Oct/Nov 2002
A
Statement of Conscience: "Not In Our Name"
The Bill of Rights Foundation
We
Must No Longer Tolerate a Culture of Violence
Depak Chopra
Murder
for Profit
William Rivers Pitt
Opposing
the President's Call for "Relentless War"
David Krieger
"Diplomacy"
in the Age of the American Empire
Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
The
Middle East: A Human Perspective
Pam Derby
What
Awaits Us in Iraq "Warrior Kings and the Test of True Vision"
David LaChapelle
Free
to Choose: Health Care for All-Oregon: Measure 23 on the Ballot this November
Gerald Cavanaugh
We
Have the Right to Know What's in Our Food
Louis Mincer
Oregon's
Measure 27
Give Oregonians A Choice
Same
News Every Channel, Every Media
Don Monkerud
The
Cult of Greed and the Anesthetization of Democracy
John Darling
Forest
Health & Logging Wealth
Lesley Adams and Joseph E. Vaile
Finding
Balance in the Autumn Season with ayurvedic Practices
Myrica Morningstar
Sacred
Plants
David Crow
The
Movie Mystic
Stephen Simon
The
Thomas Messages
James Twyman
The
Yearly Round
Richard Moeschl
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Same News Every Channel, Every Media
By Don Monkerud
If you notice that news stories on radio or TV, and in the newspaper sound as if they were scripted from the same source, you are right.
Increasingly the media speaks with the same voice and stories are written from the same sources. All of the news sounds alike because media companies are owned by a smaller and smaller group of media conglomerates. Consider the increasing media concentration.
In 1981, 46 media
companies controlled most of the book, magazine, newspaper, movie and TV industries.
By 1986, this number shrank to 29 and in 1997, a mere seven conglomerates
cornered the vast multimedia markets of the U.S. Their holdings are vast.
For example:
• AOL-Time Warner, the world’s largest media company, with 79,000
employees and $32 billion in yearly revenue, owns 12 film companies, 24 book
publishers, 35 magazines with a readership of 120 million, and 27 million
AOL subscribers who spend 84 percent of their time on AOL alone.
• Disney, with 120,000 employees and $25 billion in yearly revenue, owns
five magazine publishing groups and four major newspapers, ABC television
and 10 TV and 29 radio stations in addition to eight major film companies.
• Bertelsmann, with 65,000 employees and $16 billion in yearly revenue,
is the world’s largest publisher, moving over one million books a day
in the U.S., and owns 200 music labels and 80 magazines worldwide.
A second tier of media firms, such as Tribune Company, Dow Jones, Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Hearst, compete with these conglomerates and are giants in their turn. They rank among the top 1,000 companies, worldwide, and accumulate more than one billion dollars apiece in yearly sales. On the television front, two-thirds of all newspapers and one-seventh of all TV stations have no competition in their local markets. Major newspaper chains own television stations as well: News Corp. owns 33, Tribune Co. has 23, Gannett owns 22, and New York Times Co. owns 8. Fewer companies controlling information means that many opinions are not heard by a large audience.
“It’s very clear how conglomeration affects the news,” says Kristina Borjesson, former CBS and ABC reporter and editor of Into the Buzzsaw, a collection of essays by award winning journalists on their personal experiences with censorship. “The press is a lot less free because a handful of companies have access to millions of people. There are black holes in reporting—such as the military and international news—that are dangerous for democracy and America.”
In the book industry, Mike Shatzkin, founder of Idea Logical Co., estimates that in 2002 a mere six companies dominate consumer publishing: Random House, Pearson, von Holtzbrinck, AOL Time-Warner, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.
Additionally, two retail chains, Borders and Barnes & Noble, and a few smaller chains, such as Crown Books, Books-a-Million and Hastings, dominate bookstore sales.
“There’s little doubt that the big guys are publishing fewer books than their component parts did ten years ago, and they are paying more for them,” says Shatzkin. “In general, most books are harder to get published by a credible publisher.”
While some argue that every good book will get published, distribution is a major problem. The most cursory survey of book reviews reveals that books from huge publishers dominate the lists. Other books, such as those critical of the media, opposed to conglomerates or presenting alternate views on globalization or U.S. domination, invariably find small publishers with limited resources for distribution and marketing.
“We are not getting a good flow of quality books,” says Pat Holt, former book editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and Internet columnist for Holt Uncensored. “An emphasis on business and bottom-line profits has led to the integration of editorial and marketing functions, which results in a thinning out of literature. Serious books—history, science, biography, essays, translations, and serious novels—are pushed aside for best sellers.”
Currently, some conglomerates are divesting book publishers because they have not been able to boost the traditional four percent rate of return to the 15 percent expected by Wall Street. Yet books represent prestige and important ideas which give media conglomerates an opportunity to “share content,” market across a number of media to increase sales, and tie-in with movie and CD releases.
While conglomerates sell off book publishers, Aaron J. Moore, author of Who Owns What, a Website maintained by the Columbia School of Journalism, expects conglomerates to focus their acquisition sights on advertising-driven media such as newspapers, radio and TV. He foresees that traditional rules of “cross-ownership,” which limit news monopolies in cities, will be severely curtailed or eliminated by the FCC in spring 2003. One company will be permitted to own all the radio, TV stations, cable stations and newspapers in one market area. Not only could the same company control all of the news outlets but the same reporter could also provide the news for each outlet.
“There is a valid concern,” says Moore. “If one company has so many opportunities to talk to the public, it controls all the voices. To a certain extent this reminds people of 1984 and Big Brother.”
Don Monkerud is a long-time freelancer, author of Twister Country, Italy Uncensored: A Travelogue with Politics and Religion and co-editor of Free Land: Free Love: Tales of a Wilderness Commune. A contributing editor for electronic publishing magazines Don also teaches classes on freelancing and self-publishing. Contact him at monkerud@cruzio.com.
Can the FCC Protect the Public Interest?
The Federal Communications Commission has launched a proceeding that will lead to the erosion of long-standing safeguards designed to ensure that the public can receive information, opinions and ideas from a robust array of sources. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC set in motion changes that will place control of the nation’s TV stations, broadcast networks, and major daily newspapers in the hands of fewer giant corporations.
Among the rules at stake include a long-standing safeguard designed to prevent common ownership of a TV station and a newspaper in a single community (broadcast cross-ownership); the National Broadcast Ownership Cap, created to ensure that communities are served by local/and or diverse owners, instead of the major networks; and policies that now prohibit one major TV network from acquiring another (dual network rule).
“The country cannot afford another wave of consolidation designed to bolster the bottom line of a few at the expense of our democracy. Chairman Powell and the D.C. Court of Appeals have based their criticism of these rules on incomplete information, often supplied by self-serving media industry interests,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of The Center for Digital Democracy. “The studies underway by the FCC are insufficient to develop a truly independent record that will protect the public. We call on the Commission to engage the country in a national debate about media ownership, involving leading independent academics, journalists, political scientists, civic and nonprofit leaders.”
CDD is launching a web-based campaign that will enable the public to send letters to Congress urging opposition to today’s proposals. Please visit www.mediachannel.org/news/tracker to see how you can participate.
- Center for
Digital Democracy
(202) 452-9898
jeff@democraticmedia.org
