'Toward that end, Welch said that he would finally deal with a longstanding grievance of his: the ludicrous idea that news organizations should be allowed to operate in conflict with the best interests of the corporations that own them.
'Since the beginning of the country, it has been considered appropriate for the business community to exercise its right to aggressively support the candidate that best represented its interests. The new dimension that Welch introduced was the concept that the mainstream media should aggressively advance the political agenda of the corporations that own it. He did not see any difference between corporate journalism and corporate manufacturing or corporate service industries. Business was business, and the difference between winners and losers was profit, whether you were selling nuclear power or ads on the network news. From Welch's perspective, it was insanity, not to mention bad business practice, for the corporate owners of the mainstream media to restrain themselves from using all of their assets to promote their financial well being.
'In general, he saw corporate news organizations as untapped political resources that should be freed from the burden of objectivity.
'Specifically, NBC News was an asset owned by the shareholders of General Electric. It existed to make profits and to serve the interests of those who owned GE stock. Period.
'Anything else, Welch told associates, was "liberal bullshit."
'In 1988, NBC News president Lawrence Grossman insisted to Welch that news was a public trust and should not be subjected to the same pressure to make profits that was applied to other GE units. Welch fired him.
'In 1999, the GE chairman decided that it was no longer good enough for NBC News to just be profitable. Seven years of a frequently uncooperative Democratic Administration, combined with the Rove-inspired vision of spectacular profits through deregulation, now motivated Welch to take action.
'He began to aggressively, but very discreetly, evangelize the gospel of corporate media as corporate lobbying tool. It was not a new concept; in the opinion of many, it was already the status quo. But from Welch's point of view, the corporate news organizations were not living up to their potential.
'The mainstream media could make George W. Bush president.
'That would be good for Americans who believed in free markets and the merit system, Welch said." [iii]
"In 2004, in a story that parallels the NBC/Jack Welch tale, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone explained how his corporate identity trumped his personal politics. From the Asian Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2004, 'Guess Who's a Bush Booster? The CEO of CBS's Parent Company Endorses Bush':
"'Sumner Redstone, who calls himself a "liberal Democrat," said he's supporting President Bush.
'The chairman of the entertainment giant Viacom said the reason was simple: Republican values are what U.S. companies need. Speaking to some of America's and Asia's top executives gathered for Forbes magazine's annual Global CEO Conference, Mr. Redstone declared: "I look at the election from what's good for Viacom. I vote for what's good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom."
"'I don't want to denigrate Kerry,' he went on, 'but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people. . . . But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company.'
"Sharing the stage with Mr. Redstone was Steve Forbes, CEO, president and editor in chief of Forbes and a former Republican presidential aspirant, who quipped: 'Obviously you're a very enlightened CEO.'" [iv] (Globalization and the Demolition of Society, pp. 277-280)
I actually agree with some of the critics who say that if the show more realistically portrayed how media that are really doing their jobs seek to find out the real story, that the show would be better. Instead, we get a too-good-to-be-true prescient Jim Harper (played by John Gallagher Jr.) smelling out the true story of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe from the get.
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