Transcript
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. We all know that advertising affects consumers, and the auto industry is the nation's single largest advertiser. But as Keith Bradsher observes in his newly updated book about SUVs called High and Mighty, when it comes to selling cars, ads are not especially influential. So, why spend so much dough? Keith Bradsher was formerly the New York Times' Detroit bureau chief. Now he heads the Times' Hong Kong bureau. Keith, welcome to OTM.
KEITH BRADSHER: Thank you very much for having me on the show.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the SUV is bigger, more powerful and more expensive than a regular car, and you say so are its press junkets. When you walk into an auto industry press event, how do you know instantly whether it's for an SUV or a regular old car?
KEITH BRADSHER: If it's for a regular old car, it tends to be a modest event held on city streets. If it's for an SUV, you're being flown somewhere exotic. The auto industry has flown planeloads of journalists to Outer Mongolia for the introduction of the Land Rover Discovery Series II, to Phoenix, Arizona for the Ford Explorer, to Alaska for the Ford Expedition, to Belize for the new Acura model.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Back in their offices, away from the free food and the majesty of the mountains, can reporters recover their objectivity?
KEITH BRADSHER:Some do and others do not. It is an advantage to change people among beats periodically. I think the longer anybody is covering any subject, often the closer they tend to get to the subject.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And there is a considerable revolving door between the journalists and the companies.
KEITH BRADSHER:It's very hard to get journalists to move to Detroit. Once they're there, they tend very often to be hired by the auto makers they cover. During the space of a few months several years ago, Ford hired the reporters covering it for the Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine, Reuters. The Associated Press has lost I guess 5 out of its last 7 auto writers to working for the public relations arms of the automakers. So it is hard for news organizations to hold on to people against the considerably larger salaries, but more important, much better benefits that the auto industry does offer, and the, the strange result is that you go to a press conference one week, and you're standing next to somebody who's asking questions, and the next week they're standing next to the executive receiving the questions.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But we've all heard for years that reporters who cover consumer goods tend to be susceptible to that kind of compromising position. Is it unusually prevalent, do you think, in the auto industry?
KEITH BRADSHER: Detroit is more of a company town. Now that said, you certainly see caustic stories often about such and such an auto maker is not selling well or such and such an executive is not doing well, but there is seldom in Detroit a basic questioning of the wisdom of where, for example, the entire industry may be going as it was in the case of sport utility vehicles. There's seldom a questioning on environmental issues where the automotive media tends to very much share the perspective of the auto industry. There's seldom a question on safety issues. There's a very strong hostility to any criticism of the industry on these kinds of broad points.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Let's talk about advertising for a moment. As you note in your book, the auto industry is the nation's number one advertiser, and yet you say only about 20 percent of car buyers are actually swayed by the ads. So what's the point of all that advertising?
KEITH BRADSHER: The auto industry's advertising is roughly equal to the combined advertising of the next three categories, and those are all of telecom advertising, plus all of financial services, plus all of the national restaurant chain advertising. So it is an enormous amount of advertising, and it does make some difference, and for the auto industry it's just a cost of doing business.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So if they're spending all of that money, and it influences perhaps 20 percent of car buyers, what about the influence on newspaper and magazine publishers? That's a big chunk of change.
KEITH BRADSHER: In my book I describe the example of what happened to Sierra magazine when, in late 1996, they ran an article that was mildly critical of the poor gas mileage of SUVs. And sure enough, all of their SUV advertising disappeared immediately. And that was 7 percent of the gross revenues of the magazine, and they had to run fewer pages of articles in subsequent magazines, because they didn't have that SUV advertising. So that was a, a strong example of how dependent many publications are on, on automotive advertising, and there is a-- to some extent a chilling effect on coverage. Now that varies by the news organization--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Does the auto industry have that much power to influence and perhaps even punish publications?
KEITH BRADSHER:There is definitely an effort by the auto industry to find places to advertise their products that they perceive as providing a friendly or conducive environment for their products. Now they like to say that that's not an effort to actually manipulate media coverage, but part of what they perceive as a friendly or conducive environment for their products is one that does not raise questions.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Keith Bradsher, thanks a lot.
KEITH BRADSHER: Thank you very much.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Keith Bradsher's book is High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV.