Slashdot Mirror
'Big Media' Set to Get Even Bigger
seldolivaw writes: "You might be interested in this Wired article, a fairly good summary of why monolithic media is a bad idea, and exactly how close the US already is. Funny quote: "There are six or seven media conglomerates that rule the world... [b]ut how many companies do you need to provide programming to mass audiences? Six companies should be enough. At least it's not two." America, head for the hills -- I'm safe in the UK, not!"
In Brazil there is no limitation on what can a media conglomerate own. The biggest media companies in Brazil own television, newspapers, radios, weekly magazine, "internet portals", internet service providers, etc. It is very difficult for a community radio to get a license to operate legally (so they usually run as pirate stations), but for the few families that have political power for ages (and who own media brazilian conglomerates) it's very easy to open a new radio station or even tv station. Not only that, but these media companies not only run cable tv and cable broadband, but they usually run these business as a monopoly in many metropolitan areas.
It's common to only have access to the online version of magazine X if you subscribe to the ISP of the same media conglomerate. It's pretty messy, but people don't give a damn. What irritates me is when you see advertising of a new branch of the conglomerate in the other distribution media of the conglomerate, and you think to yourself that it is obvious that they didn't pay for that advertisement.
Oh, and we have our FCC. It's called ANATEL, for Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes (National Telecom Agency), but it is also known as Aqui NAo TEm Lei (There is no law here).
Had to bite
erm.... yes. But it's a bit more tricky than that. Most of the money media outlets recieve isn't from the customers directly, but from advertising revenue. For example, the cover price of a dead tree copy of the New York Times is a tiny fraction of the revenue that edition will collect. It's more accurate to say the media outlets got big because *advertisers* got big on our money.
That's just the start. As has been pointed out, GE is a major owner of media outlets. Some of their most profitable exercises, however, have more to do with supplying industrial and weapons componentry. Jet engines, nuclear detonator components, and landmine componentry to domestic and overseas markets are some of the more striking items. I could promise to stop buying them, but I'm not yet a customer.
However, what they can do is take away your ability to make informed decisions. If the information required to make a choice is controlled by editors who understand the importance of responsibility to G.E.'s shareholders, then your ability to make decisions that reflect badly on G.E. is severly curtailed.
This isn't conspiracy theory - this is a basic fact. If you have any role at all in the modern corporate world, have a look around at who's getting promoted. It's usually people who have a pretty good sense of responsibility to the shareholders. To expect a media outlet, which is a company, to be subject to different rules is naive.
Given this, it's pretty unlikely you'll see articles dismissing a media outlet's parent company. Have a look at that list of who owns what media to get an idea of who's not going to get bad press.
Agreed. But have you noticed the drop in diversity over the past five years? Part of the point of the article is that Internet portals are going the way of newspapers. True, content of material on the Internet is mostly up to the individual users, but Quality of Service isn't. Which is going to get more hits - a flashy site, owned by a portal with huge bandwidth, or one not owned by said portal, that doesn't have the bandwidth to choke an ant.
In most of the developed world, finding good food instead of McFast Food is an uphill battle. It seems information is going the same way.
To answer the topic - what to do about it. Give a toss. Spread information. Use the Internet for something productive. Become known in your neighborhood as that wacko who babbles about media control, in the hopes that a few people will catch on and keep demand for diversity alive.
Anyone got more suggestions?
"A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five." -Groucho Marx
The Columbia Journalism Review has a comprehensive list of the handful of corporation that control most of the news media in the United States and the rest of the world. There are a few expected faces such as AOL Time Warner, Viacom and Disney with a few surprises (General Electric, AT & T).
Where was the FCC when a handful of corporations slowly took over the media?
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It's a deplorable situation, but one that can be corrected. Curiously enough, the internet is one of the largest correcting factors, primarily because it is inherently two-way, and because the entry price is low.
Media companies know this. I suspect it is one of the driving factors behind big media's push to make the internet "simpler", as they put it. More like, say, television.
It's really hard to run an internet media company. After all, just about anybody can stand up and call bullshit on your stuff. They even seem to get a perverse satisfaction out of it.
I suspect that in the future, though the media world will realign itself. Large media will probably become feeds for smaller local media that have local advertising concerns not large enough for the big boys to worry about. The key here is just like radio: Local, Local, Local. Local folks presenting local issues concerning the local area. This is awfully hard to do with big media. The availability of more distribution channels at a local level also makes it harder on them.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
This is the same old kneejerk, Katzian song-and-dance that Slashdot seems to throw up every three months or so. There's one universal cure for big media corporations you don't like: Don't consume their product. Don't watch their movies or TV shows. Don't subscriibe to their ISPs or cable systems or online services or magazines. If you don't like what they produce, buy elsewhere. Or start your own company. If enough people boycott them, the power of the marketplace will force them to change their ways.
What's that you say? Not enough people will boycott them? That they'll thrive despite your boycott? That people who don't share your views will continue to patronize their service? Well GOSH, how SHOCKING that those mindless lemmings would DARE to have opinions other than your own! How dare they use AOL and subscribe to Time-Warner Cable and eat at McDonalds and shop at WalMart despite all the times that you've told them how politically incorrect such actions are! How dare they put their own convienance and financial well-being above the superior opinions of the fashionable elite!
Why, if those all those little people don't use their choices wisely, we'll just have to take those choices away from them! We'll just have to pass laws to tax large media congolomerates so we take money away from them and give it to government subsidized art that we, the politically correct ruling elite, judge to be superior. (Oh, wait. We already do that with PBS and the NEA.) We'll have to raise the taxes and fees passed on to the customers of media giants to punish them for making the wrong choice--just like we do for people who use tobacco. We'll have to file lawsuits against big media companies to drive them out of business--just like we're doing with the firearms industry. And if people still aren't using their freedom properly, we'll just have to outlaw bad media and throw its consumers in jail--just like we do with users of marijuana and cocaine. If we don't like what people choose, we'll just have to take that freedom away.
(/sarcasm)
Remember: Freedom of the press is for those who own one. If you don't like the choices available, go out and create your own. And if you work hard and make it a success, and AOL Time Warner Microsoft Beatrice comes along and says "Hey, Mr. Independent Press Guy, we'll pay you ten times what the book value of your company is worth and you can stop working those 80 hour weeks to clear 20K a year in profit so we can add you to our giant synergy machine," why, I'm SURE you'll turn all that money down. Just like Netscape did when AOL came calling. Just like Bungie did when Microsoft came calling.
Look, all this bitching about the current round of media concentration is just short-sighted, ahistorical whining that ignores the huge diversification of media created by technology. Go back 30 years ago, and what did you have? Three major TV networks. Two major wire news services. (You had more newspapers, but by and large they got much of their national and international news from the same few sources.) One phone company. No cable TV. No internet. No Slashdot!
And since then, look at the vast, technology-fueled growth in various forms of media:
Cable TV, with thousands of possible channels to choose from, of which several dozen or more will be on any given cable system.
Two competeing satelite TV firms, with hundreds of additional choices, many from around the world
Three more broadcast networks
Foriegn language channels
For that matter, more foreign language newspapers available more places
Tens of thousands of small press magazines fueled by the desktop publishing boom
Thousands of independent record companies fueled by the CD boom
Untold millions of websites, all available at a mouse click, thanks to computers and the internet.
Thirty thousand newsgroups (even if half of them are for porn; and, for that matter:)
Multitudes upon multitudes of adult videos and and porn sites where before there were dirty theaters and a handfull of skin mags (a vast number of choices, albeit of a particular type)
E-mail
FTP, Napster, Gneutella, and a thousand other file sharing programs that keep popping up no matter how hard they tru to shut them down
Et. Frigging Cetera.
So, in short, stop whining. You have more media choices available to you than any other people at any point in the history of mankind.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/