Das Disinformation
It is not a profound revelation that special interests in America will leverage the media to promote some advantage. But the challenge of identifying and rooting out disinformation – claims that are profoundly distorted or untrue – is increasingly a struggle for media consumers on both the right and left side of the political spectrum. So much information is now cast into the wilderness of social media and diverse on-line and print publications – with obscured sponsors and ownership – that finding a pathway to the truth can be arduous.
Typically, disinformation is a label applied to falsehoods spread for political advantage. But what if the disinformation or the propaganda or the bias (or whatever you label it) isn’t about politics or division but rather about furthering a corporation’s economic advantage? What if a media outlet winds up being weaponized by its corporate owner to handicap its competitors? A massive digital news outlet owned by a multinational corporation surreptitiously organized to take down its commercial rivals can be a concealed threat to the economy and consumers.
Let’s look at one corporation: Axel Springer, a German multinational corporation with myriad business concerns, in 2015 purchased a majority stake in the Business Insider, a financial and business website, and then last year it grew its American media portfolio by purchasing Politico, a politics and policy news-site. After the Business Insider purchase, Henry Blodget, the sites founder, CEO and editor in chief, said: “We have tremendous respect for Axel Springer's commitment to independent journalism and its global vision for the future.” The claim was met with skepticism, however, partly because Blodget himself was banned from the securities industry by the SEC after saying different things in public and private about various companies.
Axel Springer’s $1 billion deal to acquire Politico raised further concerns. Indeed, the publication Foreign Policy (FP) wrote, “When the German media house Axel Springer snapped up the Washington news site Politico in October 2021 for around $1 billion, the media world gasped at the financial audacity.” FP noted that another publication in the Axel Springer portfolio had been “regularly sanctioned by the German Press Council, a body responsible for enforcing the German Press Code, for their violation of standard journalism ethics relating to personal privacy, among other issues.”
The ownership of media empires by corporate entities is not news. American entrepreneur, founder of Amazon, and one of the wealthiest men in the world, Jeff Bezos, famously acquired the Washington Post in 2013. Even the Walt Disney Company is a colossal corporate enterprise and media empire.
But the corporate consolidation of the media is increasingly a concern – for both the left and the right. And the inherent risks posed by fewer voices having greater control over the media marketplace are intensified when a news outlet fails to disclose that its corporate parent has a commercial stake in the story being reported – i.e., publishing pieces about direct business rivals and pursuits.
The Axel Springer company is the largest publishing house in Europe, but it has myriad other business interests, including real estate, advertising, and technology (plus a stake in Uber). Across its business interests it competes with companies like Zillow, the CoStar Group, Tesla, Coinbase, and Barstool Sports. However, Business Insider has fallen short in letting readers know that its owner competes with these other entities. The lack of transparency – or the failure to disclose – is disinformation by omission.
Late in 2021, for example, Business Insider ran half a dozen articles about Zillow’s home-flipping unit and its sudden exit from that business line resulting in Zillow trimming its workforce by 25 percent and its stock falling nearly 40 percent. Nowhere, however, in its expansive coverage did Business Insider disclose that Axel Springer is an investor in Zumper, a direct competitor to Zillow’s rental real estate service.
Recently Business Insider posted several tough pieces about the CoStar Group, an American real estate marketplace operator and data broker. But it failed to let readers know that Axel Springer has competing real estate marketplace and data brokerage firms in Europe. Some would describe Business Insider’s failure to disclose its commercial interests as a breach of journalistic ethics or, worse, journalistic malpractice. The articles appeared just as CoStar began to expand its holdings in France and Germany in direct rivalry to Axel Springer.
When Barstool Sports’ (let me disclose here that I am a fan of this sports/pop-culture site) Dave Portnoy was accused of alleged sexual improprieties, Business Insider posted numerous articles on the allegations. Yet, Business Insider never mentioned that around the same time Axel Springer was creating a new streaming platform for sports news in Germany that could compete with Barstool Sports in the German market.
Axel Springer’s website boldly declares that it “empowers people to make free decisions for their lives.” To make free decisions, though, people need the truth disclosed. I applaud Axel Springer’s pursuit to empower people to make free decisions. Indeed, I end my radio show each week with a similar exhortation, “find the truth, plant your feet, and stand firm.”
Axel Springer’s “do as I say not as I do” media ethics are unacceptable, however. It is disinformation to criticize your corporate counterpart without revealing that you are its competitor. It is propaganda to tear down business rivals under the auspices of journalism. It is bias to hide the truth for your own advancement.
Weaponizing journalism for corporate self-interest is cronyism at its most awful. Tell the truth always and report the facts.
Jerry Rogers is an editor at RealClear and host of the ‘Jerry Rogers Show’ on WBAL NewsRadio.
