Issue Area: Pressure Groups
While institutional pressures are enough to keep most journalists from straying from the conventional wisdom, pressure groups stand ready to punish the exceptional reporter who challenges the official agenda.FAIR believes that grassroots activism around media issues is legitimate and indeed essential. When does an activist group become a pressure group? A pressure group is more concerned with suppressing viewpoints that it disagrees with than ensuring that a wide range of perspectives is available. Since pressure groups are often funded by companies or industries whose interests they promote, these groups often push ideologies that are already well-represented in media debates.
Next in What's Wrong With the News: The Narrow Range of Debate
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