What is the effect of advertising as the primary income source of the mass media?
The main business of the media is to sell audiences to advertisers. Advertisers thus acquire a kind of de facto licensing authority, since without their support the media would cease to be economically viable. And it is affluent audiences that get advertisers interested. As Chomsky and Herman put it, “The idea that the drive for large audiences makes the mass media ‘democratic’ thus suffers from the initial weakness that its political analogue is a voting system weighted by income!” [Ibid., p.16]. Political discrimination is therefore structured into advertising allocations by the emphasis on people with money to buy. In addition, “many companies will always refuse to do business with ideological enemies and those whom they perceive as damaging their interests.” Thus overt discrimination adds to the force of the “voting system weighted by income.” Accordingly, large corporate advertisers almost never sponsor programs that contain serious criticisms of corporate activities, such as nega
