Corporate Media: Just what in the world is meant by corporate media?

     When you hear discussion about virtually anything, you may very well encounter the term “corporate media”? What does that mean? Is it inherently bad? Or good? What else exists besides corporate media? Is social media corporate media?

The olde towne crier

     We have always wanted, and needed, to spread the news. At first, it was just one person telling another. But, within every community there was always one person who knew more than others and, the more they were known for their news, the more people utilized them as a means of disseminating the news. The town gossip (or clan gossip or tribal gossip) usually just “came about”. It usually wasn’t a paid position and it certainly wasn’t a position for which you went to school. As communities turned into villages, which turned into towns, which turned into cities, a need became clear as to how to spread official news. This might be news from the king, or the mayor, or some other “official” source. This was an addition, to the town gossip, for official community informations. This person (almost universally male) was called the town crier.

     In addition to telling the official news, the town crier would also post notices about new policies, laws, or general information. As has always been true, official information was not always correct information but the source was known. Of course, that was true about the town gossip also. At heart, you trusted the news if you trusted the source. And we knew (or thought we did) the sources.

     The printing press brought newspapers which were often generated by one person. The reputation of this person was the reputation that you trusted. Then bigger and bigger. It then became the reputation of the people at the newspaper, as a whole, that determined your trust. But the bigger it was, the more abstract it became. Some papers were no longer content to report the news, they wanted to make it.

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From local to corporate

     Newspapers were still local. Then mass media took hold. William Randolph Hearst grew his group of newspapers to nearly 30 and is considered to be a founder of “yellow journalism” (cheap newspaper turns yellow with age). Yellow journalism carried the news that the owners wanted and suppressed what they didn’t want. Sometimes they even invented “news” if public opinion did not move towards the desires of owners (Hearst, for example) quickly enough. Although not directly responsible for the Spanish American war, Hearst newspapers helped fan the flames.

     When newspapers were local, the object was primarily to inform. The local owners certainly wanted to earn a profit or, at least, break even. But, they were very much part of the community and their reputation, and pride, was partially connected to the reputation, and veracity, of the newspaper. As they grew, and as ownership was separated from the community, this bond was stretched to become unimportant. All that was left was the “journalistic code”.

     As there became more methods of conveying information beyond that of the printed word, or announced from the printed word, the word media was used as an envelope for the different methods of distribution. These still include the printed word but also broadcast, streamed, cabled, radio/podcast, and other methods of distribution.

The Journalistic Code or the “Code of Ethics”

     Professional journalists, who took pride in their craft, wanted to be looked at seriously and to be trusted. This was especially true in the US, where the First Amendment, though often attacked and confronted, guarantees an independent press and the ability of citizens to civilly express their thoughts. To support this, professional associations created a Code of Ethics. These ethics include the concepts of

• Seek Truth and Report It

• Minimize Harm

• Act Independently

• Be Accountable and Transparent

     Of course, not all individuals adhered to this code of ethics but it was a standard to be used within the profession.

Erosion of the Code in Corporate Media

     For a very few organizations, the Code still comes first. But even those few sometime back off a bit from the harder parts of the Code. I understand it. There are too many situations where a person or organization may be “right” and still end up paying (in time and money and personnel) to the point of severe loss.

     In more of the organizations, owned by even larger corporations or directly by ultra wealthy families or individuals, the journalistic code became a cute idea whose time had passed. Individual people on staff might try to continue to honor it but the corporation, as a whole, had little interest. That which would increase profit was good. Information that the people who paid (advertisers and readers) liked was what they wanted to publish. Being true was a bonus but not necessary.

The slippery distinction between investigative reporting and event reporting

     If a journalist were to investigate a person, group, or event then they would attempt to use the Code in their dealings. They would present the most honest and accurate representation of the truth that they could. But what happened when they were not determining the information; they were reporting on information presented by others? Does the Code apply to this? When someone who is being quoted says something incorrect or inflammatory, does the journalist have the responsibility to call this out so that the reader not only is informed of what was said but also what was true? I am not sure that that is directly addressed in the Code but doing such certainly is to the benefit of the reader. It is not often done, especially within corporate media.

Journalist versus Announcer

     A journalist tries to work within the Code of Ethics of journalism. They don’t always succeed but they try. One test of such is whether they apologize for errors and publish retractions that call out changes of information. People make mistakes. People that care about reality admit their errors, and take responsibility for them, when they find out they make a mistake. Someone who makes errors (particularly those that make them often) and never take responsibility for, or acknowledge, those errors is NOT behaving in accordance with the journalistic code (and, for that matter, are not behaving in an honorable fashion).

     How about those who present themselves, or their words, online or on the air or in print, and don’t take on the journalistic code as an obligation? They are announcers. They are modern “town criers”. They say what they are paid to say. Alas, in the US (and presumably elsewhere in the world) this happens more and more often. Some “news” outlets (such as FoxNews for the “right” and The Daily Beast for the “left”) are really sufficiently unreliable (without cross-checking and further fact-checking) that they should be treated as only infotainment. Infotainment is comforting (aligned with your own biases) information in a pseudo-news entertainment format.

     A journalist tries to follow a code of ethics. An announcer says what they are paid for.

The slide towards corporate media

     So, corporate media is associated with larger corporations which is no longer connected to their audience. The owners don’t “mingle” with the consumers. The owners feel no responsibilities to the consumers. Their aim is to understand the consumers well enough to produce a profitable product. Recognizing what the consumers, and any financial supporters such as advertisers, are expecting, they align information with expectations to make them more desirous to continue watching/reading/seeing from that source. Truth is irrelevant. The corporation is amoral. Sometimes, when a desire to harm the consumers with their information exists (this may be called propaganda), they may even be declared immoral.

     The movement towards corporate media is caused by consolidation and separation from the market. A small number of owners who lead lives isolated from the lives of the consumers. Or, in other words, sources owned by a few ultra-rich individuals or groups highly isolated from the lives of consumers of their product.

How to work to regain journalistic integrity in media

     Split up, and require more owners of corporate media sources. Don’t have three or four ultra-rich groups/individuals owning, and controlling, hundreds of media sources. Instead, have hundreds of less-wealthy groups/individuals who are located near (and live in the same fashion as) their consumers control those hundreds of media sources.

     Require adherence to the journalistic code of ethics. Make certain that errors are acknowledged and retractions made obvious and public.

     When reporting (non-investigative but information gathering) activities are done, ensure that the public consumer is presented with the equivalent journalistic investigation along with the accurate quotations of what others say. In other words, there should be in-line fact-checking that is included with reporting of what people say.

     Will that happen? Not without regulation. Unregulated capitalism favors information tailored to the customer, in order to maximize profits, and this is antithetical to journalistic integrity.

It is up to us.

Ethics: Always in process

 

     There is a lot of talk about ethics currently -- especially in relation to developments in AI. According to the dictionary, ethics are the moral principles that govern behavior. Note there is nothing about "universal" or "unchanging" in the definition. Ethics are based within a specific society and their rules of behavior. Societies vary a lot in their viewpoints on many issues -- sex, gender roles, religion, death, expected behaviors, taboos, and so forth. A society that expects resurrection of the individual will look at death a lot differently from a society that expects only one life (whether they believe in an "afterlife" or not).

     Ethics also change along with societal norms. Fifty years ago, there were a set of behaviors that were normal, and expected, from the members of the community. Now, in this present time, some of those behaviors are no longer acceptable. The ethics relating to current societal norms may reasonably be applied to behaviors that are happening now. They can also be applied to past societies, writings, and other memorabilia but ONLY as if one is using a microscope. They can be examined and the difference between the ethics of that time and the ethics of the current time can be looked at as documentation of change. But the past behavior WAS acceptable at the time that it happened because the rule set, the ethics of the time, was different. Each period of time and each distinct society has its own rule books that should not be applied to judge behavior within other times/societies.

     The above is true -- but only in the abstract. In real life, everyone believes that their current ethics are THE correct ethics and ethics that differ are WRONG. People with different ethics -- whether of the past or of a different society or culture -- are BAD. This would be true in the opposite direction of course -- people of the past would consider OUR behavior to be BAD when judged according to the ethics of the past. This almost always leads to conflict and even to wars.

     A cultural anthropologist must always be very careful upon entering into a different culture/society because they are there to examine, analyze, and document. Since the new ethics are not known, it is easy for them to violate those in some manner which would make their work much more difficult or even impossible.

     We have been talking about the flux of ethics. Within the current time and current society there is a set of ethics rules that applies to everyone within that time/society. If they do not follow them they have to face social, and possibly legal or martial,  consequences. This is what is typically called an ethics problem.

     AI can face issues similar to that of human individuals. One is the ownership of intellectual property. For humans, taking such is called plagiarism. Generative AI systems need to be "trained" by giving it access to much information -- not all of which is legal for general use. In that way, AI may be considered to be plagiarizing or even stealing from others within the same subject matter? It may also affect the value of those systems, or people's valuable intellectual property, from which it absorbs information? I put question marks because those are part of the questions posed about defining ethics for AI systems.

     Humans can (and do -- much too often) lie. They do such deliberately (called with malice) and accidentally (by not verifying information before passing it along). If AI is trained with bad information (deliberately bad or non-verified information) then IT will use that bad information and pass it along as "good". For humans, this is called slander or libel -- but often not subjected to legal ramifications if done within social media. What is such when done by AI? Can this distortion of reality, and worldview, be considered a dangerous crime by AI systems? Another area of ethics in connection with AI systems.

     Humans can, and do, commit crimes as defined by the legal systems of their society. AI systems can be trained to do such faster, and possibly less noticeably, than that which is done by humans. AI systems can be trained to "phish", steal private (supposedly inaccessible) data, forge accounts, and other non-physical actions. If given access to "waldos" (physical systems capable of being controlled online) then they can even do physical crimes. What is the legal aspects, and ethics, of using AI systems for such actions?

     Humans can, and do, violate ethics systems. AI can be trained, or designed, to do similar violations and be done faster, and more effectively, than humans. These are the areas that badly need to be addressed before the problems that will occur become too unwieldy to deal with.

First Do No Harm: ethics of morality, amorality, and immorality

 

     "First Do No Harm" (FDNH) is an adage that applies to the medical profession as well as variants of which as used by a high-tech company as their stated guideline. While this seems quite straight-forward, it rarely is. However, it is an ethics question that should be "top of mind" with every analysis of action, decision, or behavior.

     In the case of medicine, most treatments have possible, even likely, side-effects. It is always a judgement call as to whether the medicine, or treatment, is likely to do more good than harm. Both the effects of the treatment and the potential side-effects are on various sliding scales. Effects range from Very unlikely to help to almost guaranteed to help. Potential side-effects move along the sliding scale from unnoticeable to greatly affecting the quality of life. The side-effects have an additional sliding scale which ranges from extremely unlikely to occur to almost guaranteed to happen.

     Even if these sliding scales can be adequately defined, it is impossible to put any situation on a specific point on all of the scales. Effects, side-effects, and likelihoods are going to vary from person to person. Additionally, the importance of those effects, side-effects and likelihoods are going to vary also. Because this is true, FDNH evaluation often should be relegated back to the patient, rather than remaining solely with the doctor. For cases where (in the weighted opinion of the doctor) the positive effects are likely to be small and the potential negative side-effects have a large chance to be significant and quite harmful it makes no sense for the patient to not have the last word.

     Moral behavior for an individual or business must include the aspects of doing the best that one can -- with the least negative and the most positive. Actions should also be equivalent for all people, groups, and circumstances. For instance, if a salary freeze is in effect for a company then it should apply to all -- from the CEO or President to maintenance staff. I remember one year, in a large research company, when a salary freeze was put into effect -- but executive staff was given a 25% increase. Immoral and highly destructive to company morale and productivity.

     Evaluation of morality of actions and behavior always fall into a subjective arena. There will always be trade-offs and a variety of formulas of actions that affect different people in various ways. Sometimes, companies will allow the employees to choose between possibilities. One company presented the options of compensating for a lowered income stream by laying off a large number of people or taking a pay cut for all employees. When given explicit choices, I am proud to relay that the decision which is supportive of the most people is most often taken.

     What about immoral, or "bad",  behavior and actions? Usually immoral behaviors end up counter-productive and do not survive -- as long as such behavior is visible and subjected to external response and criticism. It does not make business sense to do "bad" things deliberately if the result is negative to the bottom line. In addition, doing "bad" things deliberately reduces corporate competitiveness. It is one of the major reasons why corporations are typically supportive of inclusive policies. Inclusive policies increase the customer base, increase the intellectual and physical pool of employees, and (not quite universally) adds to the corporate image. Non-inclusive, or discriminatory, policies do the opposite.

     One multinational megacorporation formalizes the trade-offs between positive effects and negative effects. When they set up their spread sheets for production and marketing, there are spots, in the rows and columns, for potential deaths and how much such deaths (or significant health effects) will cost in terms of legal costs, settlements, and PR hits that might affect the bottom line.  The company does not particularly WANT bad effects but they are very tolerant of living with such if profits are maintained -- they follow the definition of an amoral corporation. They are often at the target end of boycotts but the percentage market hit of those participating in the boycotts are also weighed into the spread sheet. Alas, not surprisingly, the spreadsheets often indicate that they can make more profit by allowing avoidable side-effects. And the boycotts have only moral value and do not significantly affect profits.

     Moral -- trying to do the most good and the least harm. Amoral -- trying to personally benefit the most while taking into account the repercussions of negative behavior; the negative behavior can be evaluated as excessive by outside forces. Immoral -- doing the most harm in spite of negative consequences.

     While these aspects of ethics can certainly be viewed in other manners, these are one set of usable criteria.

The way you frame goals will mold how you achieve them

 

     "I want our team to work our hardest and do our best." "I want our team to win the contract." Are these two statements the same thing? I don't think so. There are so many ways a team can win a contract but stating "I want us to win" puts the situation into a win/lose category.

     There are two (probably more) ways for the "win the contract" scenario to come about. The first is that your team wins. The other is that the other team loses.

     There can be a concentration on hoping the other team does things such that they lose and ways to make the other team lose. The focus is a negative one and energy is spent concerning the other team.

     Their lead worker gets hurt, an important paper gets mislaid, your team steals important confidential information from them that gives you an edge, your team gives false information about the other team that influences the purchaser's opinion and decisions, you promise things you cannot fulfill knowing that the other team wouldn't make such promises, and so forth.

     These may be "skills" and "techniques" that you can use many times in the future, but they do not make your team better. They do not make your product better. It may improve your "bottom line" in the short-term but they do not make your team continue to improve for the long haul.

     How about the other way -- "I want our team to work our hardest and do our best." First, it may still end up being a win/lose but it does not preclude the possibility of win/win. Next, how do you achieve these goals? The goals of "working our hardest and doing our best"? You are now concentrating on your own team efforts. That doesn't mean you close your eyes and ears to what the competition is doing -- that is a legitimate part of work. But you are concentrating on your own team. Keeping realistic work/life balance in mind and the reality that overextending is counter-productive, you try to make each 8 hours of work include 8 hours of useful work. And, within that work time, you want to help your team function at their best. People work according to their strengths, overhead is minimized, obstacles are removed, and coordination and communication is made as directly useful as possible.

    You can, of course, substitute in the words appropriate for other competitive situations in life -- personal, business, political, and so on.

     At the end of the period, you will have gotten the contract or not. But if you have worked hard and done your best then you won't have any regrets. You can shake the hands of your competitors, smile, and say "Congratulations. Wait until next time." And sleep well.

Profits and Ethics: Partners in Success

 

     I am going to start this blog with something I know is not true -- but, since I WANT it to be true, I will make it my postulate.

All companies want to do GOOD in hand with doing WELL.

     Doing good makes a positive impact on the community, society, the environment, and every aspect of life you can think of. Doing well involves making the company a commercial success.

     The way our economic systems are structured, it is easy for a company to turn away from the path of trying to do good in order to do what appears to be the most profitable process. The "bottom line" is the result of adding all kinds of numbers and projections together, subtracting costs, adding income, getting interest from positive cash flow, etc.

     In such a situation, it is easy to say "if I increase my costs, I will decrease my profits". Increase the number in the spreadsheet and it will give you the number you are expecting. So, doesn't that prove that your surmise is correct? Yes -- but only if all the numbers are completely independent of each other. There are usually dependencies among the numbers but they aren't always easy to recognize and companies (and their boards, owners, and stockholders) want stability and projections that they can rely on. Possible, but unproven, dependencies are not given enough weight to override that change of number in the spreadsheet.

     Let's take a number that is in every company's spreadsheet -- salaries. Increase salaries, decrease profits. That's what the numbers say -- once again, assuming independence between the numbers in the spreadsheet.

     The search, for the lowest salaries to be paid, leads to many things. How do you succeed in paying people less? Outsource to other locations that have lower wages. Pay just enough that there are enough desperate people willing to work for the wage. Eliminate safety measures, increase working hours without additional pay, intensify the working hours so the body and/or mind is always working at peak output and left drained and exhausted at the end of the day (crippling their ability to positively interact in any family unit). Lots of ways to wring the sponge.

     Lower wages equals greater profits -- that's what the spreadsheet says.

     But does that mean that higher wages equals fewer profits? You might assume so but here come the interdependencies. How much does attrition and turnover cost? Nothing directly -- but REPLACEMENT of those resources cost something. It costs a lot of something. Lower wages will lead to higher attrition and turnover (not that wages are the only criterion for such events). So, when you decrease that number in your spreadsheet, be sure that you increase the numbers for recruiting and training, and decrease the factors involved with productivity. And the more you decrease the salary number the more the other numbers have to change. A 30% attrition rate will cost more than twice that of a 15% attrition rate because you are not only increasing recruiting/training but constant turnover is a terrible thing for productivity.

     Productivity is related to more than salaries, of course. There are many factors and I won't even attempt to capture a majority of them within this blog. The takeaway is that productivity is a huge factor in profitability of a company and that concentrating on only one number independent of other factors is likely to be a very large mistake.

     Increased salary not only has an effect on productivity numbers but it also is a contribution to sales numbers. The more people who have money to spend on products, the more money enters the economic system so they can buy your products. Ignoring the distribution of people who have how much money -- the greater the number of people who can afford to purchase your product, the more you can sell. "Trickle up" is a real thing.

     Beyond that salary number, there are many other factors that involve treatment of employees, communities, and surrounding world. Some of those "soft" factors include equal treatment, positive purpose, comfortable work environment. good communication, and so forth.

     Profitable businesses recognize that racism, sexism, genderism, Xisms, and anti-Xisms all are counter-productive and hurt profitability. That can be shown easily within the spreadsheet based on productivity and sales. You don't want to turn away potential customers and, since creativity and abilities are well distributed within all of humanity, isms within the company will decrease the ability to produce and to compete.

     Closely related to "isms", harassment also decreases productivity and morale. Different from the "isms", harassment can, and does, occur within various groups and not "just" between groups. Positive treatment -- encouragement, acknowledgement, elimination of obstacles lead to improvement both within the individuals involved but also morale, productivity, and positive interactions with the customer base.

     The bottom line of this blog is that numbers within a spreadsheet are not independent. Doing the "right thing" can increase productivity, morale, positive interactions with the customer base -- which in turn leads to greater profits and dividends.

The spectrum of ethics: morality, amorality, and immorality

     All thoughts of morality are based within the social contexts and agreements of a society. In other words, in spite of our social upbringing and lessons, there are few (if any) actions that are universally "good" or "bad".
     However, we do not live within a potential, alternate, parallel universe. Within current Earth conditions, laws, and priorities, there ARE items of "good", "bad", and "mixed". It is within this context that people, and actions, are evaluated according to the morally approved/disapproved conditions of the society.
     In this context, the non legally sanctioned killing of another is considered murder (there are many times at which such killing IS legally sanctioned). In this context, there is the notion of personal ownership of property and the unwilling (and non legally sanctioned) transfer of such property is considered theft.
     The term ethics is generally used in the same manner as the matter of luck. If you wish someone luck, it is assumed that you are wishing GOOD luck for them. If you ask whether someone is meeting ethics standards, it is assumed that you are asking about the achievement of GOOD ethics codes.
     Ethics or morality, it is possible to be positive, neutral, or negative. Someone who is actively trying to achieve the "good" standards and actively avoid the "bad" standards is guiding their life/actions according to morality.
     Someone who does not care about meeting "good"/"bad" standards evaluates their actions according to some other criterion. It could be financial/money, ego-reinforcement/narcissism, or some other criteria. This is called amorality. A psychopath is, in fact, an amoral person. They don't actively go against the societal norms unless it meets some other desire -- for "fun", for profit, for self-aggrandizement, for curiosity, ... If it meets their criteria for desirability, they are perfectly agreeable to do what society wants them to do. It does not matter to them.
     In the corporate world, a business is more likely to be amoral than immoral -- as being moral or amoral is most likely to increase profits. Within recent (30 year) history, there is the story of the car manufacturer who determined that the gas tank was likely to explode in a certain percentage of accidents. Accountants determined that the number of likely accidents, and subsequent lawsuits and damages, was less expensive than changing the design. Another worldwide consumer corporation has run cost analysis figures on deaths from improper (but likely) use of their products -- determining the likely costs of lawsuits and damages versus the loss of profits in not heavily marketing the product. These are both instances of amorality.
     So, what is immorality? That is the active pursuit of "bad" actions and the avoidance of "good" actions. Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish between amoral actions and immoral actions as the objective, observable, results are often the same. The above corporate actions might be considered by many to be immoral but they are not done primarily to violate societal standards -- violation of those standards is secondary to their primary goals (in the above cases -- to increase profits).
     It is, of course, completely possible for an individual, or group, to deliberately pursue immoral activities. These are the "villains" of history or within books or movies or even popular media. Unlike within amorality, it is the active pursuit of socially disapproved behavior that is the goal. Doing "bad" things is the purpose.
     Another factor in the morality spectrum is that, based upon societal approved/disapproved conditions, it is not constant and, thus, can change. What was moral in one century may be considered immoral (or amoral) in a subsequent century. For example, slavery was widely considered acceptable in the 1700s and before. While slavery still exists within the current period, it is no longer considered acceptable. It has moved from moral to immoral. And, during the transition period in the 1800s, people who fought to eliminate slavery were often considered to be behaving immorally while, from the viewpoint of our current time, it is now considered very moral and their opposition considered immoral.
     While it is quite natural to view things of the past according to the current standards of morality -- it is dangerous to alter historical records to impose current morality and lose the reality of the past.