CNN as an Ad Agent for Sony?

Advertisers use of product placement in the media has become increasingly apparent to me. While reading CNN.com for the news, as I do daily, I stumbled upon a strange coincidence, but maybe coincidence isn’t the correct word to use. An article titled Can Steve Jobs Save the iPod? painted a rather sinister outlook for the iPod, especially considering they are the industry standard for portable MP3 playing. According to CNN’s Philip DeWitt, iPod sales have peaked and from there can only go down. It seems that unless Steve Jobs and Apple can continue to make some major innovations iPod sales can only drop. And after detailing the upcoming advancements to the iPod DeWitt says,

“Will these changes be enough to bring back the days of double- or triple-digit
sales growth? Probably not. But if the price cuts are steep enough and there are
enough new and interesting things you can do with iPods — like download
applications from the App Store — the latest versions could find their way onto
Christmas wish lists for a few more years.”

The overall tone of the article proclaims that iPods are old news and will be a declining trend over the next few years.

After coping with the brutal reality that my incredibly innovative iPod Touch, which has no other worthy competitor on the market, is actually outdated I managed to read on through more CNN articles. To my bemusement, only two articles down, was a CNN Video informing me about this great new device called the Sony Mylo, note the sarcasm. This “news” video described to me the many awesome things the Mylo could do, along with repeating the name, Mylo, every other sentence. I was never aware that CNN did infomercials. The hip tech guy, who presumably can relate to late teens and twenty somethings, even managed to make a jab at Apple. “I can download all my Podcasts so I can use something that’s not an iPhone” he said with a hint of disgust in his voice.

I couldn’t help but see a motive here. Could there be any reason for CNN to downplay Apple’s iPod in one story and hype up a Sony device in the other? So I went searching for who owns CNN. It turns out that CNN is owned by the massive media corporation AOL Time Warner. So if anyone wanted to slight Apple and praise Sony, it must be them. I searched again, but now for a relationship between AOL Time Warner and Sony. I figured if they had any corporate alliances, this could explain CNN’s stories. Sure enough, back in 2001 AOL Time Warner and Sony Collaborate to Accelerate Next-Generation Online Entertainment and Other Consumer Broadband Experiences. Right off Sony’s website and this could not fit the “coincidence” I found any more perfectly. Sony, like everyone else, is looking to cut down Apple’s dominance over the MP3/cell phone market following the success of the iPhone. So their partner, AOL Time Warner, carefully place an article that shoots down iPods and iPhones to divert sales. And while the readers still have the iPod obituary in their minds, nail them with a plug for the competitive Sony product.

This revelation goes entirely past the ethical threshold of proper journalism. It is the news media’s job to inform, nurture and be fair1. These tenets prescribe that journalists must be reporting about pertinent information and explain why that information is so important. It is not the job of the news media to sell products or even worse try and manipulate the sales in a market to support a corporate ally. Lucky for me, this was about a needless Sony product which I have no interest in buying. But what about the hundreds of other articles CNN posts? Because of unethical choices like this, all that CNN reports is now called into question. This is a perfect example of how the media is not acting as a watchdog2 but rather a lap dog3.

Works Cited:
1. Smith, Ron F. “The Search for Principles.”
Groping for Ethics in Journalism.
Ames: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 10
2. Smith, Ron F. “The Search for Principles.”
Groping for Ethics in Journalism.
Ames: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 12
3. Craig Chevrier – Social Responsibility in the Media, 09-12-08

Can Steve Jobs Save the iPod?
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/04/can-steve-jobs-save-the-ipod/
The Sony Mylo
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/09/04/aqui.pirillo.sony.mylo.cnn?iref=videosearch
AOL Time Warner and Sony Collaborate to Accelerate Next-Generation Online Entertainment and Other Consumer Broadband Experiences
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press_Archive/200111/01-1113BE/