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Show rHf VOICE OF BUSINESS Crooks, coramen arid I clowns on feEevision i By Richard L. Lesher, ; president Chamber of Commerce of the United States The Media Institute, a nonprofit, ' partisan research organization i S in Washington, D.C., has a i Mutation for conducting very com-: com-: ehensive studies of network news : verage of key economic issues. For ; ample. in Television Evening News i JLrs Nuclear Energy: A Ten-Year : perspective, it analyzed all network I KWS videotapes on the subject of ; cear energy broadcast between : ug 5, 1968 and April 20, 1979. The institute found both an anti-nuclear : bjaS jn the coverage and a lack o ! sufficient information to judge ob-i ob-i jgtively the risks and benefits of I nuclear power. i i Television Evening News Covers I Ration, the Institute found that the 1 werwheiming majority of inflation I ,ories originate with the government ! government spokesman; and i nat by an equally wide margin the Ration stories broadcast tend to j exonerate the government of any j contributing role in the growth of in-: in-: (lation. : Now the Institute has done it again, ' producing its most ambitious and shocking study to date. In an effort to determine how television network entertainment programs portray businessmen and women, its researchers resear-chers viewed 200 episodes from the top 50 television series broadcast between December 1979 and April 1980. The Institute's sample was restricted to prime time programs aired on ABC, CBS and NBC, and it excluded all j specials, sporting events and news programs. i Given the evidence below, it is not surprising the Institute decided to i entitle its study, Crooks, Conmen and Clowns: Businessmen in TV Entertainment: En-tertainment: Two out of three businessmen are portrayed as foolish, greedy or criminal. Over half of all corporate chiefs on television commit illegal acts. Only three percent of television businessmen are shown engaging in socially or economically productive behavior. Hard work is usually labelled "workaholism" and leads to strained personal relations. In other words, the single-most powerful medium penetrating nearly every American home invariably portrays business as a conspiracy against the American people. Of course there are a few logical problems here: First, it is business, through its taxable profits, wages and dividends, which provides the revenues that fund all the government programs assisting people in need. Were it not for profitable businesses, there would be no revenues .to collect and no programs to fund. Incidentally, thanks to private enterprise, en-terprise, the average person on welfare in the United States has a higher standard of living than the average fully-employed Russian living in the Soviet "workers' paradise." Then too, business is people, so if we are to believe all business is corrupt, how do we explain that the vast majority of Americans can be both dishonest and God-fearing, law-abiding people at the same time? Crooks, Conmen and Clowns confirms con-firms the conclusion reaches by Ben Stein in his recent book, The View from Sunset Boulevard: "...The murderous, suplicitous, cynical businessman is about the only kind of businessman there is on TV adventure shows, just as the cunning, trickster businessman shares the state with the pompous buffoon businessman in stiuation comedies." Asked why there is such blatant and persistent anti-business bias on television entertainment programs, Leonard J. Theberge, President of the Media Institute answered: "There are possibly several reasons. First, the formate of TV entertainment programs are highly simplistic and lead to the portrayal of good and bad guys. Two, we have fortunately eliminated many of the traditional stereotypes in our society, which in the past would have been the "bad guys" on television entertainment programs. Minorities, ethnic groups and women are treated much more fairly than they have been in the past. Of course this has .. left a vacuum in TV entertainment programs which may explain why the American businessman is such a prominent villain. Finally, there are cultural reasons which might explain a bias by TV writers against businessmen. For example, it is not a new phenomenon for creative artist to look down on the commercial sector." The business community, of course, has no right to dictate the content of scripts coming out of Hollywood. That is totally foreign, indeed, abhorrent to the concept of free speech embodied in the First Amendment. Still, it's worth remembering that these programs are being funded by our advertising dollars. So if it seems clear we are not receiving even a whisper of objectivity, then why should we continue wasting our shareholders' and employees' funds by subsidizing our own demise? Think about it. |