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Ted Turner's Beef With Big Media

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the whuh? dept.

pizen writes "Washington Monthly has an article from Ted Turner where he talks about the problems with the media conglomerates and calls for them to be busted: 'At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates.'"

3 of 552 comments (clear)

  1. Face It. by torpor · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Unless we fight back against Big Media, we are going to lose, and lose hard, a lot of the things we have come to take for granted in the past 20 years of the Internet...

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
    1. Re:Face It. by joebok · · Score: 5, Insightful

      RTFA - one of Turner's points is that the independence of the Internet is illusionary - the large media companies own plenty of Internet news sources as well.

      From TFA: the "diversity-enhancing value of the Internet." The FCC is confusing diversity with variety. The top 20 Internet news sites are owned by the same media conglomerates that control the broadcast and cable networks. Sure, a hundred-person choir gives you a choice of voices, but they're all singing the same song.

  2. Why all the Ted Turner bashing? by thecombatwombat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes Ted Turner is easily the center of the evils he's complaining about . . . . but well, did anyone RTFA before bashing him?

    Sure there's hypocrisy in Turner saying big media should be broken up, but he explains himself rather well. I admit I haven't even read the whole article yet. Maybe he's a little bit bitter (AOL), but he starts by explaining that he could never have gotten started in the current environment and then goes on to detail lots of real problems with the current media. Why can't he just be a very smart old man, who knows more about this topic than probably any of us, and is pissed because his industry is going to hell?