Concentrated Media Ownership
Concentrated media ownership in today’s society is doing much more harm than good. As a democratic nation, there are many values and freedoms that we are entitled to and with this concentration, these rights are being infringed. The value of news is also in jeopardy as the diversity and localism of the news media diminishes. Both of these things together form a platonic pair that should be a concern of all democracy loving Americans. According to an FCC regulation that is currently being revised, TV stations are not allowed to own a newspaper or be owned by a newspaper in the same city that its broadcast license is held (Cooper 159). The purpose of ownership limits such as this are to promote diversity and localism. Some of these regulations obligate the TV stations to show kids shows, public affairs programming, community affairs, and political debates (Cooper 159). Because mass media is the primary means people gather their news, a concentrated media is dangerous. It reduces the diversity of local reporting because most of the news is coming from the same big corporations. With these corporations in control of most of the media, this gives dominant firms a huge amount of power in influencing political decisions (Cooper 162). Being in control of what the world sees or reads when they are looking for current news is a huge responsibility that seems to be abused more often than it should. Under the 1st Amendment, Freedom of Speech is clearly stated. However it is being interpreted in many different ways during this Age of Electronic Media. Media owners are complaining that these ownership limits are infringing on their Freedom of Speech as well as the need for an open market. “The objective of the commercial marketplace is to exchange goods and services to improve efficiency and produce profit” (Cooper 169). From the point of view of media owners, this is exactly what they are doing as they continue their processes of news giving. They are the producers, and the
Cited: Cooper, Mark. Media Ownership and Democracy in the Information Age. 10 Apr. 2008. cyber law.stanford.edu. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. Prod. And Dir. Robert Greenwald. Carolina Productions. 2004. Radford, Benjamin. Media Mythmakers. New York: Prometheus Books. 2003.