I'm reminded of an interesting observation I have discussed with others in the past, I think perhaps from Scott Adams (aka Dilbert's creator).

In engineering, first comes the idea man. He has an idea for widgets, and he's technically competent in designing the widgets, and he makes a company to make widgets. And he hires some good technical people to help make widgets. And they make good widgets, and the widgets sell, because they're good. Then after a while, the business is growing and competition in the widget business grows. Then the company gets accountants in to help make things efficient and keep the business healthy. And slowly the accountant types (and marketing types) take over, and become more interested in making money than making widgets. Till the company becomes a big bloated monster that doesn't care about the innovations from the technical folks because they interfere with the "way things are done" and the current widgets and marketing.

I think there's something similar in the news business. The newspapers and TV stations are run by competent and mostly ethical journalists, but the decisions are monitored and controlled by the owners, who are more concerned over the dollar than the content. "Oh, you can't publish that because that is critical of company X, which is a subsidiary of our parent company, and that would hurt company X, which hurts us." And the news is shaped and controlled by the accountant/marketers, rather than the journalists.

Here's yet another example of what seems to be the same effect in a slightly different field. The Sci Fi channel is a popular cable channel. It has a niche market - Sci Fi programs. But like most cable channels (as opposed to networks), it doesn't have much original programming. It mostly runs movies and old reruns, and occasionally begs a new show to run syndication as a second run. However, they had one original program, Farscape. After three and a half seasons, and just wrapping the filming on a fourth season, they go and cancel the program and won't make the already promised fifth season. It's an expensive show to make, yes. There are probably good reasons from a business perspective to cancel it. But the handling of it paid very little regard to the opinions of the main base of their customers, the viewers they're trying to appeal to. The one original program that they had that reached their core audience and they canceled it. Probably to make more John Edward Crossing Over shows.