Content Choice and Selective Reporting Media as today's main information sources unarguably have the power to influence political agenda-setting and public opinion. They decide which topics and issues are covered and how they are reported. Still, in many cases those decisions are not primarily determined by journalistic criteria, but affected by external factors. The importance of shareholders forces media to generate more profit every quarter, which can chiefly be raised by enlarging audiences and hence attracting more advertising money. Therefore the focus of media's programming in many cases shifts towards audience alluring content like entertainment, talk-shows, music and sports. Further pressure regarding the selection of content occurs from advertisers and marketers, who often implicitly or explicitly suggest to refrain from programming which could show them or their products and services (e.g. tobacco) in an unfavorable light. Interlocking directorships and outright ownerships can moreover be responsible for a selective coverage. Financial connections with defense, banking, insurance, gas, oil, and nuclear power, repeatedly lead (commercial) media to the withholding of information, which could offend their corporate partners. In totalitarian regimes also pressure from political elites may be a reason for the suppression or alteration of certain facts.

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Henry Ford b. July 30, 1863, Wayne County, Michigan, U.S. d. April 7, 1947, Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his assembly-line methods. Celebrated as both a technological genius and a folk hero, Ford was the creative force behind an industry of unprecedented size and wealth that in only a few decades permanently changed the economic and social character of the United States. Once Ford realized the tremendous part he and his Model T automobile had played in bringing about this change, he wanted nothing more than to reverse it, or at least to recapture the rural values of his boyhood. Henry Ford, then, is an apt symbol of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial America.

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The World Wide Web History Project The ongoing World Wide Web History Project was established to record and publish the history of the World Wide Web and its roots in hypermedia and networking. As primary research methods are used archival research and the analysis of interviews and talks with pioneers of the World Wide Web. As result a vast of collection of historic video, audio, documents, and software is expected. The project's digital archive is currently under development. http://www.webhistory.org/home.html

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