Media Mughals: Expose

"We demand zero tolerance of violence against journalists and press freedom. But today more subtle threats to freedom of expression come from within media as a result of media concentration, globalization and a culture of greed within the industry."

   —International Federation of Journalists, May 2001

Concentration of media ownership (also known as media consolidation) is a frequently used term to signify the majority of the media outlets being owned by a small number of conglomerates and corporations — especially by those who view such consolidation as detrimental, dangerous, or otherwise problematic — to characterize ownership structure of mass media industries.

These individual media industries are often referred to as a ‘Media Institution’. Media ownership may refer to states of oligopoly or monopoly in a given media industry, or to the importance of a low number of media conglomerates. Large media conglomerates include Disney, National Amusements, Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Sony, General Electric, Vivendi SA and Lagardère Group.

The year 2000 saw some staggering media mergers. The results, as the hype went, will be beneficial, benign and transform the way we use the media. To pay for the staggering costs of the mergers, consumers are going to be bombarded with incessant cross-media promotions. These huge global media giants aren’t friendly guests in the public’s homes, but hydra-headed monsters. Unless democratic and accountable media is created, which are to be regulated towards the public interest, their power to influence governments, culture and the way accurate information is obtained about the world will be boosted enormously.

In 2001, however, saw a more sombre note being struck where jobs and investments were cut in online operations by global media conglomerates, television networks, newspaper groups and Web sites. The media, which a year ago had been uncritically reporting and praising global media mergers, began to point to some of the less palatable consequences.

The idea of corporate media itself may not be a bad thing, for it can foster healthy competition and provide a check against governments. However, the concern is when there is a concentration of ownership due to the risk of increased economic and political influence that can itself be unaccountable.

    Global conglomerates can at times have a progressive impact on culture, especially when they enter nations that had been tightly controlled by corrupt crony media systems (as in much of Latin America) or nations that had significant state censorship over media (as in parts of Asia). The global commercial-media system is radical in that it will respect no tradition or custom, on balance, if it stands in the way of profits. But ultimately it is politically conservative, because the media giants are significant beneficiaries of the current social structure around the world, and any upheaval in property or social relations—particularly to the extent that it reduces the power of business—is not in their interest.

    — Robert W. McChesney, The New Global Media; It’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates, The Nation Magazine, November 29, 1999

    We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d’etre.

    — the C.E.O. of Westinghouse(CBS), Advertising Age, February 3, 97

    Having a few huge corporations control our outlets of expression could lead to less aggressive news coverage and a more muted marketplace of ideas.

    — Rifka Rosenwein, Why Media Mergers Matter, Brill’s Content, December 1999

    It is useful to remind ourselves that free expression is threatened not just blatantly by authoritarian governments and all those in the private sector who fear public exposure, but also more subtly by the handful of global media conglomerates that have reduced meaningful diversity of expression in much of the globe.

    — Gerald Caplan, Advancing Free Media, Open Markets, Open Media forum, November 1997

There have been a lot of mergers and buyouts of media and entertainment companies since the 1980s. Mainstream media has since become more concentrated in terms of ownership and the influences of advertisers and owning companies both have an enormous in how mainstream media shapes itself and society.

As Robert McChesney, a media critic, describes, these are the “first tier” companies and following them are around 50 or so “second tier” companies doing media-related business at either national or regional level. All of these companies each do more than one billion dollars worth of business.

At first thought, one might ask, what is wrong with a few companies becoming so big? Isn’t that how business works? Even from a business perspective, the oligopolies or monopolies is not desirable. Considering the important role that a free and diverse media takes on in a functioning democracy, these questions become even more important. One of the major concerns that arises from such concentration is that there are very few media owners in the mainstream that reach out to the masses. As a result, there is the risk of reduced diversity of issues and perspectives as well as undue political influence and interests from a few affecting the many.

Most citizens get their views and understandings of the world around them from the mainstream media.