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/* Written  4:56 pm  Sep 22, 1992 by bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:alt.activism */
/* ---------- "The Media Monopoly (part 3)" ---------- */

The Media Monopoly

by Ben H. Bagdikian

Part 3 -- The Endless Chain

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"For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also."
					   -- Matthew 6:22


"Corporate leaders predict -- that by the 1990s a half-dozen 
large corporations will own all the most powerful media outlets 
in the United States." This is scary because of, among other 
things, "the striking similarity in the private political and 
economic goals of all of the owning corporations."

Bagdikian gives numerous examples of the trend toward centralized 
control of the media. He cites the fact that "At the end of World 
War II... 80 percent of the daily newspapers in the United States 
were independently owned, but by 1989 the proportion was 
*reversed* [my emphasis], with 80 percent owned by corporate 
chains."

[This centralized control over our information gives enormous 
power to what is essentially a *thing*. A corporation is not a 
human being. It is not several human beings. It is rather a 
technology whose only purpose is to make more and more money. A 
corporation has no heart, or rather it displays a "heart" only 
when this suits its primary purpose -- profit. B.R.] The mass 
media "is being reduced to a small number of closed circuits in 
which the owners of the conduits... prefer to use material they 
own or that tends to serve their economic purposes."

The chief executive officers of the twenty-three corporations 
"that control most of what Americans read and see... [are] almost 
without exception... economic conservatives." The believers in 
this economic mythology "know which side their bread is buttered 
on." When their corporate interests are at stake "they use... 
[their] power, in their selection of news, and in the private 
lobbying power peculiar to those who control the media image -- 
or non-image -- of politicians."

Without unrestricted and accurate information, democracy begins 
to fail. If citizens cannot make *informed* choices they will 
be led to *badly formed* choices. "In a democracy, the answer to 
government power is accountability, which means giving voters 
full information and real choices."

"When the same corporations expand their control over many 
different kinds of media... the experience has been that the 
common control of different media makes those media more alike 
than ever... Cable, once thought to be a fundamental alternative 
to programs on commercial television... is increasingly an 
imitation of commercial television."

Big Government and Big Corporations are increasingly intertwined. 
"The history of Big Government and Big Corporations is more one 
of accomodation than of confrontation... [Nixon and Reagan] both 
made extraordinary moves to support corporate concentration and 
increased profit-taking in the media; newspaper publishers 
overwhelmingly endorsed both Nixon and Reagan for reelection, and 
while in office President Reagan received stunningly uncritical 
coverage by the Washington news corps."

The author stresses that this concentration of media control into 
the hands of a few CEOs of a small group of mega-corporations is 
a topic that is *verboten* in the mass media. "...the public, 
almost totally dependent on the media... has seldom seen in their 
newspapers, magazines, or broadcasts anything to suggest the 
political and economic dangers of concentrated corporate 
control." The corporados can especially exert a subtle control 
over our information by emphasizing some items more than others. 
"Most owners and editors no longer brutalize the news with... [a] 
heavy hand... More common is something more subtle, more 
professionally respectable and more effective: the power to treat 
some unliked subjects accurately but briefly, and to treat 
subjects favorable to the corporate ethic frequently and in 
depth."


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 3