Who Owns the News? A Journey Through Digital Media Ownership
Let’s take a moment to consider the overall situation. When you hear about events in the world, where do you think those events are coming from? You might assume that the internet a medium as seemingly diverse and decentralized as any provides a constant flow of events from every corner of the globe. In truth, however, the seemingly boundless web of the internet is also a space that media consolidation has packed full of content from a shockingly small number of corporations. And here’s a revelation: things aren’t any better in the digital public sphere. The same half-dozen or so corporations that not only control our television and radio waves and our printed pages but also pump a big portion of the content into the internet that now serves as the public square for half the planet also happen to be a big part of the problem. And those companies have a huge influence on public discourse largely as a result of choices made by a handful of billionaires whose pictures you’d probably hesitate to hang in your living room.
The Control of the U.S. Media by a Few Corporations and Even Fewer Individuals If you examine the U.S. media closely, it really does appear like this. A half-dozen corporations and about 15 very wealthy individuals exercise almost total control over the U.S. media. For instance, the monster international corporation AT&T has a part that deals with digital media. And that part does provide some media to customers. But not directly rather, through the channels it owns and operates. This digital media portfolio includes, but is certainly not limited to, CNN, the Warner Media network, and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). To say that these outfits are the corporation’s “media product line” is …
The online information ecosystem seems more varied and accessible than ever before. Still, for all this supposed openness, online participatory journalism seems largely contained within a virtual reality created by those same elite media companies that, ten years ago, were often condemned for maintaining a media monopoly. The online participatory journalism of today largely occurs within the paradoxical participatory walls of those same high-rent “news sites” that now dominate the online information ecosystem.
Disconnected? Really? One might well demand to know just who is truly disconnected. Which sites can you name that are genuinely free of the all-encompassing media corporate umbrella? Of the digital news operations in the top hundred, it is very hard to find what you would call an independent voice. Even Politico, which one would be hard-pressed to accuse of not being independent, operates in an overall media environment that almost exclusively serves the business interests of a few big companies. And those media outlets that are a bit more set on this whole independent thing such as The Atlantic don’t offer a whole lot of better news. Still, it’s something of a comfort to know that there are voices out there that represent the scene’s independent media sector to at least some degree.
Who possesses your news shouldn’t matter. At least, that’s the claim we tend to uphold. In a perfect world, the identity of media owners wouldn’t influence the media content we consume. Yet some media owners are better at it than others, setting practically and chief-wagon-style paths to that independent space in which “editorial” happens. So, you know, good for them. But if we’re being honest, not every media owner respects that space and knows when to let it be respectably autonomous. And when they don’t, and if we’re also being honest, they often don’t nail the reasons they give for intervening, which sometimes involve being a few steps under a serious conflict of interest, better known as a C.O.I.
You can hold up Rupert Murdoch as an example of a media mogul who has far too much influence over American public discourse. Listen to almost any domestic political conversation, and you’re likely to find the kind of media that Murdoch directs right at the center of it. Murdoch’s hand is guiding so many right-wing conversations in America and this is a hand that has long, long ago passed way too many hundreds of millions of dollars in cash into so many right-wing talkers’ and doers’ pockets that it’s embarrassing and undemocratic.
The Consequences of Ownership Concentration The majority of the media we intake isn’t created by a varied set of individuals so we’re not hearing many different perspectives. For about 20 years, a small handful of powerful companies have been buying up all our media. These companies have been muffling dissent and letting fewer and fewer contrary opinions be heard. We’re left to follow a not-at-all-pretty trail to a seemingly nonexistent place. And when we arrive, we’re almost guaranteed to find the same tired content waiting for us tired because it hasn’t stirred up any lively conversation worth having, let alone any disagreement that might have led to something interesting.
What is the right step to take now? This is a matter that is closely related inextricably connected, really to the previous one. As with that one, this one tends to lead toward a resolution that does not bring us back to the crisis of big journalism. Significant, if much-maligned, news institutions happen to be a problem. Should we be agitated enough with them to be suggesting that they be abandoned? If not, what then? I happen to have two answers: the positive one first and the negative one second. The first answer is: “Understand better alongside them.”
