Censorship in the Media

In some parts of the world, the government controls the media. This means that no one can broadcast or publish anything a government considers immoral or harmful, or that threatens the country’s “stability” (which usually means the government’s own power base). This is what we usually think of when we hear the word censorship.

Democratic countries, on the other hand, take pride in upholding the principle of freedom of speech. People are free to say and write whatever they wish, with some carefully defined exceptions. But in a market economy, there is another controlling power at work – the power of money. In North America, most mainstream publications depend on two income sources: subscriptions and advertisers. Both influence decisions about content. Readers must find the content relevant, interesting, tasteful, and entertaining, or they will drop their subscriptions. And advertisers will cancel their accounts if they consider the content to undermine or challenge their messages about the products they sell.

Is there a relationship between advertising and content? Consider the following:

The tobacco industry has enormous advertising power in the U.S.. According to the American Federal Trade Commission, annual advertising and promotions expenditures for the five largest U.S. tobacco companies in 2006 were over $12.49 billion.

Source: Federal Trade Commission, Cigarette Report for 2006

The tobacco industry has enormous economic clout. Philip Morris International – whose holdings include forty per cent of Canada’s third-largest tobacco company, Rothmans, Benson and Hedges Inc. – is the leading international tobacco company and fourth most profitable international consumer goods company, with $6.890 billion in net earnings in 2008. Altria Group, the parent company of several tobacco companies, including Philip Morris USA and the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, and Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, earned $4.930 billion in net earnings in 2008.
Between 1950 and 1969, Time, U.S. News and Newsweek between them wrote 210 articles about cigarettes and tobacco – most of these related to the health dangers of smoking. On January 1, 1971, cigarette advertising was outlawed on U.S. television, and advertising revenue began to flow into the print media. Between 1970 and 1986, Time, U.S. News and Newsweek included only 64 articles about tobacco and cigarettes, and most of these dealt with political or business issues, not health. Not only did these three major national news publications fail to cover the health dangers of smoking, they routinely failed to mention smoking in most articles about cancer and heart disease.

Joe Tye, “The STAT Speaker’s Guide and Slide Collection”
(Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco, 1991)

We rely on the media for our health information, but the information that we get is tremendously distorted and censored, on behalf of the advertisers…Many studies have shown that magazines don’t bite the hands that feed them.

Jean Kilbourne in the video Pack of Lies

Foundation for Media Education

“Although popular women’s magazines state that they have a commitment to general health coverage, they fail to cover the number one cause of cancer death in women – lung cancer – according to a new study by the American Council on Science and Health.” Women’s magazines continue to publish cigarette ads, but rarely include information on the negative health effects of smoking. Of the 2,414 health-related articles published, only 24 articles – less than 1 per cent – addressed the health effects of tobacco. Moreover, the image of female smokers as independent, attractive and lean was portrayed overwhelmingly in the advertisements.

“Science Group Finds that Popular Women’s Magazines Continue to Ignore the Risks of Smoking”

Press Release, July 2001, American Council on Science and Health

In November 1983, Newsweek ran a 16-page special health supplement written by the American Medical Association. Although the original AMA manuscript included information on tobacco addiction, Newsweek resisted any mention of cigarettes. That issue of Newsweek had 12 full-page cigarette ads.

Andrew Tobias, “Kids Say Don’t Smoke”

(New York: Workman Publishing, 1991)

When he was head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, David Kessler campaigned unsuccessfully to have nicotine classified as a drug. Sifting through tobacco company documents that had been collected by FDA investigators, he discovered evidence of an organized campaign by Big Tobacco to influence public opinion through the media. One Philip Morris in-house document suggested buying The Atlantic Monthly, along with several other media outlets, in order to “influence the public policy agenda and the information flow to the populace.”
In August 1998 Mother Jones magazine unearthed a document from Philip Morris that revealed the company's strategy aimed at more tobacco-friendly news coverage. The 1985 memo, written by former Philip Morris chief executive Hamish Maxwell, planned to shape public opinion in the company's favour by using its "considerable clout with the media." Maxwell wrote: "A number of media proprietors that I have spoken to are sympathetic to our position – Rupert Murdoch [who was on the Philip Morris board at that time] and Malcolm Forbes are two good examples. The media like the money they make from our advertisements and they are an ally that we can and should exploit." An appendix to the memo, written by another Philip Morris employee, stated that "Murdoch's papers rarely publish any anti-smoking articles these days."

Adbusters Quarterly (Winter 1994) cited a study which found that magazines were afraid to publish paid anti-smoking ads because they feared losing lucrative cigarette advertising. The study – which was initiated in part to find out why magazines rarely write about the dangers of smoking – was carried out by University of Washington professor Steven Bishofsky. In the survey, ninety-three per cent of the sampled magazines that print tobacco ads reported that they were concerned with how tobacco companies might react if an anti-smoking statement appeared in a magazine in which they advertised. At the same time, more than half of all other magazines said they were concerned about what the tobacco parent companies might do. For instance, one family-oriented magazine said that losing advertising revenue from other companies “might be of concern if somebody like Philip Morris, which owns Kraft and General Foods, got cranky about it.”

I think now that lung cancer is a disease that gets reported fairly regularly, or the set of diseases. But for a very long time, papers that used to seize upon every disease – muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, huge articles, pictures of the pitiful victims – never had the same thing about victims of tobacco.

Ben Bagdikian

1999 interview for the PBS series “Frontline”

Reprinted with permission from Smoke-Free for Life, a smoking prevention curriculum supplement from the Nova Scotia Department of Health, Drug Dependency and Tobacco Control Unit, 1996. Adapted and updated 2002. Updated 2009.