Concentration in the Media

Upon occasion I have referred to the "Elitist Media" in posts. There is an article concerning the concentration of media ownership that might be of interest to some readers. It is linked below.

Anup Shah, Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, GlobalIssues.org, Last updated: Sunday, April 29, 2007

When we talk about "Freedom of the Press" we have in mind the idea that government should not control the news. What about control in other hands? Is the media truly free when a handful of large corporations control the bulk of the content -- either through "friendliness" toward advertising revenue or through their own corporate and institutional biases?

The Internet has changed the shape of media in regard to news stories, however, one must consider where most content is generated. Often, bloggers merely take stories generated by existing main line media sources and present commentary. Investigations by bloggers are often primarily Internet searches. Often, information, or worse, misinformation, is promulgated throughout the "blogosphere" by individuals with agendas. Where is the public to find unbiased information?

I would never advocate government control of the media, however, it may be time to examine who does control news content and consider breaking the monopolization of the news. Better yet, new entries into the media business that do not carry the existing biases that appear to be inherent in current media sources would potentially return some balance.

In the early days of our country, every small town had a newspaper and most larger ones had multiple newspapers. Often, those newspapers were aligned with political factions within a community. Over the years, media companies have consolidated until, as the article examines, only a few companies control the bulk of news sources. Perhaps the question is, "How can new venues, such as the Internet, be shaped in such a way as to prevent the consolidation of news sources and thus insure balance?"