The media made (in round numbers) $3 billion in the 2012 election and $1- 2 billion in the 2010 election- the most ever.
Over that same 4 year period the media made $32 billion from just the SNAP food stamp reditribution scheme. About 10% of food costs go to advertising and SNAP spends $80 billion a year.
so SNAP provides 7 or 8 times the ‘fiscal motive’ for the media than campaigns do. That’s a huge ‘influenece on business’.
That’s just the media’s income from SNAP redistribution. Numerous other programs also take saving and investment money and redirect it to the consumer spending that media profits from. The ‘War on poverty’ has destroyed the wealth of the nation but the media has profited hugely from it. The Democrats get media favor because they pay for it.
Sure, Sherman’s point is good. Ads with beautiful girls next to cars, cookie-buying mothers surrounded by loving children, the Marlboro Man riding the range all show this point. Salesmen make their wages on the fact that people have non-fiscal motives for their purchases and actions.
But it’s the ‘sellee’, not the sellor, whose motives are described by him. The sellor (and his advertiser) is in it for the money.
I don’t know why I have such difficulty getting the point across that redistribution is big money for the media. Maybe there’s a media conspiracy against me... that’s most people’s explanation for the media’s favoritism towards Democrats.
I don’t disagree with most of what you say.
However, I think you overstate the media’s incentive to favor redistributive police. That incentive exists not for all consumer spending, but only that portion of consumer spending generated by redistributive policies.
Take food. While SNAP spends $80B a year (I will assume your numbers are accurate), it’s not like this is “new” spending on food. Quite obviously, some considerable majority of this would be spent on food if SNAP did not exist. They would still have to eat.
SNAP mostly allows people to spend cash on other stuff they would otherwise have had to spend on food.
Advertising dollars in mass media will always be aimed at consumer items, since trying to sell locomotives or architectural services in this way would be immensely expensive for the tiny percentage of the audience that is a potential buyer.
-PJ
Even if the direct profit motive from elections is smaller than from other engagements from other government programs, it's still a symbiotic relationship. The media supports those candidates that favor programs that will kick back money to the media.
Take the food stamp program again. I remember Rush Limbaugh talking about how food stamp enrollments late in the Bush term were so low that the federal government was considering advertising on the radio to boost enrollment, rather than see this as a sign that people are either more interested in being self-sufficient or they are getting their charity elsewhere.
If you were a media special-interest, would you rather promote a candidate who supports a growth in faith-based charities (or secular foundations) to feed the poor (who don't advertise on radio), or would you support a candidate who wants an increase in government spending to advertise increased enrollment in government programs?
So, the media get their money coming and going. They profit from the campaigns, and then they profit from the actions of the elected government officials.
It's one thing to say that our media is only interested in supporting liberal left-leaning candidates (to the point of rabidly despising right-leanding candidates), but that is mostly the "boots on the ground" journalist mind-set. The exectuive elites in the media are also motivated by the profits and special access they get by supporting the candidate and then receiving the payback once elected.
-PJ