The Insider and Business Flak

Micheal Mann's The Insider is the true story of Jeff Wygant, a leading tobacco scientist who has some very important and damaging information on the inner workings of big tobacco. Wygant is approached by Mr. Bergman, a source recruiter for the "60 minutes" television show. Unfortunately, Wygant's former employer, Brown and Williamson, has a strict confidentiality agreement with Wygant, disabling him from speaking out. Wygant is faced with the option of telling the public vital information, but taking this path will undoubtedly threaten his family's health care and safety.
Eventually when Bergman finally convinces Wygant to reveal the truth, Wygant subsequently looses health care and is left with dire family problems. In any case, CBS decides not to even air the program on account of the ongoing litagation that would inevitably follow. On top of litigation worries,the network is even less inclined than usual to run the piece on account of higher echelon heads of CBS standing to make a lot of money in the future sale of CBS to the Westinghouse corporation. Obviously, Westinghouse would be less inclined to purchase a network with the leeches of big tobacco attached to it. Word is handed down from above that the program cannot be aired in it's entirety.
According to leading media critic Noam Chomsky, mass media goes through various filters before it reaches your television screen (or radio, newspaper, etc). These filters include such things as wealth (the ability to own enough capital to run a network in the first place), advertising, dubious sourcing and flak. The blatent omission of vital public knowlege presented in The Insider is what Chomsky would call the "fouth filter" of the "flak filter" of the media. Flak is defined as "intense adverse criticism." It is not a surprising fact that the policy entrepreneurs of big tobacco will do anything in their power to oppose and critisize any damaging information targeted at them. It is commonplace for the mass media to ignore or bypass certain information to avoid such flak.
In a hyper-pluralist society such as ours, it is not uncommon to find political action comitees and interest groups that not only have influence on the media, but own the media. On the subject of capitalist America, it would be hard to debate against the elite class theory and it's subsequent dictation of the system. Chomsky's first filter, concerning size and ownership, now comes into play. In order to own a sizable and profitable media network that reaches a vast audience, wealth is 100% instrumental. The business class can be viewed as an interest group of its own once one considers its undisputable anti-labor, anti-government regulation agenda. Thus it can be demonstrated that the business class as an interest group dictating what information we are exposed to... and what information is kept hidden.
The story of The Insider is the rule, not the exception. Corporations have an agenda. The agenda is to profit and maintain profits. It is extremely unfortunate that we, as the American public, cannot expect balanced factual news from our media on the subject of capital, business and anything related that may or may not definatively effect our lives. The media corporations have always and will always keep us in the dark on business related issues that the public may dissaprove of. The business community is not suicidal, afterall.