Effects of Corporate Control on Media Outlets


Hilbert College

Survey of Communication Theory:

Effects of Corporate Control on Media Outlets

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(Note: This paper was written at the University of South Carolina)

Prettyman, Jane W. (Date Unknown) Commercial Media Are Not Liberal, They Are Commercial. Online: http://http://www.rain.org/~openmind/bias2a.htm/
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The term "liberal media" is a liberally used fallacy. The corporate owned media is designed to make money, not to necessarily have journalistic integrity. Free expression is curtailed by the corporate owned media that only wants to make a profit.

Streisand, Betsy. (1997) It's a divisive world after all: Under attack, Disney struggles to preserve its wholesome image. Online: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/970714/14mous.htm/

Disney's ownership of Miramax directly conflicts with its "core values" because of the release of the Miramax films Priest and Trainspotting. Disney's holdings are not all familly friendly, and this causes PR problems.

Johnson, Nicholas. (June 1968) The Media Barons and the Public Interest: An FCC Commisioner's Warning. The Atlantic Monthly.

Johnson predicts the problems of corporate controlled mass media, citing the ITT-ABC merger and an RCA-NBC scandal. The problems with monopolies in the news media are discussed in terms of wire services, magazines, television, and newspapers.

Vincent, Mal. (Nov. 6, 1999) "The Insider Story: They called him a whistle blower. Now this former tobacco exec tells his story in a new movie." The Virginia Pilot.

Disney's new release "The Insider" has 60 Minutes and the tobacco industry up in arms. The movie is based on the 60 Minutes expose where Dr. Jeffrey Wigand told all to journalist Lowell Bergman, making accusations of coruption with in the tobacco industry.

Booth, Cathy. (1999) "Worst of Times: In Los Angeles, a newsroom erupts over a business-side gaffe." Time.

The editors of the Los Angeles Times dedicated pert of the October 10 Sunday paper to the opening of the Staples Center sports arena. They promised part of the advertising revenues to the Staples Center without telling the reporters or the readers. Though revenue sharing is becoming more widespread, it still raises questions of editorial integrity.

The Atlantic Editors. (1969) "The American Media Baronies, A Modest Atlantic Atlas." The Atlantic Monthly.

The editors expound on the ideas put forth by Nicholas Johnson's "The Media Barons and the Public Interest: An FCC Commissioner's Warning." They put forth five types of baronies and the problems with each: local monopoly, regional concentration, multiple ownership, multimedia ownership, and conglomerates.

Banks, Louis. (1981) "The Rise of the Newsocracy: All the News All the Time." The Atlantic Monthly.

Media can work against big business, such as in the 1979 asbestos/hairdryer panic initiated by an expose on Washington channel 4 on asbestos-caused deaths. It was picked up by NBC, ABC, and print media and caused a consumer uproar.

Compaine, Benjamin M., Christopher H. Sterling, Thomas Guback, and J. Kendrick Noble, Jr. (1982) Who Owns the Media?: Concentration of Ownership in the Mass Communications Industry. Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc.

The authors discuss ownership of newspapers, book publishing, magazines, theatrical film, television and radio broadcasting, and cable and pay television, why, who owns the companies who own the media companies, and the implications of all of this.

McChesney, Robert W. (1997) "The Global Media Giants: the nine firms that dominate the world." Online:http://www.fair.org/extra/9711/gmg.html/

The global commercial media system is controlled almost exclusively by nine media giants: Time Warner, Disney, Bertlesmann, Viacom, News Corporation, Sony, TCI, Universal, and GE/ NBC.

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