The free press: Now worth $165 billion

Can you imagine how much $165 BILLION is?

It's approximately how much money five people would earn at my current salary if they worked for a million years. Or five million people working at my current salary could earn it in one year. My calculator can't even handle that figure; I had to do the math on my computer instead.

One-hundred sixty-five billion dollars is the amount of the deal that put America Online and Time Warner in the same corporate nest last week, according to The New York Times. Newsweek reported the deal at $172 billion, Time at $10 billion less.

The differences in the way our two major news magazines covered the buyout in their January 24 issues were interesting.

For starters, Time put AOL CEO Steve Case and Gerald Levin, its own company boss, on the cover. Rival Newsweek, on the other hand, put only Case on the cover.

Newsweek downplayed Levin in its extensive spread about the deal, too. Time ran a feature called "A Two-Man Network" on differences in Case's and Levin's management styles and personal tastes. Newsweek, on the other hand, ran a long article, "Case Study," on the AOL chief, followed by secondary, half-page boxes about four secondary players in the deal -- one of whom was Levin.

You don't need a degree in journalism to figure out why Newsweek would downplay Levin's role.

Surprisingly, Newsweek's total spread was considerably longer, at 23 pages, compared to Time's 12. When you factor in how much text you get proportional to pictures and other art, though, things even out: there are about 13 pages of text, overall, in Newsweek's "Special Report" and about 11 in Time's coverage. In other words, both devoted a similar number of words to the story, when you subtract the pictures and other illustrations.

In fact, the content of both magazines' coverage was really pretty similar: a lengthy article on the deal itself, including the chronology of the few days before the merger was announced on Monday, Jan. 17; a consumer-oriented feature accompanied in both magazines by a huge graphic illustrating what the deal means for media consumers; a section on the major players; a short feature describing how Microsoft and Bill Gates are expected to respond to the merger; and two or three commentaries on various issues raised in the corporate commotion.

One interesting difference -- besides the cover strategies -- stands out. Newsweek reported the total cost of the deal at $172 billion, Time at $162 billion. The New York Times has consistently put the deal at $165 billion. You might ask, in that ballpark, what's a difference of a few billion dollars? And the answer is . . .

A warning that you and I would do well to heed.

I've chosen to focus this discussion of the AOL-Time Warner merger on Time's and Newsweek's coverage of it to make this point: from now on, we will be scrutinizing our news and its sources like never before. We might criticize Time for putting Case and Levin on its cover, arguing that Case is the key player and Levin just made the cover because he is Time's CEO. Or we might compliment Time for downplaying the merger in its coverage, compared to its rival, Newsweek.

The point is, the deal brings Time's news divisions and publications -- Time, CNN and Fortune, just to name a few -- under a microscope from which they aren't likely to escape. Disney CEO Michael Eisner commented recently on National Public Radio that he didn't think ABC should cover Disney because Disney owns the network. "I think it's inappropriate for Disney to be covered by Disney," Eisner said.

How can a company that owns as big a hunk of the media as AOL-Time Warner now does work by these guidelines? Just a few days after the big merger, Time Warner's music division announced that it's buying British label EMI. Should CNN and Time have left coverage of that story to Newsweek or to independents like The New York Times? If CNN and Time had covered the story, we might call that a conflict of interest. If they had avoided it, we could say they're bending over backward to avoid one.

Steve Case has apparently said that his top priorities for the new company are entertainment and e-commerce, in that order.

In a climate where our news is delivered against a backdrop of dollar signs, we consumers will have to adopt some new rules, too.

First, be skeptical of any news delivered by a reporter employed by a conglomeration.

Second, whenever possible, get your news from independent sources, such as (this shouldn't take long; it's a short list) The New York Times or National Public Radio.

Third, use more than one news source. In trying to verify the amount of the AOL -Time Warner buyout, I chose The New York Times because it's still owned by a family, not a corporation. We're going to have to do comparison shopping for our news, not just take it from the highest bidder.

Borrowing from The New York Times' well-known motto, Case and Levin could adopt this one: "All the News That's Not About a Company We Own." Or better yet (pardon my broken Latin), Skepticus Emptor: Let the Buyer Be Skeptical.