neither pretended to be “straight down the line” objective.
But they claimed to, in a combined effect, if you were willing to buy both, give you both sides of issues, especially political ones, back in those days.
Of course, this was over 40 years ago, of which I am speaking, and the viewpoint on their stances and existance was my late mother’s.
As someone who grew up in Philadelphia and read the Inquirer from my youth I am sickened by this development. Even the Annenberg family which ran in those days, weren’t the prostitutes McClatchey has let it become.
Shame on them–what’s next, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin sponsering the Op-Ed page and Time-Warner the world and national news sections? How disgusting.
Why isn’t this illegal?
As the business editor of The Inquirer, I understand the concerns raised here about the relationship between the newsroom and Citizens Bank because of its sponsorship of our content. Certainly, it’s easy for me to say that the bank will get no special treatment in The Inquirer. But the proof will come in the work that we do. So, for starters, I invite all interested parties to pay close attention to the blog that is the foundation for the column, at http://go.philly.com/phillyinc. Also, I’d invite you to take a look at the column as it appears in print, at http://inquirer.philly.com/rss/business/bizfront.pdf.
A quick correction. I allowed punctuation to get in the way of two perfectly fine URLs. Those links above should not include the periods and their ends. Thge correct URLs are:
http://go.philly.com/phillyinc
and
http://inquirer.philly.com/business/bizfront.pdf
Cheers,
Tony Gnoffo
OK, one more try on that second URL.
http://inquirer.philly.com/rss/business/bizfront.pdf