ABSTRACT
The “advertising subsidy” has provided the economic foundation for news in free-press countries since the mid-nineteenth century. Critics have long held that this structure favors the establishment: news that doesn’t fit the prevailing view is avoided as deviant (Hallin 1986, 117), unseen “filters” on the press make it an instrument for the governing and business élites to “manufacture consent” (Herman and Chomsky 1988, 1–35) and the professional journalistic practices that grow out of a successful commercialized press can just be a way of supporting the status quo (Tuchman1978; Schudson 1978; McChesney 2003). The argument extended to the global level in the 1960s when developing countries lobbied for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) against what they saw as an international news system produced by and for the developed world. Despite efforts to address the complaints, there was little that could be done given the economic structure of the news industry.
