Know the media

[Asgaya Dihi]

I keep seeing the comment "republican controlled media" and I'm not sure that's going to help us to solve the problem. We need to recognize it for what it is, a corporate owned and self serving institution, one that some of us own in part through our stock portfolios. That's pressure we can use if we recognize it. They serve the people who best serve them, today it's the repubs. If we can change what they see as being to their own benefit then we can maybe change what they do. We have to know who they are first though.

The vast majority of our media is owned by a small handful of corporations, I'll list the top seven here and leave a link for you to research the rest. I hope you'll use it, you can look up the ownership of about any radio or TV station you'd like as well as a lot of print.

News Corporation
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/newscorp.asp

General Electric
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/ge.asp

Viacom
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/viacom.asp

Time Warner
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/timewarner.asp

Disney
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/disney.asp

Vivendi Universal
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/vivendi.asp

Bertelsmann
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/bertelsmann.asp

That's the vast majority of everything most will see, read or hear. The rest can be found here.

Columbia Journalism Review: Who Owns What?
http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/

[snot]

1. I agree with your basic point, but . . .

Although in theory, corporations are owned by stockholders, whose interests are represented by the board of directors, in practice most directors are hand-picked cronies of senior management.

So in practice, corporations are controlled and run by senior management for the benefit of senior management.

This is why we see out-of-control compensation and golden parachutes for senior management, and also why so many unproductive mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs take place -- because such transactions, since they are so large, create opportunities to generate huge bonuses, fees and pay increases for senior management, even if the underlying transaction turns out to have been a mistake.

Moreover, although I don't have evidence for the following, I'd bet most senior management as well as most really large shareholders are Republicans.

And I believe it's well-established that some decades ago, conservatives consciously adopted a strategy not only of acquiring media companies and outlets but also of creating various foundations, think tanks, educational and other institutions that could function as sources for "experts" propounding various conservative positions -- in short, they consciously built an entire, multiply-layered network that would be capable of dominating the public agenda and discussion.

Sorry I don't have the sources of this info at my fingertips, but I don't think there's any secret about any of it.

[Asgaya Dihi]

2. Actually I'd agree with you

I've used to argument myself when people claim we have a "liberal" media based on some survey they saw that even if the reporters were liberal management isn't and it's the news directors and copy editors who make the choices of what to print and what stories to cover. It tends to conservative no doubt. Can't disagree on the power balance either, stockholders don't have the control they should.

But, it's an opening. Better a chink in the armor than none at all. Even if we can't force them to be responsible directly we can try to make them aware that we know who they are and what their relationships are.

I honestly don't have a fix for the media, wish I did but as much as I've thought about it the problem we've created is complex as hell. Knight-Ridder was recently forced into sale in spite of profits of 15% or so, others have gone down at 20% or better. We've got things so entangled between the stock market, conflicts of interest in ownership and their addiction to access to power that I wouldn't know which end to start on. I'm pretty sure we have to start with recognizing exactly what we're up against though.

[snot]

7. You might also try asking your Congressional reps to support HR 550. nt

[AX10]

6. I know what you are talking about.

Where are the wealthy Democrats to build our "empire"?

[Doctor_J]

3. What's your point?

This is not news. Everything we see, hear, and read is controlled by a handful of ultra-conservative businessmen. It's been that way for at least 20 years.

[Asgaya Dihi]

5. Not exactly.

It hasn't been that way for at least 20 years, though it's been heading that way. Time Warner didn't absorb CNN till late in the 90's for example. If you want the timelines it's listed corp by corp at the link I listed above.

It isn't done. A few years ago they tried to sneak another consolidation measure in that we managed to stop, it was sent back to the FCC and just sat there for the last year or so. It's been a 2-2 tie on the board between dems and repubs till Robert McDowell was confirmed just recently. If you think things are bad now, they can still get worse. They steadily have been over recent years and they aren't done. With Robert McDowell they now have a 3-2 edge and can rewrite the measure that was sent back to them and if we aren't watching we get to watch another round of consolidation.

It's bad enough now, I don't see sitting and asking "what's the point" as an option. We should probably learn a bit about it instead.

[Flubadubya]

4. "...change what they see as being to their own benefit..."

Ah but therein lies the rub. Who is going to pay their bloated, six-figure salaries for being stooges to their masters? i.e. corporations and republicans. I don't think even George Soros could pay off Russert, et. al.