As per Wikipedia, "Media cross-ownership is the ownership of multiple media businesses by a person or corporation. These businesses can include broadcast and cable television, film, radio, newspaper, magazine, book publishing, music, video games, and various online entities." But before discussing monopoly of the news, what is the nature of news media ownership?
In a 2003 paper published in the Journal of Law and Economics, vol. XLVI (October 2003), and authored by Simeon Djankov (World Bank), Caralee Mcliesh (World Bank), Tatiana Nenova (World Bank) and Andrei Shleifer (Harvard University), the authors acknowledge that, "In modern economies and societies, the availability of information is central to better decision making by voters, consumers, and investors. Much of that information is provided by the media, including newspapers, television, and radio, which collect information and make it available to the public."
Put in simple language, what majority of people know as reality is shaped by the news media they have access to. The news media is a discipler of men--a great tool for manufacturing and shaping knowledge.
The question asked by the aforementioned paper is whether the news media should be owned by government or private entities. It goes without saying that the answer is both, except that it should tilt more towards private ownership. A better question is whether it should be owned by a few private entities or whether monopolies should be broken up between many private actors who are not interlinked or tightly knitted together.
According to the paper, "Newspapers in Western Europe and the Americas are held predominately privately. In Western Europe, none of the top five daily newspapers are owned by the state. In the Americas, the majority of the newspapers have been owned and managed by single families for many decades."
There is a 2012 article by Ashley Lutz in the Business Insider titled, "These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America" in which she shares an infographic by Jason at Frugal Dad which explains that, "almost all media comes from the same six sources... consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983." The title of the Infographic is "Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice". The big six own news outlets on multiple continents.
A Wikipedia article states that, "Over time the amount of media merging has increased and the number of media outlets have increased. That translates to fewer companies owning more media outlets, increasing the concentration of ownership. In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90% is controlled by just six companies." It is thus not surprising that more than half of Americans via a 2012 Gallup poll say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
Another article by Anup Shah which discusses Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership states that, "Some nations can influence and control their media greatly. In addition, powerful corporations also have enormous influence on mainstream media." It further explains that not only is there concentration of ownership but also Interlocking Directorates, that is, "where a director of one company may sit on a board of another company. As pointed out by U.S. media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) for example, Media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, including banks, investment companies, oil companies, health care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies." It adds the following quote from "The Media Monopoly", 6th Edition (Beacon Press, 2000), pp. 35--36, 45 authored by Ben H. Bagdikian:
It is not often the public hears of ... clear destruction of editorial independence. In most cases there is no visible imposition of the parent firm's policies, and the policies are often not absolute, conditioned as they are by the desire for profits... The problem is ... subtle and profound. In a democracy ... a wide spectrum of ideas has equitable access to the marketplace [justifying a private publisher's imposing his personal politics on the decision of what to print]. The effect of a corporate line [exerting control over public ideas] is not so different from that of a party line [of a country imposing controls]. Detecting how most of the mass media impose political tests on what the public will see and hear is not as straightforward as [it may] seem. Political intervention in its most pervasive form is not open and explicit but is concealed under seemingly apolitical reasons [such as the natural choices that have to be made on the countless number of works that might not be published for legitimate non-political based reasons]. Most difficult of all to document is the implicit influence of corporate chiefs. Most bosses do not have to tell their subordinates what they like and dislike. (Emphasis added)
The deeper social loss of giantism in the media is not in its unfair advantage in profits and power; this is real and it is serious. But the gravest loss is in the self-serving censorship of political and social ideas, in news, magazine articles, books, broadcasting, and movies. Some intervention by owners is direct and blunt. But most of the screening is subtle, some not even occurring at a conscious level, as when subordinates learn by habit to conform to owners' ideas. But subtle or not, the ultimate result is distorted reality and impoverished ideas.
Bagdikian adds on p.222 that "If the number of outlets is growing and the number of owners declining, then each owner controls even more formidable communications power."
Another article in Asia-Pacific Research on July 06, 2016, by Bill Rosenburg states what happens to reporters who refuse to bend to the will of their bosses. The article states:
In a notorious case, reporters at a television station owned by Fox, a News Corporation subsidiary in the USA, produced a report critical of Monsanto. They were sacked when they refused to modify their story. The station manager pressured them to back down by saying: "We paid $3 billion for these stations. We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!"
The Capture of the Fourth EstateThe Fourth Estate today in the global West is probably the worst source of full, accurate, and fair news because it has been "captured" through mergers and consolidations--effectively creating monopolies that supply their services to the highest bidder--mainly politicasters and interest groups. This is why so many are disenchanted with the results of the elections. They were fed garbage. I derive the term "capture" from the terminology regulatory capture, which is defined thus by Wikipedia:
Regulatory capture is a form of government failure that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special-interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. When regulatory capture occurs the interests of firms or political groups are prioritised over the interests of the public, leading to a net loss to society as a whole. Government agencies suffering regulatory capture are called "captured agencies".
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