Money has replaced concern for public welfare as the force that propels the journalism industry.

That was the message proclaimed by Ben Bagdikian in his speech Tuesday titled, “Sinners Wearing Haloes: When the Business Office Selects the News.” Bagdikian is a journalist and an author, as well as dean and emeritus professor at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

“If we do not inform ourselves beyond the prime-time commercial news of the front pages of the larger newspapers, we will not acquire all the information needed to work actively for candidates, legislation, regulations and corporate policies needed for the common good,” he said.

Though the nature of his topic was serious, Bagdikian made the crowd of more than 100 laugh, injecting humor into his oration.

“I’ve had a very warm welcome here, even though I am not running for president, and I have no position on ethanol,” he said.

During the first half of his speech, Bagdikian fought microphone difficulties, but this did not stop him from identifying the negative effects of the five major media corporations owning a majority of the daily newspapers, radio and television stations and other mass media outlets.

“We depend on these corporations to tell us about the world beyond our own personal experiences,” he said.

However, the broadcasting and publishing companies do not address many of the issues facing the entire population, instead focusing on an affluent audience, he said.

He attributed this trend to the fact that advertising provides nearly all of the revenue for mass media in the United States.

The once-respected wall that separated the newsroom and the business office has been torn down, Bagdikian said.

“Today’s executives of large media corporations are more interested in increasing the corporate stock prices so that their massive stock options can make them multimillionaires,” he said.

He said the money-grubbing tendency of businessmen came at a cost — news content has often been dictated, altered and even censored because of financial concerns.

“There have been frequent silences of news that might offend an advertiser,” he said.

Even news that is covered may not affect anything. A single story is quickly forgotten, he said. It takes repeated coverage to change public opinion.

“What the media emphasize day after day, the political people respond to,” Bagdikian said. “What is not in the news is more safely ignored by the political system.”

The causes of homelessness, a steady decline in the purchasing power for the working class and other injustices have largely been ignored by news organizations, he said.

“When it comes to the problems of those who end up sleeping on the street, they aren’t terribly important except possibly for sympathetic stories,” he said.

Bagdikian said the public welfare stories of 100 years ago are gone, replaced by reporting that caters to affluent people and ignores the rest of the population.

“Because we have seen it every day for decades, it is easy for us to make the mistake that this partial reality is the whole picture,” he said.

Though he said it would bring about change, Bagdikian said the Internet was not the solution to the problems that exist in the mass media.

“The salvation of democracy never comes from a machine,” he said.

The speech was sponsored by the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication and the Institute on National Affairs.