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Posted on 01 Apr 2010 at 4:41pm By GavinoUK newspapers are casting aspersions at each other’s owners following the sale of the Independent to a Russian billionaire for the sum of one pound. According to its competitor, the Guardian, Alexander Lebedev, the new proprietor who also owns the London Evening Standard, has links to the KGB.
Propaganda for the mantelpiece?
While the Independent defends its new owner, it also takes a swipe at the larger annual losses being made by the Guardian (£30 million) and Times (£70 million), which apparently pale into insignificance next to its own relatively lowly annual financial hole of £12 million. But without subsidies from their owners, all three newspapers would be out of business. So what really motivates an individual to buy and run a loss-making major newspaper in the west? Are they expecting to turn things around? Is their ownership altruistic?
Veteran Independent journalist Stephen Glover is correct when he writes in Monday’s edition that, “The dream of a profitable, non-partisan [UK] newspaper free of proprietorial control has been dead for many years.” But he also hangs onto a modern journalistic myth when he expresses the hope that the Independent can “break even” (something it has rarely achieved since it was launched in 1986). Businesses simply aren’t run to break even. The money invested in them can do better than that sitting risk-free in an interest bearing bank account – even at today’s rates of interest. Businesses must either make an acceptable level of profit or provide some other value. It should be clear that, while a profit would be nice, wealthy individuals like Mr. Lebedev are seeking something other than a financial reward from the daily print runs.
Mr. Glover expresses the hope that Mr. Lebedev “believes in journalism and freedom and democracy”. Doubtless most newspaper owners would say that they do. But what they are getting in return for subsidizing newspapers is an ability to influence society by disseminating particular viewpoints through news reporting, editing, editorials and comment pages. To put it more crudely, the losses they sustain are a price they are willing to pay to assert a degree of power over civil society.
It is no secret that newspaper owners have different views of how the world should operate. Some promote the narrative of the left such as the Scott Trust (Guardian), Sulzbergers (New York Times) and Grahams (Washington Post) and others, like Rupert Murdoch, promote a more conservative philosophy. All are content to operate newspapers that lose substantial sums of money.
Mr. Glover need not fear that the Independent will become “a trophy on a mantelpiece”. The reality is that, like a player winning a game of Monopoly, Mr. Lebedev has taken over the only asset that was available in the UK newspaper market. The Independent has a small circulation and a patchy reputation but owning it allows him to promote his political agenda, whatever that might be.
You are correct in your belief that these news outlets are simply self serving. They have a small following in the general population, but mostly they serve to inflate the egos of the owners and editors.
There is a philosophy that prevails in most newspapers around the U.S. If you have read one editorial page, you have basically read them all. Just change the names and places.
Of course, most people pick up the social norms that they are exposed to during their years of formal education.
As life moves on for the new work force many of them will come to understand that our system of government was built on a “work and reward” ideal. Others won’t have the intellect or ability to handle such a system, and will become writers and reporters for MSNBC and The Washington Post. Their H.S. dropouts will become taxpayer funded community workers for whatever ACORN morphs into.
Prez Obama, please free us, massa!!!
“Infotainment” sells ad space… but they don’t realize the editorializing and lack of real content is their undoing.. but that’s what happens when a group of people (investors) make decision rather than a single owner. How many pilots are needed to fly a plane?