In Denver, Sacramento, Atlanta and Cleveland, radio stations owned by the Gannett media conglomerate have adopted "advertainment" - a new programming format that consists of "hybrid shows, which mix entertainment with commercial content (in addition to regular commercial breaks)." In Minneapolis, Gannett affiliate KARE plans this spring to "revamp its chatty mid-morning talk show 'Today,' and put much of that happy talk up for sale," writes Deborah Caulfield Rybak.

Technologically, the news media are vastly more advanced than it was during the Vietnam war, but commercial and political factors have "kept the war in Iraq marginal in the American media," write Rebecca Dana and Lizzy Ratner. A study done during the Vietnam war found that CBS devoted 91 minutes per month to reporting on Vietnam, whereas U.S. networks this year gave Iraq only 55 minutes per month. Other gaps in reporting include the following:

Brussels, home to the European Commission, has also become home to "over 15,000 lobbyists (more than one for every European Commission official) but just 10 per cent of these represent environmental and social groups," according to a recently-released report. "A massive industry of corporate lobbying has grown up in Brussels with overwhelming influence on European trade policy.