Advertising and political bias in the media: the market for criticism of the market economy

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, July, 2002 by Daniel Sutter

VI

Buying and Silencing Radical News Outlets

COULD DISSIDENT, RADICAL VOICES maintain their outlet even if they found a television network or radio station or magazine to transmit messages? Powerful corporate interests could buy up their station or paper or magazine and silence the critics. In the words of A. J. Leibling, "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Corporate interests surely will quickly remonopolize ownership of media outlets if occasionally a crack develops. Buying and sterilizing a dissident news organization represents a final means of silencing critics.

The threat appears serious. Upton Sinclair (1919) and Louis Filler (1976), among others, attribute the end of the Muckraking era to a business conspiracy. Between 1912 and America's entry into World War I, seven leading muckraking magazines either failed or were bought out and changed formats, including McClure's, The American Magazine and Hampton's (Miraldi 1990). According to Filler, "The movement to put a stop to exposure was systematically begun by those who felt they could no longer tolerate interference in their affairs. . . . [T]he destruction of the magazines was deliberately planned and accomplished in short order--in the case of individual organs, within a few months" (1976:359).

The cause of the demise of the muckraking magazines, however, is not so clear cut, Consider McClure's, which launched the exposure movement with investigations by Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker. While Filler (1976:370) claims that S. S. McClure lost control of his magazine "because muckraking was 'on the spot,'" McClure biographer Peter Lyon (1963:337) claims McClure's inattention to business details and accumulation of debt forced the sale of the magazine. Maraccio attributes other magazine failures to financial distress and concludes in his review of the evidence:

But in nine cases out of ten the conspiracy theory over dramatizes the hostility between muckraking and business. It should be rejected by historians. Instead, a more plausible explanation would emphasize the business problems of the magazines, and the reasonable and defensible concerns of creditors and potential creditors. (Maraccio 1984:71)

The corporate bias argument assumes transmission of critical messages is efficient. An alternative explanation for the decline of muckraking is the movement's own success; by the 1910s the marginal benefit of additional stories had dwindled sufficiently to render further muckraking unprofitable. The historical record appears at least as supportive of this alternative hypothesis as of a business conspiracy.

Corporations would probably not find buying and silencing radical news outlets profitable for two reasons. First, since silencing a critical outlet is a public good, free-riding will plague contributions to the effort. Competitors who do not participate share the benefit and avoid the cost. Second, corporations would probably have to pay a high price to acquire an outlet owned by radical publishers and journalists. The owners of a partisan publication are likely to be true believers who must be well compensated for giving up their moral high ground. A buyer would need to pay the journalists' willingness-to-accept to acquire the outlet. Willingness-to-accept must include the foregone earnings and nonpecuniary payoff to get the owners to relinquish control of the outlet. Willingness-to-accept, unlike willingness-to-pay, is not limited by a person's current wealth. A true believer's willingness-to-accept is likely to greatly exceed his willingness-to-pay on matters of principle. Corporations in general would hav e to pay sums well in excess of market value to purchase radical publications.