Big business affects television ethics Essay

Today, a child watches television twenty to thirty hours a week and an adult is close to this number. Television is one of the most patronized media. Almost every house in the world has a television. This kind of media instrument is an avenue for people to be connected to the outside. It also enables people to be acquainted with products in the market. â€Å"Television ethics are derived from early professional codes of broadcasting that began in the late 1920s and are grounded in problems and issues identified in early radio. For television these ethical systems came into their own and grew rapidly, in conjunction with the development of the new medium, during the 1960s. But they now no longer exist as they once did. † (NBC, 1929) With the dominance of television in people’s lives, most companies use this as a tool to advertise their own products. We can see different products in different television programs being endorsed. Products that are being endorsed ranges from children to adults’ needs. We can see commercials of milk for children, liquor for adults and more. Anything that can pay to a television network for advertisements are seen on television, almost everyday. Even big business such as the war in Iraq is hounding journalists of their ethical practice. â€Å"The war in Iraq provided particularly difficult ethical challenges. Embedded journalists were scrutinized for their ability to report with independence. And their news organizations were tested — and often criticized — for their degree of either patriotic support or rigorous scrutiny of our government. † (Steele, 2004) Television stations depend their airtime life to advertisements. It is through paid advertisements that a television station is most likely to get their income. Without paid advertisements, a television station will collapse because it is truly expensive to maintain a station to stay on air. A station has a lot of people to be paid for their services and has a lot of machineries to maintain. Big companies affect television ethics. The money a company is willing to give in order to advertise their product is one factor to contend with. It has been estimated that a 30-second national TV commercial average cost is nearly $350,000. This is a cost that a small business cannot afford. In some cases, big companies are willing to pay larger amounts than the $350,000 just for their product to be aired on a particular station. This was simpler in the past decades. â€Å"Business news became of general public significance beginning in ? the late 1960s and early 1970s. Such newly emergent issues as equal ? opportunity, consumerism, and environmentalism brought business to the front page but often in a way that made it appear to be a ? major obstacle to progress. Add to this the seemingly endless economic problems of the 1970s–skyrocketing oil prices, recession, ?unemployment, inflation–and business news coverage seemed to ? many business executives as hostile, indeed. Faced with such accusations from business, reporters, for the most part, responded that ? they were not hostile toward business but simply reporting events as they see it. † (Evans, 1987) With the overwhelming amount at stake, most television stations do not care about the product they will advertise. This scenario is not only seen in the relationship of companies and television stations but even in the relationship of websites, radios, and other media types to the business world. With the power of money, television stations become apathetic to the content of the product a company will advertise. Television stations become blinded of the fact that their viewers are not only adults but most are children. They don’t mind the outcome of an advertisement and they don’t mind how it will influence the people specially the children. As long as the pay is good, an advertisement will surely be seen on air. We see almost all themes of life if not all in television today. We can see love, family, church, and even violence. This only says that television stations do not really have a clear censor rule regarding what to air and how to air or they are just being insensitive to the ethical demands of the public because of the money at stake in advertising. Wherever we go, we cannot do away from the reality that money rules almost everything. Even in different fields of life such as politics and education, money is the determining factor. If a politician has a lot of money, he or she will probably win. If a person is wealthy, most probably, he or she will have a greater education program. Indeed, big business affects television ethics. Television stations lives and continue to live because of paid advertisements. Big businesses continue to pay large amount of money for their products to be advertised. Connecting the two realities, we can say that because big businesses pays big on advertisements and television stations live because of paid advertisements, television ethics is affected. Most television stations do not care about ethics anymore. All they care is for their station to profit and to stay on air.