Blog #10

Conspiracy Theories and the News

There's always one student in a class that asserts that broadcast news is controlled by some secret conspiracy.

Having worked in radio and TV news for many years, as well as being a writer for two newspapers and a few magazines, I tell them this would be pretty hard to believe -- unless, in my case, I had some Manchurian Candidate type chip implanted in my brain at an early age that I know nothing about. And if they are ready to believe that, then I guess they won't accept anything I say anyway.

With the exception of one conservative cable news channel that has a political agenda, about the only thing that broadcast news does is possibly tread carefully around it's commercial sponsors. (We aren't fools; we are careful about biting the hand that feds us.)

But "careful" didn't mean we didn't do it. 

For example, if one of our sponsors was caught in illegal activities, or if one of their products was defective, it was news. If we didn't go with the story, we knew someone else would and that would make us look like we were covering it up. The fallout from that would result in major damage to our credibility; and, if nothing else, news credibility ultimately translates into profits.

For a while I worked as a TV News Director and I had to make decisions on what would go into each newscast. There were many stories that didn't get air time simply because --

1. the criteria for newsworthiness didn't rank them high enough

2. they weren't adequately supported by verifiable facts, and

3. most significant of all, there was not enough time for them. (Remember, the entire text of an evening TV newscast wouldn't fill a single page of a daily newspaper.)

Unfortunately, today we need to add a couple more to the list --

1. there is no video footage to illustrate the story

2. most viewers wouldn't understand the story, wouldn't care, or would find it boring

At one TV station I worked at the News Director was a strong Catholic.  When stories about birth control, priest molestation, etc., came up, everyone paid particular attention to how he handled them. Any personal "spin" would have put him in hot water with the other reporters, the management, and, ultimately, with the viewers.

Notice that nowhere in the above discussion about what does and does not determine news does it say "because it's not on the agenda of the secret powers that govern us." 

Do mega corporations control most of the U.S. media?  Yes.  Is the main purpose of it all to make greater and greater profits? Yes. Do corners sometimes get cut in pursuing that?  Yes. Is there some kind of a global or even national conspiracy to shape the news?  Well, consider this --

In my many years of working in print and broadcast journalism, at no time did I ever feel pressure to not cover a story that I thought was important, or to shape the content of a story. It never happened.

Fact is, I found much more pressure in academia from higher-ups that went against some my beliefs about integrity than I ever did in my professional news work.

For now, I'll cite just one example.

I was to do an article for a national magazine about the achievements of a department at a large West Coast university. The person in charge of the department insisted on approving the story before it was published.

Knowing that my facts were well balanced -- the story would have, in fact, resulted in positive national attention for her university -- I refused.

She insisted, saying that she would withdraw permission to use the quotes she had given me and all photo permissions unless I did.

I simply killed the story.

Otherwise, the magazine would have published a story under my name that included only what she wanted people to know -- not exactly fair and balanced.

What this comes down to is simple professional ethics.

-Ron Whittaker 

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