design contained in hundreds of corporate laws throughout the world is nearly identical. This is it:

"...the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders....

Although the wording of this provision differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, Hinkley writes, its legal effect does not:

"This provision is the motive behind all corporate actions everywhere in the world. Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders.

"Corporate law thus casts ethical and social concerns as irrelevant, or as stumbling blocks to the corporation's fundamental mandate. That's the effect the law has inside the corporation. Outside the corporation the effect is more devastating. It is the law that leads corporations to actively disregard harm to all interests other than those of shareholders.

"When toxic chemicals are spilled, forests destroyed, employees left in poverty, or communities devastated through plant shutdowns, corporations view these as unimportant side effects outside their area of concern. But when the company's stock price dips, that's a disaster. The reason is that, in our legal framework, a low stock price leaves a company vulnerable to takeover or means the CEO's job could be at risk. In the end, the natural result is that corporate bottom line goes up, and the state of the public good goes down. This is called privatising the gain and externalising the cost." (Hinkley, 'How Corporate Law Inhibits Social Responsibility', January/February 2002 issue of Business Ethics: Corporate Social Responsibility Report How Corporate Law Inhibits Social Responsibility A Corporate Attorney Proposes a 'Code for Corporate Citizenship' in State Law � see articles section www.medialens.org)

It is also called fundamentalism.

The media are businesses run by managers who "shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders". 'Serious' broadsheets are such companies, and are dependent for 75% of their income on other companies, advertisers, also run by managers who "shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties" in the agreed way. The media are also deeply embedded in the wider corporate system, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explain in their classic work on the subject, Manufacturing Consent:

"In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal 'profile' for advertising purposes, and, on the other hand, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audiences' needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their 'societal purpose' also requires that the media's interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups." (Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent � The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon, 1988, p.303)

Within the media, taking the freedom of the press for granted is an important entry requirement for those who "exercise their powers and discharge their duties" in the expected manner. Declaring that the 'free press' is a lie does not "serve the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders", because it erodes the credibility of the media corporation itself (damaging credibility with the public, advertiser support and, so, profits). It also threatens wider corporate control of society by revealing precisely the facts and crimes of corporate control filtered out by the media. For the corporate media to tell the truth about itself involves undermining its own position as an individual corporation and as part of a corporate system that is also thereby undermined.

The ugly truth about the media, then, is in a sense subject to a de facto legal ban in a corporate media system legally obliged to serve the "interests of the corporation and of the shareholders".

Speaking recently at The British Academy Television Awards, culture secretary Tessa Jowell described