ny news or information that doesn't fit with the attitudes, values or revenue goals of these ten corporations doesn't get exposure in their media venues. Also, any information that is damaging to them or to another large corporation that they sympathize with may be repressed or given so little exposure that the public doesn't even notice it.
             For instance, Times-Mirror newspapers did not report critical events surrounding a controversial project in the Los Angeles area. The Times-Mirror Company owns newspapers, cable systems, book publishers, agricultural and urban real estate, commercial printing plants, and other ventures. Due to their land interests, the company had regularly advocated for subsidies for agricultural water. This particular project called for a $2 billion, tax-paid canal system to be installed which would directly benefit one of the Times-Mirror subsidiaries. This was definitely a news item of interest to tax payers, yet the Times-Mirror newspapers did not report on it because they claimed it was not newsworthy (pp. 39-40).
             In fact, a survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors "found that 33 percent of all editors working for newspaper chains said they would not feel free to run a news story that was damaging to their parent firm" (p. 30). With that much news being withheld from the public, it is overwhelming to consider the vast quantity of news of which we are uninformed.
             "The capacity to propagate information and ideas is at the root of political power, and political power is essential to modern corporate ambitions. So is the power to suppress information and ideas," says Bagdikian. "To give citizens a choice of ideas is to give them a choice of politics. If a nation has narrowly controlled information, it will soon have narrowly controlled politics."
             Bagdikian cites the truism among political scientists that the media may not be able to tell the public how to think, but they do tell ...