ADVERTISING AND CONTROVERSY

This chapter examines a legacy of problems that arise between journalists and the businesses they cover, a history that includes advertisers dictating and censoring stories, a cozy relationship that can form between reporters and corporate sources and a narrow focus on an elite audience. These conflicts date back to the emergence of the commercial advertising model in the mid-nineteenth century. Further, this chapter explores an important theoretical critique of news media and business and the political economy theory of mass communications, and it describes how the legacy does and does not apply to the National Thrift News. The newspaper used its industry ties as a reporting advantage, allowing it to navigate both roles as industry insider and as industry watchdog.