Murrow. Gone are the days of honest, hard-hitting exposes of large corporations and government. Today news department"s budgets are repeatedly slashed, the news has become an unwanted child that has been deemed less important than earning that extra dollar hawking the movies and products of the corporate parent. The news has become an ever-shrinking bit player in huge corporate machines. This pressure to cut costs and increase earning has ensured only news that is the best marketed will reach your home, not the most thoroughforcing the few remaining independent news organizations to cut costs, further hurting their ability to report or forcing them out of business, or into the hands of their competitors.

             Editors and newsroom executives now fear upsetting their bosses by printing or broadcasting a story that will cast the parent company in a negative light. The move towards profits at all costs means control has been taken out of the hands of those that know the business and put in the hands of those whose sole motivation is the bottom line. An excellent example of this is Time magazine"s decision to put a story about Pokemon on the cover of a recent issue, this issue just happened to coincide with Warner Brother"s (the other half of Time Warner) release of a Pokemon movie. Unpopular ideas are now quashed in boardrooms instead of being put into the public forum where they have a chance to be debated on their merit.

             The last several years have produced many examples of corporations killing stories they did not like; two examples took place at ABC and CBS. .

             Michael Eisner, the chairman of Disney, which owns ABC, said in an interview in September of 1998 "I would prefer ABC not to cover Disney. I think it"s inappropriate." a short time later at ABC"s 20/20 a decision was made not to run a story about lax security and child molestation at Disney World. Many feel that the story was killed to avoid angering executives at parent company Disney, who have a history of firing those in their company who disagree with the company and Eisner"s comments back this up.