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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conflict of interest | 8/10 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T04:27:55.281412+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Insurance claims adjusters === Insurance companies retain claims adjusters to represent their interest in adjusting claims. It is in the best interest of the insurance companies that the very smallest settlement is reached with its claimants. Based on the adjuster's experience and knowledge of the insurance policy it is very easy for the adjuster to convince an unknowing claimant to settle for less than what they may otherwise be entitled which could be a larger settlement. There is always a very good chance for a conflict of interest existing when one adjuster tries to represent both sides of a financial transaction such as an insurance claim. This problem is exacerbated when the claimant is told or believes, the insurance company's claims adjuster is fair and impartial enough to satisfy both their and the insurance company's interests. These types of conflicts could easily be avoided by the use of a third-party platform, independent of the insurers, which is agreed to, and named in the policy.
=== News media === Commercial news media have a conflict of interest in discussing anything that may impact their ability to communicate with their audience. Most news outlets, when reporting a story that involves a parent company or a subsidiary, will explicitly report this fact as part of the story, to alert the audience that their reporting has the potential for bias due to the possible conflict of interest. The business model of commercial media organizations (i.e., any that accept advertising) is selling behavior change in their audience to advertisers. However, few in their audience are aware of the conflict of interest between the profit motive and the altruistic desire to serve the public and "give the audience what it wants". Many major advertisers test their ads in various ways to measure the return on investment in advertising. Advertising rates are set as a function of the size and spending habits of the viewing audience as measured by the Nielsen Ratings. Media action expressing this conflict of interest is illustrated in the reaction of Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corporation (the owner of Fox Broadcasting, to changes in data collection methodology adopted by Nielsen in 2004 to measure viewing habits more accurately. The results corrected a previous overestimate of Fox's market share. Murdoch reacted by getting leading politicians to denounce the Nielsen Ratings as "racist". Susan Whiting, president and CEO of Nielsen Media Research, responded by quietly sharing Nielsen's data with her leading critics. The criticism disappeared, and Fox paid Nielsen's fees. Murdoch had a conflict of interest between the reality of his market and his finances. Commercial media organizations can lose money if they provide content that offends their audience or advertisers. The substantial media consolidation that has occurred since the 1980s has reduced the alternatives available to the audience, thereby making it easier for the ever-larger companies in this increasingly oligopolistic industry to hide news and entertainment potentially offensive to advertisers without losing audience. If the news media provide too much information on how Congress spends its time, a major advertiser could be offended and could reduce their advertising expenditures with the offending media company. This is one of the ways the market system has determined which companies won and which either went out of business or were purchased by others during this period of media consolidation. (Advertisers do not like to feed the mouth that bites them, and often do not. Similarly, commercial media organizations are not eager to bite the hand that feeds them.) Advertisers have been known to fund media organizations with editorial policies they find offensive if that media outlet provides access to a sufficiently attractive audience segment they cannot efficiently reach otherwise. Election years are a major boon to commercial broadcasters because virtually all political advertising is purchased with minimal planning, therefore, paying the highest rates. The commercial media have a conflict of interest in anything that could make it easier for candidates to get elected with less money. Accompanying this trend in media consolidation has been a substantial reduction in investigative journalism, reflecting this conflict of interest between the business objectives of the commercial media and the public's need to know what government is doing in their name. This change has been tied to substantial changes in law and culture in the United States. To cite only one example, researchers have tied this decline in investigative journalism to an increased coverage of the "police blotter". This has further been tied to the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Beyond this, virtually all commercial media companies own substantial copyrighted material. This gives them an inherent conflict of interest in any public policy issue affecting copyrights. McChesney noted that the commercial media have lobbied successfully for changes in copyright law that have led "to higher prices and a shrinking of the marketplace of ideas", increasing the power and profits of the large media corporations at public expense. One result of this is that "the people cease to have a means of clarifying social priorities and organizing social reform". A free market has a mechanism for controlling abuses of power by media corporations: If their censorship becomes too egregious, they lose audience, which in turn reduces their advertising rates. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism has been substantially reduced over the past quarter century by "the changes in the concentration and integration of the media." Would the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement have advanced to the point of generating substantial protests without the secrecy behind which that agreement was negotiated—and would the government attempts to sustain that secrecy have been as successful if the commercial media had not been a primary beneficiary and had not had a conflict of interest in suppressing discussion thereof?