Media juggernauts are buying other media outlets, a process known as media consolidation; this consolidation and convergence of the media is creating a mass movement among our media driven lifestyle. This process is affecting how we receive and interpret the news and may even effect the news itself, in regards to what is being reported on and the amount of coverage a particular topic is granted. Today, six companies and a handful of CEO’s are in control of the news. The big six includes names such as The Walt Disney Company, General Electric, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom and the CBS Corporation. All of these companies turn over billions of dollars in profit each year, allowing them the funds to purchase a large amount of media sources. The largest profit is turned by General Electric, who in 2008, grossed $183 billion dollars. General Electric holds control over “television networks NBC and Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, 26 television stations in the United States and cable networks MSNBC, Bravo and the Sci-Fi Channel. General Electric also owns 80 percent of NBC Universal (Freepress.net)”. But the most impressive in terms of directly influencing the news is News Corp. News Corp controls the Fox Broadcasting Company, television and cable networks such as Fox, Fox Business Channel, National Geographic and FX, and print publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, TV Guide, the magazines Barron’s, SmartMoney and The Weekly Standard, book publisher HarperCollins, film production companies 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios, and numerous Web sites including MarketWatch.com(Freepress.net)”. It is the staggering amount of media that is controlled by these companies and corporations that make others feel nervous or uneasy, simply because these corporations themselves are being the media.
The overwhelming question is, how much influence in the media do we consider to be too much and at what point does this influence become hazardous to the media itself and detrimental to our overall media lifestyle? The answer is not a clear cut one, the lines are still blurry, but we know through our own experiences that when too much power is put in the hands of a select few, it can easily be abused. Surely the idea of consolidation isn’t a negative one; the concept of combining media houses should make the news more reliable, more easily accessible, and more accurate but the same powers can be used for more sinister purposes. These media giants have more leeway to skew the facts, neglect certain stories and topics and over all just narrow the scope of the news covered by eating up more and more sources for the news, this kills media diversity. When the media is less diverse and all major news networks and publications are owned by one of the companies above, the likely hood of deception is more easily executed. In upcoming elections these companies & corporations could potentially poor millions of dollars into add campaigns, through this political saturation spread throughout various outlets, these companies could have an usual amount of influence over our public elections in the future. The problems of media consolidation will become ever clearer in the coming decade, when more and more media is converged into each other, creating a one way news flow.
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Excellent assessment of the current state of media ownership, Anthony. Can you think of any specific stories or current news reports that illustrate how media consolidation affects the way a story is covered? For instance, it seems there are a number of stories that are rarely acknowledged by these major media companies.
ReplyDeleteA very well written post. When writing dollar amounts, however, you only need the "$".