Candidacy and Corporate Control

The current presidential campaigns illustrate many of the points McChesney makes in his article "The Emerging Struggle for a Free press." One of McChesney's main points is that the media is owned by corporations with eyes for profits only. These corporations give financial support to campaigns in return for favors if the candidate they purchased wins the election. In watching the presidential debates it is clear that while the candidates claim to be seriously concerned with the middle-class American, the vast majority of the issues discussed revolve around the economic crisis primarily affecting the extreme upper-class. Is this truly because they fear the top-down effects that will eventually hurt the middle-class if the wealthy corporations fail? Or is it more because the financial backing for each candidate's presidency will be severely impacted if their corporate sponsors go under? It's difficult to know for sure, but it is interesting to note that problems affecting the lower-class (a class more concerned with being able to afford basic necessities than funding political campaigns) are rarely discussed in comparison to the frequency with which issues relating to big businesses are addressed.

The government essentially gets to decide which problems are considered most pressing to the public with the frequency with which they address specific issues. The more a topic is discussed, the more important the public believes it is- after all, why would the government and the media be wasting our time with stories of little value? In the same way that the corporate-owned media decides what issues are pressing to the public, they also decide which issues are of so little concern that they aren't worth addressing publically. As a result, issues not addressed by the news media generally fall under the radar of the common man. The candidates dedicate a lot of time to talking about issues relating to foreign policy, the economy, and increasingly the environment, but seldom do they address issues relating to free press and media monopolies. If big corporations own the media as well as fund political campaigns, it follows that if candidates want to afford their campaign costs they may tend to overlook the issues surrounding corporate media control.

Issues like corporate control of the media are not reported while the media is inundated with slanderous stories and negativity about both candidates. McChesney criticizes the media for only giving the public what they think they want. People are attracted to stories of betrayal, dishonesty, questionable pasts and media mishaps and these are precisely the kinds of things that are often reported of the candidates. News stories are just as likley to be about Obama's possible secret Muslim faith as they are to be about Obama's economic policy, but which story is really of the highest interest to the general public? This election and its media coverage are distorting the issues and convincing Americans that they care more about news stories regarding Sarah Palin's pregnant teen daughter than they do about Sarah Palin's ability to be Vice President.