Interesting fact from the Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter (ok, so the website hasn’t been updated since March; sue us. Get on the mailing list!):
The media continue to be gobbled up by “Merger Mania.”
Ever wonder why so much of North American media content looks as if it were all written by clones?
There are ~1,800 newspapers, ~11,000 magazines, ~11,000 radio stations, ~2,000 TV stations and ~3,000+ book publishers in the United States.
Companies owning a controlling interest in the major players:
50 in 1984
26 in 1987
10 in 1996
6 in 2002Today about 90% of the media voices have been silenced by takeovers, just compared to the number we had 20 years ago.
Source: NOW with Bill Moyers. Politics & Economy. Massive Media | PBS
There are seven major players, if you count Bertelsmann, which has lately been into American acquisitions.
In this age of the internet, how hard can it be for the average news-absorbing American citizen to get an outside perspective? The question is: Does he/she want to?
Have you heard of the phenomenal popularity of this new invention called ‘blogs’ ?
That might be one route to getting an outside perspective… Or maybe you mean everyone should log on to IndyMedia.org and NPR ?
Such a Sri thing to say.
A majority of the population still gets its news from the major networks, cable news networks, radio stations and newspapers. Also, they neither have the time nor the inclination to putz around the internet and Seek Out the truth. This is still a relatively new phenom. It’s catching up, I hope.
Speaking of phenoms, have you heard of Blogebrity? I was going to post about this, but decided it doesn’t need any more attention than necessary. Heaven forbid that we should make blog gurus/deities out of Wonkette, Ms. Malkin and Daily Kos. Oooh, let’s add tiers to the blogosphere and add exclusion and exclusivity to a medium that was intended to prevent such things.
I read it on the internet; it must be true. :-)
No, they do not want to. Because they are lazy.
And I would hardly call NPR an “outside perspective”. Try Pacifica, with a shaker of salt, of course.
I disagree so much with the premise that we are not getting diverse enough data that I don’t know where to start…
And, what’s ‘Sri’ ?
Take any major news headline and compare the analysis of that story across all of the major news sources. All the way from NPR to Fox News, the message is the same, as is the way in which it is covered. However, this same take isn’t replicated outside the US, or with independent news sources.
Lastly, if you don’t agree with the premise, what’s the point in your discussing it in this vein?
Sri = some dude that sounds a lot like the first Anon comment ;->
That’s why I gave up discussing it… It’s futile. But, demonstrating my masochistic side, I’ll still try to explain my view.
Two reasons for the identical analysis you read.. Every ‘serious’ journalist graduates out of the Harvard/Yale/Columbia… where they are all taught by the same set of Professors, all of whom got PhDs from the same small set of schools.. It’s an incestuous little club.
Second, all business managers of publications went to the same set of Harvard/Wharton/Kellogg business schools and now are similarly enamored by the power and low cost of syndication…. And they were all taught by the same set of Professors, all of whom got PhDs from.. you get it.
That said, there has never been a generation in history where what was important was also popular. So, why measure this generation by an impossibly higher standard? Just because you were born now?
What is really different is that electronic media has made it so much easier for the small set who really want to Seek Out the truth to go directly to the source. Economics junkies can get NBER research for free, political junkies can subscribe to RSS feeds straight from their favorite raw source, and anyone can access orginal research reports and data series from almost any source you care to name. The only thing stopping anyone is their own motivation.. not even cost.
25 years ago, I couldn’t get detailed company financial data unless I paid hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars and waited weeks while ValueLine did my bidding. Today, I have to prevent myself from drowning in data from Hoovers and ProQuest and what have you…
(I don’t mean I personally was looking for data 25 years ago.. back then I was wrestling with complex tasks like tying my shoelaces and keeping myself out of harm’s way as intended by bigger kids in the sandbox..)
This is the same Anon from comments #1, #4, #6..
Also, as a statistician… you should be careful about drawing conclusions about time series data without controlling for underlying trends.. meaning, it’s awfully hard to know if the newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, cable channels and so on are the same identical population…
Also, what is the bias thrown in by PBS itself? Remember, their thesis is … “Independent Media is in trouble, so give us your eyeballs/time/money ! ”
I mean, for heaven’s sake. Riz Khan recently hooked up with Al Jazeera International… If Al Jazeera and Khaleej Times are beginning to talk with an American accent, that’s plenty diversity, don’t you think? It’s like the Third Reich opened a press office in NY…