How much is your local TV news influenced by the people who buy ads? Too much, according this latest report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism: "A quarter of news directors in small markets, those under 376,000 households, report that they have been pressured to censor their news. One news director in the Rockies described the situation as 'a very large problem in this market.'" If the pressure from advertisers to alter content is this bad at the local level, I can only imagine how bad it is for national news where the sums of money and numbers of viewers at stake are much, much higher. And with the economy in a slump, television news will need to find ways to remain profitable and keep advertisers. [via sotd]
Something tells me you won't see this reported in the news.