uniformity of thought in the media has increased. media consolidation cannot be blamed on trump.
EDIT:my first statement is unqualified and based on personal feeling. the bitter partisanship i'm confronted with whenever i tune in to american news outlets form my opinion. i cannot present a historical decline in journalistic diversity. my second point is the main one. consolidation of an industry is a more symptom of capitalism than the actions of one man.
As an example of uniformity of thought in media. Have you considered why we aren’t having debates about open sourcing the vaccine? We just take for granted that the right thing to do is lock it up behind a couple companies and never consider the lives we could be saving by making its production immediately accessible to the entire world.
strange that it hasn't been discussed. i think the answer may be that open sourcing wouldn't speed up manufacturing as the issues are supply-chain based. not sure if that's strictly true i'm just suggesting. and open sourcing this vaccine will make it less profitable which will actually slow down the development.
>Have you considered why we aren’t having debates about open sourcing the vaccine?
Because historically speaking that's not really something that really has come up at all? Like how do you measure that not being discussed as some sort of uniformity of thought?
There's so much "issue important to me isn't being discussed, it's the media" that I don't see any evidence that it would otherwise come up ....
Insulin’s patent was not enforced. Volkswagen gave their seatbelt patent to competitors. There is a history of life saving technologies being made available for free. So, we do in fact have a history of foregoing profit to save lives.
I've never understood how I'm supposed to feel about this. Successful businessmen are always going to own successful media companies in a capitalist society.
Perhaps there is room in the US for a national media company like we have here in the UK, but even here most successful media companies are still owned by successful businessmen.
I think this is the correct answer. Any business where there is a lack of competition tends towards negative monopolistic behaviors. Monopolies tend to not be good for consumers with knock-on effects for society. If gas (standard oil, for example) is a monopoly then consumers experience inflated prices. If media has a lack of competition consumers are told a point of view that they believe over time due to a lack of alternatives.
That horse bolted long ago, as long as the 18th or 19th century, as soon as people got news of what other people far away liked, and had a chance to pay for a piece of it.
The star system (one star takes the pickings over thousands of local artists) started then, and probably won't get stopped unless we get punted back to sticks and stones.
I think it would help you see where people are coming from if you assume media ownership is power and consider that consolidation of power is undemocratic.
Example: I have lots of money. Media is a profitable business. I buy some media companies because 'more profit'.
I accept and welcome the above. BUT.. I have lots of money, I made it selling heroin, and now the media are on to me, so I will 'buy a couple of media companies to counter the noise', is completely different game.
I am thinking of Italy's Berlusconi. He had sex parties, some had minor(s) [0][1], but it's all good. He owned media companies, ad companies, he was the prime minister, he was untouchable. He used all this power and control to have sex with minors? He wasn't Epstein-grade, but he wasn't a clean guy either.
So.. media consolidation helps or not the 'evils'?
I agree with this and I think you seem to be acknowledging that the word "billionaire" in this article is irrelevant? My issue is that it's being used here as if the reader should care that rich people own media companies.
Perhaps the article should be titled, "These 15 [bad people] Own America's News Media Companies", because as you point out, it's okay for rich people to own successful media companies, but that sometimes people with bad motives who are rich enough to own a media company do so.
I was being critical of the framing of the article – I understand why people are critical of the individuals and the motivations of those who own media companies.
Putin controls Russian media for the same reasons billionaires control American media. Neither are democratic. Whoever controls the media controls the electorate.
Agreed. We need to pass an amendment and #AbolishImaginaryProperty (#EndCopyright and #EndPatents). #LiberateIdeas so the people can exchange information p2p, we stop subsidizing lies, and we can have decentralized intelligence.
I could be convinced that intellectual property shouldn't be protected by the government, but how does that help with the current consolidation of media?
I cannot realistically create a public domain competitor.
Imagine I were to do that, and it were slowly to make it
good. They can come in and clone all my material, while I
could not do the same to them. In a public domain world, I would not have the resource concentration to fight them in court, and they would drive me into the ground. Could I still beat them? Perhaps. But best case it would take 50 years, not 5, and everyone will suffer in the interim as a result.
If we got rid of #ImaginaryProperty laws, we would compete
on a level playing field, and innovate like crazy. Everyone
would benefit (except for the current .1% who sits back and
profits from #ImaginaryProperty royalties)
That America and other countries have allowed the consolidation of media companies to such a degree is a large part of the reason why we're having so many problems today.
Not the op, but I think any consolation of media will make people care less about their neighborhood and more about the world, which might be a good and a bad thing. Bad in that local news are often a tiny bit more actionable and social building, and good in that it makes progress faster.
I remember when I moved to another country and was absolutely shocked that they had local restaurant reviews on the news channels. Really appreciated it instead of all the doom and gloom. I visited quite a lot of them!
To be fair, lots of local nightly news shows in America have local restaurant reviews. My parents live outside of Asheville, NC, and their local nightly news on all the broadcast channels carries restaurant reviews and lots of "around town" happenings.
The deregulation frenzy that started with Reagan/Thatcher and all over the world is responsible for the insane inequalities we have today. The billionaire owned media has a neoliberal agenda against regulation.
Of course they don't have to call journalists to tell them what to say, they recruit heads of HR who recruit neoliberal journalists/editorialists.
90% of people haven't seen their wages progressing that much in 20 years, yet they keep voting for the Biden/Trump/Macron/Bolsonaro of the world whom appeal is 100% created by the media.
Deregulation is also responsible for leaders doing nothing about global warming and so many other things that make the world a particularly shitty place right now.
Not OP but generally poorer folks in US especially in rural parts vote for right which protects much more the rich. Its sold to them for generations under guise of 'American dream' and if you are not yet rich, well you just didn't work hard enough and should be ashamed and go back to work more and harder. Which is bullshit on many levels. Everybody in society benefits when poor are helped a bit and not kept poor and desperate. But that would require skimming a bit off the top, reshuffling few things and bottom jobs would still have to be paid livable wages without exception.
Compared to places where social inequality is much lower (ie some parts of Europe), US has some deep societal issues that I don't see going away soon, in contrary. Marketing has been very effective in branding any other idea as socialism/communism. And here is the media role, be it Hollywood, news etc - resist any change, our way is the best, it was and always will be. Don't think hard if its best for you, or you are not a true American.
Or it could be the opposite - from US conservative viewpoint those leaning left are harming themselves and US society in the long run (not that I agree with this, but I can understand why certain people would hold this opinion).
(I don't have a personal stake at this, just presenting an outsider's, potentially flawed view. When deciding where to settle around the globe US went quickly off the list for quite a few reasons, overall not a place I wanted to raise my kids in but that's another topic. That was despite obvious strengths of US society and location, as strengths don't cancel out weaknesses in my opinion).
I look at Rupert Murdoch here as complicit with an intentional political goal he achieved through his vast media network. Think all the conservative outlets. Fox news changing news to opinion not based in the same reality, not even accepting base facts - while most of their viewers take it as actual news and fact.
Democrats and Republicans only differ on societal issues. Smoke and mirrors pushed by the billionaires to avoid talking about the insanity that is unregulated capitalism, the only issue that actually matters.
"It's ok to fuck the lives, communities, job prospects, etc. of blacks, latinos, gays, lesbians, whites, fill billionaires' pockets, and bomb foreign countries, but we care for correct pronouns, and are in favor of same-sex marriage and stuff. Oh, and yay for ACA [as if that solves anything]".
vs
"It's ok to fuck the lives, communities, job prospects, etc. of blacks, latinos, gays, lesbians, whites, fill billionaires' pockets, and bomb foreign countries, but we don't care for political correctness and we are pro-life and stuff. Oh, and yay for more tax-decuctions to the rich [as if that solves anything]".
(given the lack of an actual socialist party to vote for),
it's basically voting Democrats - a party complicit in the same neo-liberal policies, Wall Street bailouts and deregulation, warmongering, corporatism, looking down upon the "unwashed masses" (aka "deplorables"), and rampant corporate globalism (i.e. job outsourcing hitting the working classes) with the Republicans, that can't even stand a "soft" "socialist" like Bernie Sanders to be given a chance?
Not sure what your point is, I was obviously talking about Bernie (soft is right). Once again, inconsequent societal issues won over economic interests of these voters.
To clarify, these are all stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is the largest television station conglomerate in the United States. They've been pretty aggressive in buying up local stations, and have a reputation for exerting fairly strong editorial control and enforcing "must-run" opinion segments.
One study found that local stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local events, increase coverage of national politics, and shift rightward in tone compared to other stations of the same area. http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf
To be honest, I'm not sure this shows lack of diversity of opinion - but it does show how consolidation of news media allows a handful of people to use local stations as sockpuppets for their beliefs in a way that hides the origin of the message.
Occupy Wall Street was hardly not covered. If anything, it probably got a disproportionate amount of coverage given the small numbers of people and the lack of coherent demands.
“The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.” Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
I take it that you didn't follow the Democratic Primaries? The mass hysteria that ensued on all channels when Bernie Sanders was leading the race, to be specific.
Seth Meyers is one of the few who addressed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjj7VJpqy1w. And that's just a minuscule fraction, the reporting was downright shameful across the board. You'd watch 10 channels and read 10 newspapers reporting on Sanders and you'd feel as if it was 1 channel and 1 paper. One has to wonder if that was due to Bernie proposing to break up internet and cable titans and to introduce a wealth tax. The cable titans own the majority of channels, after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U.... And the newspaper owning billionaires probably didn't like the wealth tax idea too much either.
- fewer platforms means it was possible to deplatform a sitting President
- leftst MSM means the left did not see reporting on 2020 election fraud, and very little on CCP malfeasance, so kept repeating endlessly the narrative keywords "debunked" and "no widespread election fraud." Visible exampls are cnn.com and NY Times, but those phrases were also commonly parroted on HN.
(The reason leftists use the term "no widespread election fraud" is that everybody agrees there is election fraud via voters who moved out of state but still vote in their previous state, but leftists are attempting to exclude common sources of fraud like that to burden the accuser further.)
A very long time ago (15 years maybe?) there was a great internet site (I don't remember the name anymore) which showed a graph of top ~100 largest companies in the USA, their CEOs and their boards.
When expanding the graph you could basically see that the same 30 or 40 people where in the boards of major companies, from Pepi to Johnson&Johnson to Microsoft to Fox and other communication companies.
It showed a really interesting picture of how really consolidated the control was at the top.
Oh my god, yes this is it! and yes it was in Flash. I had completely forgotten about the name but clearly remembered the site. Thanks for bringing it back.
EDIT: I tried to run the SWF file on Ruffle but there is no data. I can imagine that the SWF contacted some backend server to load data which is no longer available.
I believe it was http://theyrule.net Unfortunately, it looks like it's no longer up. You can find the home page on the Wayback machine[1] but it looks like the data was all in Flash.
Moreover, that these media companies are not able to make profitable revenue by conveying factual news reports. They have a growing footprint through the consolidation and influence the public discourse and keep it focused on (seemingly) the most inflammatory topics, statements and events in order to drive clicks, views, likes & shares.
Hence, they've devolved into entertainment while the public at large still perceives them as news sources. I am sure this has been going on to some degree for centuries. More than consolidation, the unprecedented reach to now 5 billion humans actually should be concerning enough to raise a hue and cry for oversight.
Did he call the neo-Nazi's and white supremacists fine people? Did Biden launch his campaign on that claim? How can our news sources call themselves news when a few seconds of research (literally) can show such an inflammatory claim as false?
Unregulated social media and the traditional consolidation of media are resulting in not much different than what occurred right after the US civil war.
Not only did “unchecked” freedom of the press and speech result in the US Spanish War between countries but it also resulted in white terrorism against black, brown, and Asian people in the US throughout the period of Reconstruction from 1860’s-1930.
Not treating journalism as public utility/service with high standards for integrity has something to with it.
Compared to German standards, substantial parts of journalism in the US is a joke (an unfunny one, watching Fox News feels like a fever dream for instance). Too much bias and pollution with opinion and entertainment (opinions are fine, but only if clearly demarcated and from someone who has skin in the game and knows what's up, not random shrill plastic lady), too little self-reflection/introspection, too much clickbait, too short memory, blatant disregard for journalistic best practices. That said, the harsh financial environment there is at odds with sober, analytical (=boring) reporting.
Too bad "öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk" (or information about it for that matter) basically isn't available in English, it would do well to lead by example (I've seen dw mentioned but that's a drop in the ocean really).
That said current US societal problems have a more complex etiology than just media consolidation, but it really doesn't help to have the "mirror of society" blunted as much.
How do the viewers of CNN, Fox, MSNBC not recognize that the guests cannot make substantial points about policies when their discussion is interrupted every 5 Minutes for commercial breaks?
Also, the USA has PBS, which is for a large part financed through a public fund (taxes). I don't know whats wrong with it but I assume by now most of the tv-watching audience is "trained" to watch opinion pieces on Fox&CNN instead of actual news.
I watched PBS News Hour the other day and it was refreshing. It had only a reasonable portion of the episode dedicated to what CNN had already been flogging to death for the entire day. Then they had an interesting piece on declining interest in trade jobs. It was interesting, informative, and I never felt shouted at or goaded.
The problem begins with loose campaign finance rules which allow money to control who can run for an election. Both primary parties' candidates are beholden to the big money interests which fund their campaigns.
So once they do get elected, they must somehow make laws which benefit (as quietly as possible in the past, but very openly nowadays) the wealthy interests which fund them.
The headline is misleading. The article body doesn't claim that these 15 billionaires (actually it lists 20+, but focuses on the majority partners) own all, or any overwhelming majority, of US news media. It describes itself more accurately as
> Here’s a look at some of the billionaires who own news media in the United States
Many news outlets are instead owned by publicly traded companies: News Corp, Disney, the New York Times. Plenty more are small businesses.
Yes, there have been mergers and acquisitions, but I would say it's more fragmented than many other healthy industries. If you just read the headline and thought "it's unconscionable that these 15 people should own 50% (or whatever) of US news media assets", what number would you think reasonable? 30? 100? 1000?
This is really an argument between big corps operating on scale + M&As vs. small local businesses.
I think we should favor more news outlets than fewer (a specific threshold is a loaded question) that have outsized influence at the local level. These large media companies are living off clickbait and pandering to echo chambers and not on 4th estate accountability, or providing real value to peoples lives.
That and America should have a state funded, independent news organization similar to the BBC. It's not perfect, BBC has had some nasty prat falls but, like a supreme court, also not perfect, it's the best you can do. So when citizens are rubber necking around trying to figure out who they can trust there is at least a guiding star.
It's a direct consequence of capital accumulation and lack of regulations. We have the same thing in France, billionaires own ~75% of medias (newspaper, tv, radio), some of them own so many that even when you think you're reading "multiple sources" you're actually reading slightly different flavour of the same propaganda : https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA
People have been calling these things forever but we somehow "rediscover" it every now and then.
> Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.
> Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Practically every "market" in America is a cartel or monopoly. Really this augurs the future of massive multinational corporations consolidating and controlling worldwide markets with cartel/monopoly power that will be even more insulated from regulation.
Innovation comes from many players in actual competition.
Sure some innovation can come from subdepartments in megacorps, but if you've spent any time in large corporations and witnessed the empire building and other structural behaviors more in common with single party rule governments, you know that innovation is suppressed.
Employment likely is suppressed. You'd need more people doing the various roles of companies, and while that seems less efficient that what large companies are doing overall, I'd argue the reduced middle management pyramids and increased amounts of people trying different management and software approaches will lead to a net gain in efficiency, more fluidity, more GDP, and more local employment.
Large cartels/monopoly megacorps also are better able an to lobby the government to entrench themselves. Possibly their greatest advantage. And highly incented to do so, which increases the overall corruption in the system of government.
How much of the perceived corruption increase in American government, despite the transparency that the internet allows, is due to the monopoly/cartel consolidation throughout the economy?
"In Russia or China the state runs the media, in the US the media runs the state"
Apart from Sheldon and Rupert not a single name strikes me as significantly non-progressive. Sheldon has passed away, Rupert is going to be not to far in the future and his heir is decidedly in the opposite camp (maxed out his legal spending cap for donations to Biden's campaign).
freedom of speech is mostly not about the who owns media company etc! its mostly about who owns naming, addressing people,,, if it is not easy to publish anything, own name and ip to share whatever I have then its never possible to be free ( as in free, not in beer[social media deceive people])
They have complete control since they hire the people ... who hire the people who make those decisions. They won't hire people ... who hire people who don't do what they want. You can bake the bias right into the company without ever having to issue an editorial order.
After seeing what Theil did it made me look at the world slightly differently in a more open way that money and those with a lot of it could be behind so many things in our society from politics to whatever. Everything can be bought/manipulated/etc based on the desires of the richest people whether they are open about it or not. Thus, I don't believe much of what I see and read especially in politics.
FWIW, I'd argue that Theil's actions were a rare example of that sort of thing happening semi-openly. It's probably always happening behind the scenes to all other publications by all people of that class. The rest of them just have better cut-outs and relationships already established to quietly kill anything they don't like.
The Salt Lake Tribune was turned into a 501(c)(3) non-profit a couple of years ago. Obviously the Salt Lake market will be ignored by people such as the author of this article; it would be super interesting if a major market media company went this route.
Wealth is ownership and power. So long as there is concentration of wealth, and things with power that can be owned, there will be concentration of ownership of those things.
I think it's time to use antitrust laws to break up these media corporations. There's a point where a company grows so large that the amount of power that they have is too much for democracy to bear.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadHas it? How do you measure that?
As an example of uniformity of thought in media. Have you considered why we aren’t having debates about open sourcing the vaccine? We just take for granted that the right thing to do is lock it up behind a couple companies and never consider the lives we could be saving by making its production immediately accessible to the entire world.
Because historically speaking that's not really something that really has come up at all? Like how do you measure that not being discussed as some sort of uniformity of thought?
There's so much "issue important to me isn't being discussed, it's the media" that I don't see any evidence that it would otherwise come up ....
Simply delete the things you disagree with to control the narrative.
It's barely different then writing it yourself.
Perhaps there is room in the US for a national media company like we have here in the UK, but even here most successful media companies are still owned by successful businessmen.
The star system (one star takes the pickings over thousands of local artists) started then, and probably won't get stopped unless we get punted back to sticks and stones.
Example: I have lots of money. Media is a profitable business. I buy some media companies because 'more profit'.
I accept and welcome the above. BUT.. I have lots of money, I made it selling heroin, and now the media are on to me, so I will 'buy a couple of media companies to counter the noise', is completely different game.
I am thinking of Italy's Berlusconi. He had sex parties, some had minor(s) [0][1], but it's all good. He owned media companies, ad companies, he was the prime minister, he was untouchable. He used all this power and control to have sex with minors? He wasn't Epstein-grade, but he wasn't a clean guy either.
So.. media consolidation helps or not the 'evils'?
[0]: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=195272...
[1]: https://www.smh.com.au/world/second-minor-at-berlusconi-part...
Perhaps the article should be titled, "These 15 [bad people] Own America's News Media Companies", because as you point out, it's okay for rich people to own successful media companies, but that sometimes people with bad motives who are rich enough to own a media company do so.
I was being critical of the framing of the article – I understand why people are critical of the individuals and the motivations of those who own media companies.
Abolish IP laws and I could build a worthy competitor to CNN or NYTimes in a year
If we got rid of #ImaginaryProperty laws, we would compete on a level playing field, and innovate like crazy. Everyone would benefit (except for the current .1% who sits back and profits from #ImaginaryProperty royalties)
I remember when I moved to another country and was absolutely shocked that they had local restaurant reviews on the news channels. Really appreciated it instead of all the doom and gloom. I visited quite a lot of them!
Of course they don't have to call journalists to tell them what to say, they recruit heads of HR who recruit neoliberal journalists/editorialists.
90% of people haven't seen their wages progressing that much in 20 years, yet they keep voting for the Biden/Trump/Macron/Bolsonaro of the world whom appeal is 100% created by the media.
Deregulation is also responsible for leaders doing nothing about global warming and so many other things that make the world a particularly shitty place right now.
Compared to places where social inequality is much lower (ie some parts of Europe), US has some deep societal issues that I don't see going away soon, in contrary. Marketing has been very effective in branding any other idea as socialism/communism. And here is the media role, be it Hollywood, news etc - resist any change, our way is the best, it was and always will be. Don't think hard if its best for you, or you are not a true American.
Or it could be the opposite - from US conservative viewpoint those leaning left are harming themselves and US society in the long run (not that I agree with this, but I can understand why certain people would hold this opinion).
(I don't have a personal stake at this, just presenting an outsider's, potentially flawed view. When deciding where to settle around the globe US went quickly off the list for quite a few reasons, overall not a place I wanted to raise my kids in but that's another topic. That was despite obvious strengths of US society and location, as strengths don't cancel out weaknesses in my opinion).
"It's ok to fuck the lives, communities, job prospects, etc. of blacks, latinos, gays, lesbians, whites, fill billionaires' pockets, and bomb foreign countries, but we care for correct pronouns, and are in favor of same-sex marriage and stuff. Oh, and yay for ACA [as if that solves anything]".
vs
"It's ok to fuck the lives, communities, job prospects, etc. of blacks, latinos, gays, lesbians, whites, fill billionaires' pockets, and bomb foreign countries, but we don't care for political correctness and we are pro-life and stuff. Oh, and yay for more tax-decuctions to the rich [as if that solves anything]".
(given the lack of an actual socialist party to vote for),
it's basically voting Democrats - a party complicit in the same neo-liberal policies, Wall Street bailouts and deregulation, warmongering, corporatism, looking down upon the "unwashed masses" (aka "deplorables"), and rampant corporate globalism (i.e. job outsourcing hitting the working classes) with the Republicans, that can't even stand a "soft" "socialist" like Bernie Sanders to be given a chance?
One study found that local stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local events, increase coverage of national politics, and shift rightward in tone compared to other stations of the same area. http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf
To be honest, I'm not sure this shows lack of diversity of opinion - but it does show how consolidation of news media allows a handful of people to use local stations as sockpuppets for their beliefs in a way that hides the origin of the message.
Is there?
I was really hoping someone was actually checking beyond quotes, sentiment, and their own topics not getting enough airtime.
- leftst MSM means the left did not see reporting on 2020 election fraud, and very little on CCP malfeasance, so kept repeating endlessly the narrative keywords "debunked" and "no widespread election fraud." Visible exampls are cnn.com and NY Times, but those phrases were also commonly parroted on HN.
(The reason leftists use the term "no widespread election fraud" is that everybody agrees there is election fraud via voters who moved out of state but still vote in their previous state, but leftists are attempting to exclude common sources of fraud like that to burden the accuser further.)
When expanding the graph you could basically see that the same 30 or 40 people where in the boards of major companies, from Pepi to Johnson&Johnson to Microsoft to Fox and other communication companies.
It showed a really interesting picture of how really consolidated the control was at the top.
http://www.theyrule.net/2001/
EDIT: I tried to run the SWF file on Ruffle but there is no data. I can imagine that the SWF contacted some backend server to load data which is no longer available.
I’m kinda sad that theyrule didn’t live on and become an institution, honestly
http://web.archive.org/web/20080901010712/http://www.theyrul...
Hence, they've devolved into entertainment while the public at large still perceives them as news sources. I am sure this has been going on to some degree for centuries. More than consolidation, the unprecedented reach to now 5 billion humans actually should be concerning enough to raise a hue and cry for oversight.
Did he call the neo-Nazi's and white supremacists fine people? Did Biden launch his campaign on that claim? How can our news sources call themselves news when a few seconds of research (literally) can show such an inflammatory claim as false?
This has to stop.
Unregulated social media and the traditional consolidation of media are resulting in not much different than what occurred right after the US civil war.
Not only did “unchecked” freedom of the press and speech result in the US Spanish War between countries but it also resulted in white terrorism against black, brown, and Asian people in the US throughout the period of Reconstruction from 1860’s-1930.
- https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...
- https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyrawleyconference/31/
It’s no different than what happens now except it’s truly global and even more centralized.
- https://www.salon.com/2021/01/16/despite-parler-backlash-fac...
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934
Compared to German standards, substantial parts of journalism in the US is a joke (an unfunny one, watching Fox News feels like a fever dream for instance). Too much bias and pollution with opinion and entertainment (opinions are fine, but only if clearly demarcated and from someone who has skin in the game and knows what's up, not random shrill plastic lady), too little self-reflection/introspection, too much clickbait, too short memory, blatant disregard for journalistic best practices. That said, the harsh financial environment there is at odds with sober, analytical (=boring) reporting.
Too bad "öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk" (or information about it for that matter) basically isn't available in English, it would do well to lead by example (I've seen dw mentioned but that's a drop in the ocean really).
That said current US societal problems have a more complex etiology than just media consolidation, but it really doesn't help to have the "mirror of society" blunted as much.
How do the viewers of CNN, Fox, MSNBC not recognize that the guests cannot make substantial points about policies when their discussion is interrupted every 5 Minutes for commercial breaks?
Also, the USA has PBS, which is for a large part financed through a public fund (taxes). I don't know whats wrong with it but I assume by now most of the tv-watching audience is "trained" to watch opinion pieces on Fox&CNN instead of actual news.
And those who'd watch Fox and it's even more biased ilk will view PBS as purely liberal propaganda.
Assuming every news source tends to have some degree of bias, do you imagine they would tilt towards bigger government or smaller government?
So once they do get elected, they must somehow make laws which benefit (as quietly as possible in the past, but very openly nowadays) the wealthy interests which fund them.
> Here’s a look at some of the billionaires who own news media in the United States
Many news outlets are instead owned by publicly traded companies: News Corp, Disney, the New York Times. Plenty more are small businesses.
Yes, there have been mergers and acquisitions, but I would say it's more fragmented than many other healthy industries. If you just read the headline and thought "it's unconscionable that these 15 people should own 50% (or whatever) of US news media assets", what number would you think reasonable? 30? 100? 1000?
I think we should favor more news outlets than fewer (a specific threshold is a loaded question) that have outsized influence at the local level. These large media companies are living off clickbait and pandering to echo chambers and not on 4th estate accountability, or providing real value to peoples lives.
Funnily enough most of them are friends, have regular "dinners" &co with politicians and other people of the "elite": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Siècle_(think_tank)
People have been calling these things forever but we somehow "rediscover" it every now and then.
> Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.
> Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Albert Einstein, Why socialism ? 1949
Innovation comes from many players in actual competition.
Sure some innovation can come from subdepartments in megacorps, but if you've spent any time in large corporations and witnessed the empire building and other structural behaviors more in common with single party rule governments, you know that innovation is suppressed.
Employment likely is suppressed. You'd need more people doing the various roles of companies, and while that seems less efficient that what large companies are doing overall, I'd argue the reduced middle management pyramids and increased amounts of people trying different management and software approaches will lead to a net gain in efficiency, more fluidity, more GDP, and more local employment.
Large cartels/monopoly megacorps also are better able an to lobby the government to entrench themselves. Possibly their greatest advantage. And highly incented to do so, which increases the overall corruption in the system of government.
How much of the perceived corruption increase in American government, despite the transparency that the internet allows, is due to the monopoly/cartel consolidation throughout the economy?
Apart from Sheldon and Rupert not a single name strikes me as significantly non-progressive. Sheldon has passed away, Rupert is going to be not to far in the future and his heir is decidedly in the opposite camp (maxed out his legal spending cap for donations to Biden's campaign).
That's not how power works. The point is that people will write in a particular way if they believe it 's what the owner wants.
NPR - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
CSMonitor - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Christian_Science_Monitor
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