The Olbermann-O'Reilly Feud: Freedom of the Press and the Economic Value of the 'News'

Few
of us still labor under the delusion that what we are told is the 'news' is necessarily an unbiased reporting of
fact. Depending on your political
leaning, you probably perceive it as either liberal propaganda or rightwing
spew.

But
the silencing of the long-running Olbermann-O'Reilly feud is a reminder that
what serves as our window to the 'news' is largely dictated by corporate interests. As the New York
Times reports, General Electric, which owns MSNBC and News Corp.,
which owns Fox, decided the bickering between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly
had to end because it was bad for the corporate image. Rarely is the content of
news programming so blatantly dictated, but it does point out the wide net of
vested interests that hold our trusted sources of information
captive.

GE
wants you to think they are all about imagination and bringing good things to
life. In terms of market capitalization, according to Corpwatch, it is the world's second largest company,
and it is #12 in the 2008 Global Fortune 500 with a net income of $20.829
billion dollars. You can't make
that kind of money selling light bulbs, so what does GE actually do to earn that
kind of income?

In
addition to household goods, GE also builds nuclear power plants to power them, and is involved in
providing nuclear fuel and reactor services. India recently announced that GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, "would be among the
companies bidding for nuclear energy contracts worth as much as $10
billion." In addition, GE is also a major player in
uranium enrichment.

GE
is also a significant player in the healthcare field. According to their
website, GE Healthcare, "provides transformational medical
technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our
expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics,
patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and
biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the
world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor
disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest". According to The Business Journal (Milwaukee), "GE Healthcare
has
been awarded two contracts with the Defense
Supply
Center
in Philadelphia
valued at a maximum of $63 million a year for up to 10 years." GE alsorecently opening a $165 million mammography production
facility.

Another
area in which the company has huge stakes is the defense industry. The Louisville (KY) Courier Journal recently reported that
GE stands to lose out on significant income unless Congress funds new fighter
planes that President Obama and the Pentagon have said are not needed. At stake for GE is $100 billion in
potential business over the next three decades. Reuters reports that GE also recently received a $2
million DoD contract to "transform the Twentynine Palms facility, the world's
largest Marine Corps base, into a model smart microgrid
system."

Not
surprisingly, GE is also a major player in the financial markets. Its GE Money unit provides consumer
financing through numerous partners.
If, for instance, you apply for a credit card through Toro to pay for that
new rider-mower, you'll find that the Toro Online
Credit Application Center is operated by GE Money Bank. GE Commercial Finance has divisions for
capital solutions, corporate financial services, healthcare, energy, real estate
and aviation.

In
late July,
GE reported a 47% earnings fall in the second quarter due in large
part to its financial unit.

Without
doubt, GE's wide and very substantial stake in so many significant parts of our
economy should by itself be enough for us to question whether they can possibly also deliver news in a manner
we can trust to be factual. Indeed
as The
Daily Show's Jon Stewart so painfully pointed out, CNBC's Jim Cramer
was a major economy cheerleader even when all evidence pointed to there being major problems that would certainly
have an enormous impact on GE's bottom line. And that is certainly not the only instance
when NBC/MSNBC/CNBC's integrity has been called into question as Glenn Greenwald notes,

This
is hardly the first time evidence of corporate control over the content of NBC
and MSNBC has surfaced. Last May,
CNN's Jessica Yellin said that when she was at MSNBC, "the press corps was under
enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this
[the Iraq War] was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with
the patriotic fever in the nation"; "the higher the president's approval
ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives ... to put on positive
stories about the president"; and "they would turn down stories that were more
critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive." Katie Couric said that when she was at
NBC, "there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a
variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations" not
to be too critical of the Bush administration. MSNBC's rising star, Ashleigh Banfield,
was demoted and then fired after she criticized news media organizations
generally, and Fox News specifically, for distorting their war coverage to
appear more pro-government. And, of
course, when MSNBC canceled Phil Donahue's show in the run-up to the
Iraq
war despite its being that network's highest-rated program, a corporate memo
surfaced indicating that the company had fears of being associated with an
anti-war and anti-government message.

Greenwald
also reminds us of a glaringly obvious example of when we should have questioned
the impact of GE's substantial involvement in the defense
industry,

when
it was revealed that both news outlets ((NBC and MSNBC) along with most other
major television outlets) were presenting as "independent military analysts" a
whole slew of former Generals with substantial, undisclosed corporate interests
in the policies they were promoting and doing so in coordination with a secret
Pentagon propaganda program?
Despite front-page NYT promotion, Congressional investigations, and even
a Pulitzer Prize awarded to the NYT's David Barstow for uncovering all of that,
NBC's Brian Williams (like virtually every other news outlet) to this day has
never so much as informed his viewers of this story, and they continue to use
some of those very same former generals as "analysts."

Finally,
even GE's generosity has an insidious impact on what is considered factual. Here in
Kentucky
where I live, the GE Foundation has awarded a four-year $25 million grant
to provide funding for math and science education to the local school system
that will meet newly established "World Class Standards" that will
"will
revamp the curriculum with the focus of producing high school graduates who can
compete successfully in the global marketplace." In an age of environmental
crisis and complex energy issues, the involvement in science and mathematics
curricula of a major player in a specific energy industry should certainly be
suspect, as should the notion that math and science are taught to foster market
competition. Almost bizarrely,
along with this description comes a banner on the school district's website that says, "Your
coffee brought to you by chemistry." Leaving aside the grammar concerns that the
banner evokes, one is left to wonder if the coffee bean, along with the 'news'
is a relic of the past.

And
that's the way it (really) is.