Theres an ominous trend threatening our civic and cultural health. It is an inevitable result of the increasing concentration of print and electronic media into megacorporations. And it inforces the basic law of money and politics. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Before the tobacco giant RJR Nabisco purchased the Weekly Reader, which reaches 8 million schoolchildren, 62 percent of their tobacco articles had an anti smoking slant. After the purchase this dropped to 24 percent. Stanton Glantz, Professor of Medicine at the University of California compared Weekly Reader articles to those in Scholastic News, a similar ublication with no tobacco ownership. Glantz found that nine Weekly Reader articles gave the tobacco industry the last word while none of Scholastic News articles did. And the Weekly Reader was less likely to mention the effects of smoking that would turn off kids, such as yellow teeth, bad breath and smelly clothes. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

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