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/* Written  4:43 pm  Sep 20, 1992 by bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:alt.activism */
/* ---------- "The Media Monopoly (part 1)" ---------- */

The Media Monopoly

by Ben H. Bagdikian

Part 1 -- Preface

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"Each year it is more likely that the American citizen who turns 
to any medium... will receive information, ideas, or 
entertainment controlled by the same handful of corporations, 
whether it is daily news, a cable entertainment program, or a 
textbook." Thus writes author Ben H. Bagdikian in the 1990 
preface to his book.

Bagdikian declares that the difference between our government and 
the corporate entity of business is getting harder and harder to 
delineate. "Corporate news media and business-oriented 
governments have made common cause."

A historical parallel between the current situation and something 
similar from the past is cited by the author. "The mainstream 
news media postponed for more than fifty years full public 
awareness of the hidden dangers of the medically known threat to 
public health from tobacco... They did [this] to protect a major 
advertiser." And they are doing the equivalent obfuscations 
today, but this time on a grander scale.

The increasing control of the media by a handful of corporate 
entities means that more and more it is they who control "what 
the average American reads, sees, and hears." And yet "...there 
is a close to total silence in the mainstream news on the social 
consequences of this concentration [of media control]." Our 
access to information is being controlled by persons whom we do 
not know, persons who are pulling the strings of the corporate 
puppet. "When the central interests of the controlling 
corporations are at stake, mainstream American news becomes 
heavily weighted by whatever serves the economic and political 
interests of the corporations that own the media."

One of the dangers in all this is that "...the new corporate 
ethic is so single-minded about extreme fast profits and expanded 
control over the media business that it is willing to convert 
American news into a service for the affluent customers wanted by 
the media's advertisers instead of a source of information 
significant for the whole of society. The rewards of money profit 
through market control by themselves and their advertisers have 
blinded media owners to the damage they are doing to an 
institution central to the American democracy."


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 1