Corporate Media Moguls Protect Commercial Interests by Silencing Valid Criticism

by Deb Cupples |  The New York Times reports that some folks at Fox and MSNBC (owned by General Electric )  held a private "summit," at which they agreed to stop allowing Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly to go after each other -- despite the fact that both networks had seen ratings increases (which usually means bigger ad revenues) since the two TV personalities started openly attacking each other. The Times states:

"The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations."

Well, sure.  Consistently one of our nation's top-20 federal contractors, General Electric has made billions off the contractor-friendly politicians that Bill O'Reilly and other folks at Fox dupe ordinary, hardworking Americans into voting for. 

Why would GE allow one of it's own talking heads to so effectively discredit the deceptive cheerleaders at Fox?  My guess is that the ad revenues resulting from MSNBC's higher ratings (when Mr. Olbermann exposes Mr. O'Reilly for the unabashed liar that he is) are not quite as large as the revenues from government contracts. check out the table below:

GE's Ranking Among Federal Contractors & Contract Values

Year	Ranking	Contract Value
2008	#16	$3.39 billion
2007	#15	$3.26 billion
2006	#16	$2.65 billion
2005	#17	$1.96 billion
2004	#13	$2.46 billion
	Total	$13.72 billion

That $13-plus billion is just five years of GE's revenue from government contracts.  Making matters worse, GE has behaved questionably while under federal contract -- resulting in at least one Justice Department lawsuit over contractor waste, fraud, or abuse.

In 2006, for example, General Electric (and 2 subcontractors) paid $11.5 million to settle a government suit alleging that GE had sold defective blades for the engines of U.S. military planes and helicopters.

The Federal Contractor Misconduct Database lists 32 legal actions against GE for various alleged legal violations, including contractor waste, fraud or abuse.  The data is certainly worth a look.

This Fox-MSNBC "cease fire" is yet another piece of evidence suggesting that our nation needs to start de-consolidating media ownership a bit.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald sums it up this way:

"[A] review of all of Olbermann's post-June 1 shows does reveal that he has not ever criticized (or even mentioned) Bill O'Reilly since then and barely ever mentions Fox News any longer.  And on June 1 -- the last time Olbermann mentioned O'Reilly -- Olbermann claimed at the end of his broadcast that he would cease referring to O'Reilly in the future because ignoring him (and "quarantining" Fox) would supposedly help get O'Reilly off the air ("So as of this show‘s end, I will retire the name, the photograph, and the caricature").

"So here we have yet another example -- perhaps the most glaring yet -- of the corporations that own our largest media outlets controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation."

The big question: if the vast majority of our nation's media is spinning or withholding actual truths in order to better line their own pockets, how are we ordinary Americans supposed to discover what's really going on in our nation?

The Colombia Journalism Review has data on current media ownership.  For more about media consolidation, click here and here.

Memeorandum has commentary.

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* Reducing Executive Pay and Contractor Fraud Would Lower Health Care Costs

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* Real Bonuses Based on Fake Profits

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