Media Concentration Chart (Eric Alterman)

[Phrazz]

Every so often I come across a tasty tidbit in the form of visualization of information that I find fascinating, and this one is a "gem" (IMO, whatever that's worth). This chart describes the "big 10" Media Megopolies along with a nice graphical interface. Some of you might know about Eric Alterman... I am curious what you think about the Media Concentration Chart as well as the dynamics of media bias and related issues.

-Phrazz

http://www.whatliberalmedia.com/apndx_3.htm


P.S.: One digestification on the issue of media bias:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_media

[tim]

i'm not able to digest the whole chart at this time but i really liked this quote...

The Propaganda model by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky deems possible bias of the journalists themselves to be an insignificant matter, but claims that structural and economic causes filter the type of news published.

there is definite media bias... the left controls abc, nbc and cbs while the right controls foxnews and the talk show circuits. i think it's a total ying-yang relationship with each side appealing to their respective sheeple. the one thing that is most scary about foxnews is the fact that they are a cable channel and have managed to gain such a following. anyone ever watch that channel for extended amounts of time? it's crazy. it is "news" being presented in a beat 'em up, take no prisoners fashion...more entertainment than substantive information. as an entity, it's such an unabashed apologist for the status quo it's not even funny. it fronts for the "moral" side of the country while serving as our biggest tabloid rag. that fox news sure is a facinating creature.

i listen to alot of talk radio but i'm not even going to get into that can of worms right now(michael savage is great btw). in the end, the mainstream media is just a tit for tat, back and forth volley of idiocy. like little two kids, "he started it"..."no, she did!". "liberal media bias" vs. "vast right wing conspiracy". very few people get their info from the more "reputable" sources or have the time to wade through both sides of the bullshit to try and find the parts nobody is telling you about. the scariest thing is that even fewer forms of media want to really confront the most dangerous issues we are facing right now...environmental degradation, illegal immigration, loss of civil rights and our own real role in leading to the f'd up world we;re in right now.

this shit is really scary... http://tv.yahoo.com/nielsen/

http://tv.yahoo.com/nielsen/

[ScS]

as the entertainment world becomes more homogenized, we'll see a lot more personalization in the things we are sold. most of these companies we've had some contact with before so they know we're out there.

i think the cost is the personalization and the invasion of privacy that some people might think it brings. the more a company knows about you, the less a private citizen you feel, at least in my opinion. i don't want a company sending me personal information about myself even i didn't know about. that's just freaky. reminds me a bit of an issue of Reason in which they sent out a satellite photo of each individual's neighborhood with their house circled in red.

as the companies grow and envelop even more small companies, you'll begin to see a nationalization of news, which has already begun. you'll see the same thing in Phoenix that you do in Palm Springs and the same thing you see in Chicago that you do in Salt Lake City. we've kind of seen this with bush's propaganda on news programs passing as "news stories".

[Katie]

So Phrazz, I see you're looking to stir up some interesting conversation... sorry for not contributing to the baseball discussion (I'm honestly not affected by baseball fans enough for me to form an opinion on that), but this is one area I spent semesters studying in college. It's almost funny to see so many 18-year-old jaws drop when confronted freshman year with just the tpo 5 (let alone the top 10) for the first time... ('you mean the company that made my refrigerator and light bulbs also owns NBC, Madison Square Garden and professional wrestling?')... and then it's disturbing to realize that the majority of media-consumers have no idea that so many separate facets of media in so many different forms are ultimately owned by a small group of people. While vertical monopolies are still illegal (ie: one company owning too much of one industry like software), and horizontal monopolies are limited in the sense that one company control all aspects of disseminating one form of media (ie a movie production company cannot also own a huge amount of distributors, theatres... etc) it's not technically illegal for 5 companies to own and control huge amounts of it all, so long as there's still competition among them. Their control of the dominant forms of media has an enormous impact on politics and culture, not just here but globally.

Like take Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for example... which owns major networks (Fox) and newspapers in the US, the UK, Australia, and one of the largest (geographically, in terms of reach) satellite networks in the world, Asia's Star TV. I think it's easy to see the rightwing bias in Foxnews commentaries if you look for it, but whether or not the problem is recognized, the impact is scary. The political agenda of one company (or in Murdoch's case, one man) can influence so many people, influencing popular opinion and who gets put into power. I'm not just talking Bush election theories here, with Murdoch this goes back to the 70s in the early days of his career when he used his Australian newspaper to support the Labor Party and then turned around toward the Liberal Party a few years later. (This is pretty much common knowledge, because the people who worked for him got fed up with it and were public about it, but here's a general source on Murdoch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch). Also, considering the amount of influence and money companies like News Corp have, they then have a strong power of persuasion on those political parties and leaders they support once they get into office. This is the reality of the kind of power these small groups of people can have when they chose to use it. I think sometimes the media can seem unbiased because the individual journalists who work for these companies often do try and do their jobs objectively, but ultimately the bias of who controls the purse strings comes into play somehow. The documentary 'Outfoxed' is most interesting, I think, in showing this perspective of some former journalists who worked for Fox, and how the bias affected them.

Besides politics... What about the impact The Big 10 have on culture? Because they own shares in so many areas of media that reach so many places, does it hurt local culture? I think we do have a natural reaction to resist homogenization and that can make us celebrate a regional culture, and individualism even more. (I remember watching a documentary in a Global Communications class on MTV in India, and how it didn't gain popularity at first, showing Western pop music videos and TV shows, but took off once the programming featured more Indian musicians and actors). And really... we're a good example of people who are all here because we sought out music that isn't mainstream, popular music. So if we prefer the unique and local culture will the big business media loose popularity? I doubt it. It'll probably lead more to what ScS is talking about... a false sense of individualism. To me gathering personal information about stuff like your age/race/gender/location and TV viewing habits is like trying to make a huge wide-reaching media seem like it's connecting with you on a personal level when it isn't. I've heard about Clear Channel radio stations that can be picked up in rural areas that are played off as local programming but actually are initially broadcast form somewhere far away... and you wouldn't know it except that you can't even call them to get local weather or breaking news information. The truth is disconcerting but as long as people buy it (figuratively, and literally speaking) it'll succeed and the media conglomerates will probably get even bigger.

Disturbing, isn't it? Now I see why I lost motivation and dropped the double major in journalism (besides the fact that it was too much work). I’ve probably read an article or book excerpt of Alterman’s, but don’t remember anything in particular… might have to look into his work some more sometime. Thanks for making me think about this stuff again (and don't take my disenchanted outlook on the media too seriously... it's not all bad, I just like to keep in perspective who's bias I'm getting along with it.)

[ScS]

katie, if you want to read more of alterman's stuff may i suggest the following

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp ... VF&b=10930
http://www.ericalterman.com/
http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bio.mhtml?id=8

i love his column in the nation and the american progress column is usually interesting.