Advertising and a Democratic Press [Hardcover]

In this provocative book, C. Edwin Baker argues that print advertising seriously distorts the flow of news by creating a powerfully corrupting incentive: the more newspapers depend financially on advertising, the more they favor the interests of advertisers over those of readers. Advertising induces newspapers to compete for a maximum audience with blandly objective information, resulting in reduced differentiation among papers and the eventual collapse of competition among dailies.

Originally published in 1994.

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Advertising and a Democratic Pressis an essential book for anyone interested in the structural impact of advertising on American newspapers in particular and the American media in general. Newspapers, Baker insists, operate mainly as businesses, secondarily as businesses, and occasionally--when they're sounding patriotic and devoted to the public interest--as businesses. . . . The main problem . . . is that advertising now accounts for some 65 percent of the average daily newspaper's revenue. In such a fix, he believes, advertisers replace readers and editors in determining editorial content. ---Carlin Romano,The Philadelphia Inquirer Baker's central concern is the impact of the media's financial dependence on advertising on the substance and distribution of theirnonadvertising content.... The real contribution of Baker's work is ... the use of economic analyses to show how an apparent benlC.