The Money Behind the Media

Jamal Dajani - Producer, Link TV

I see both the government-controlled media and the commercial media, the media that's controlled by corporations, are both in the same bucket as far as I'm concerned. They all have their issues. In the Middle East, you know, Al-Jazeera, they don't label it as a government-controlled station but the Amir of Qatar finances Al-Jazeera. So, it does receive directly or indirectly, subsidizes its budget from the government. And yet, in my opinion, does also an incredible job.

Robin Sloan - Vice President of Strategy, Current TV

I think it has been overall a huge strength of the American system of media that it's not particularly tied up with the government. We don't have a BBC, we don't have a CBC, and I think that's been a good thing.

Jamal Dajani

Al-Jazeera might show you everything in every aspect, fair and balanced, and they do a great job reporting the news from Palestine and from Lebanon and the Iraq war but, I don't remember seeing someone on Al-Jazeera criticizing the Amir of Qatar. So, how do you explain that? Is that self-censorship, or is there someone from the government going to the general manager there saying, "You're going to lose your job or you're going to wind up in jail." Or, does the general manager make that decision on their own because they don't want, they want the money to keep coming to their station.

Robin Sloan

You look at a place like the U.K. where the BBC reigns supreme and there's really no room for competition, for innovation, because the BBC gets so much money, it has such incredible resources that it basically hires up all the good talent, does all the cool projects but in a sense, there's something that's lost there because you don't have companies competing against each other trying to sort of out do each other. Whether it's to get a scoop, or to invent the next big thing on the Web.

Jamal Dajani

Here in the United States we claim to be independent media and free media, so what is our excuse when we censor and we self-censor?

Jeff Goodby - Co-Chairman, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

One of the functions of advertising is to provide enough income so that stations can afford to be relatively objective and produce great pieces of art and so on.

Mickey Huff - Project Censored

In my estimation there's no difference between advertising and propaganda. Advertising is culturally accepted in a capitalist climate as an art of persuasion, of selling ideas. We always hear about the marketplace of ideas. Well what sells the ideas in the marketplace, is propaganda.

Jeff Goodby

One of the things that we love about America, I think, is the free market, the free and open feeling of a market. And one of the things that I think people love about commercials is the way that they celebrate that sometimes. They actually can make you feel good about the free and open commerce that goes on in America and the intelligence with which people can do it.

Mickey Huff

When you're interested in selling an idea, you then therefore are not necessarily interested in pursuit of the truth. And that's something that should be at the core of journalistic integrity, is the truth.

Robin Sloan

So I think the American model is actually a good one, especially when it comes to innovation, and that's important because innovation is what we need now.

Jamal Dajani

No one is, you cannot put someone on a pedestal and say, "This is a perfect kind of uptopian news outfit. We don't have that."