If you've ever watched television in the United States — especially nationally televised sporting events like the NFL, or "talking heads" current affairs shows like Meet the Press or Face the Nation — you've probably noticed a lot of advertising for companies and organizations that the "Joe Six-Packs" in the audience would never directly patronize. Examples of these advertisers include AIG, Boeing, the American Petroleum Institute, Credit Suisse, and the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (BNSF).[1] These entities don't pay huge sums of money to the TV networks to sell their products.[2] Rather, they pay huge sums of money to affect the content of the network (and, in some cases, local) news shows.
Whenever any of these advertisers finds out that a pending news story is critical of it or any of its clients, that advertiser can get the story killed merely by threatening to pull its multi-billion dollar ad campaign from the network. Also, by repeatedly pushing bullshit memes — like the benevolent defense contractor and the benefits to the environment of clean coal — these advertising campaigns function as a means to propagandize the viewers.
Once upon a time, this was not allowed. The news divisions at the networks and local stations were not-for-profit. This allowed them the freedom not only to produce controversial news stories and documentaries, but also to call out any entity that tried to threaten them for doing their jobs. That started to change beginning in the 1980s, when politicians began to believe that everything should be for-profit. With the discontinuation of the Fairness Doctrine, limited ownership policies[3] and the requirement that stations broadcast programming designed to serve the public interest, American TV and radio stations became little more than propaganda machines for large corporations.
The sole benefit of this to the consumer is a person in New York can bitch with their friend in California about the same ad on television.
