Re: Public broadcasting funding

[Dave Faneuf <tklaundry@juno.com>]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:38:22 -0500 (EST) Garrett Wollman
<wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
> <<On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 18:08:18 -0500, "Dan Billings" <dib9@gwi.net> 
> said:
> 
> > I also do not think any news outlet can be truly objective when 
> they depend
> > on a government appropriation to stay on the air.
> 
> I would suggest that the difference is that you *know*.  In old-line
> family-owned media companies, you were often left to guess what 
> effect
> the ownership had on the news, and in the new corporate media world,
> there are enough layers of management that it's impossible to know
> (unless Rupert Murdoch is involved).
> 

I can tell you from personal experience (25+ years in the biz).  It was a
very rare occasion that an owner stepped in to kill or influence a story,
even about a major sponsor.  (although sales dogs usually came
screaming).  In my personal experience is that the most that an owner did
was have us move the story out of the lead (if that is where it happened
to be) and have us place it deeper into the newscast, but no owner I ever
worked for ever told us to kill or re-write a story,  That is not true
when I worked for a major corporation.  There was an instance where there
was a major story in Boston that the business manager tried to get us to
kill, he failed but he tried very hard to get us to kill it.  I think the
individual owner was much more sensitive to his or her responsiblities
than large corporations can ever hope to be.

DF

> -GAWollman
> 

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