Managing People and Creativity in Product Leader Organizations
Organizations that are product leaders do things differently. Be it the way they market the product, the way they build the value proposition to their customers or managing the internal environment and culture they practice innovative methods that gives them the edge to be the leaders. Managing innovation calls for nurturing a pool of highly […]
Roles and Responsibilities of a Sales Manager
A sales manager plays a key role in the success and failure of an organization. He/She is the one who plays a pivotal role in achieving the sales targets and eventually generates revenue for the organization. A sales manager must be very clear about his role in the organization. He/She should know what is supposed […]
Techniques of Survey Method
There are mainly 4 methods by which we can collect data through the Survey Method Telephonic Interview Personal Interview Mail Interview Electronic Interview Telephonic Interview Telephone Interviewing stands out as the best method for gathering quickly needed information. Responses are collected from the respondents by the researcher on telephone. Advantages of Telephonic Interview It is […]
Corporate Philanthropy and Direct Marketing
What is Corporate Philanthropy? Corporate philanthropy is the act of donating money to social causes. In these times, when corporate social responsibility is the buzzword what with governments specifying the terms under law, corporate philanthropy is no longer the earlier scenario where employees pool together money with matching contribution from the organization and then they […]
The Making of Brand Leaders
Every Management student and future Business Manager would do well to study and understand more about how certain Organizations build brand leadership and keep growing. Some of the global brand names like Apple, Sony, Reebok, Nike, Samsung, and companies like Dell, IBM, HP, Xerox, GE, Motorola not to forget a host of other technology Companies […]
In the earlier decades of the 20th century, there was a clear distinction between the corporates and the media houses with each existing in a symbiotic relationship with other.
In other words, corporate houses were content with advertising in the newspapers and the TV channels and the media houses were happy with the advertising revenues as long as they retained editorial autonomy.
However, things began to change from the 1970s onwards wherein the media houses started to resemble corporate entities both in the way they were managed and run and in the way, they added spin to their stories.
It was no longer the case that media houses would criticize the corporates and still get advertising revenue. On the other hand, most media houses entered into partnerships with leading corporates wherein they published stories that were friendly to the advertisers.
The other parallel trend from this period to the present is that media houses became corporates themselves in the way they approached the business of news reporting.
Each media house aligned themselves to a particular corporate among the leading companies and thus, competition between the media houses ensured that the different groupings among industry in all countries could find sympathetic reporting from each media house.
Moreover, the revenues of the media houses started to grow by leaps and bounds and in this trend, media houses were no longer the independent entities that they were earlier. This can be seen in the way media conglomerates like NewsCorp (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and other companies transformed themselves from being mere reporting of the news to agenda setting behavior.
No wonder that many leading media house owners are more powerful than many politicians are as the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword became a truism.
In India, media conglomerates like the Times Group have risen in prominence in the last few decades thanks to the corporatization of the media. In the UK and the US, NewsCorp and Time Warner have come to symbolize big business and corporate media in all its glory.
The point here is that the media is no longer content with just reporting the news but instead, it has morphed into entities that set the agenda and entities that play a prominent role in shaping the public discourse.
In addition, the media houses entered into strategic partnerships with the leading corporates so that they get friendly press coverage. While the ethics of these trends can be debated, it is clear that media, the conception of what makes news has been altered, and the current media landscape is symbolic of corporatization of the industry.
Finally, media houses in these times are not just purveyors of news but more importantly, they have become entities, which are solely concerned with making money. Even this can be debated and as we shall discuss in subsequent articles, this has a bearing on their behavior and whether this trend is good for society.
It would suffice here to state that the corporatization of the media is now complete and it would be a trend that would accelerate in the coming years.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Introduction to Corporate Communication: Need and its Importance
February 12, 2025
