Media Advertisers Selling Control

In his book entitled The New Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian talks about the undeniable role that advertising plays in media. He identifies media conglomerates as well as commercial conglomerates such as New York Herald, New York Times, Reader's Digest, Procter and Gamble, and Revlon. He sets up the connection between money spent on advertising annually and money paid to have control over content surrounding ads bought under certain media titles. He identifies the difference in sales of advertising between newspapers and magazines, identifying that 50% of magazine content was at one time comprised entirely of advertising pages (Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly, 2004). With this he underlies his major point that media advertising has always served first the individual companies, and second, the people.

His major point dealing with this comes in the quote found on page 249: "Given the eagerness with which newspapers protect major advertisers, it is understandable that by now advertisers expect that when the interests of readers are in competition with the interests of advertisers, the newspapers will protect the advertisers". Immediately preceding this quote was a paragraph describing an incident in which price checks and comparative shopping had been a feature once offered in newspapers in America. During a time a massive inflation in the 1970's, this feature all but disappeared when it was "one of the most compelling needs for readers". The reason for the disappearance is described by Bagdikian as the reality that advertisers feed the mouth of media conglomerates, and the newspaper industry is not wishing to starve anytime soon. Newspapers cut this feature because grocery store advertisers did not like it, and the fact that the American people felt quite the opposite came secondary to their opposition.