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6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

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31–40 of 146 posts

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#31

Isn't facebook already bigger than some of the firms mentioned in the articles? Or is it not counted as media?

If this infographic is to be believed: https://twitter.com/jmalvpal/status/869297376439173121, then FB ad revenue is greater than all newspaper ad revenue combined.

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#32

A big difference between the US media and the rest of the developed world seems to be a complete absence of state-owned/subsidized/run media. To me, this seems much more problematic than the limited competition between corporate media. In the US, it seems that news/stories/investigative reporting without some commercial interest to some company tends to go underreported. There is no money in being critical towards bu…

We have NPR and PBS, but no large/official federal apparatus. I think a big part is the history of suspicion of government (part of America's founding myth, etc) but there's also always been a robust private media in the US. Lots of Founders, eg Ben Franklin, were publishers.

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#33
post #3

Except that media is much more than TV and newspapers. More and more people turn their backs on traditional media and get their information from a blend of many internet sites and witness videos on youtube and so on. And I only see this trend growing in the future.

The problem in my view is that somebody still needs to do the original reporting. From what I can tell most internet sites just comment on what other sites are writing but they rarely add any new information to the mix. They just comment on existing information.

We still need organizations that can afford to undertake long investigations.

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#35
post #17
post #7

I know hardly anyone likes the MSM (myself included), however is this stat so bad? Is it anything unusual for any other industry? Mature industries consolidate - its just a fundamental nature of the growth process. How many corporations control packaged chicken? cell phones? cement? No doubt the voices behind such "X mega-corps control Y" are in fact just advocating for legislation changes to mandate that they get a…

> Is it anything unusual for any other industry? Isn't that a big problem? Monopolies and oligopolies are crippling capitalism. The "too big to fail" conglomerates become just a part of the political system instead of the economic one. With the media industry, it gets worse, as it has an important role in keeping the democratic and economic powers in check. > No doubt the voices behind such "X mega-corps control Y" a…

>Is not that fair? Shouldn't all parts of society be represented in the industry that consolidates the cultural values of a nation? Why should only economic power have representation in the media? It is one person one vote, not one dollar one vote.

Your dollar is your vote. You choose what industries you support by where you spend your dollars (or cast your eyes in this case).

You have the ability to hurt these corporate boogey-men by simply not giving them money / attention. You already have this power, you don't need a politician to give it to you. Use it.

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#36
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd have to agree on this. A corporation's main revenue stream is their business regardless of how diversified they are. So Google is a search-driven advertising company. Facebook is a social-networking-driven advertising company. This all depends on what % of revenue is ad-based. The other tech giants, Apple and Microsoft (Oracle, Samsung, SAP, Huawei, …) actually make most of their money selling combos of…

AWS may be 8% of Amazon's revenue, but I believe I've read AWS is disproportionately profitable (compared to Amazon's retail segment). I'm not sure what the exact numbers are, but I think it you can make a reasonable argument that a company is defined by where its profits come from moreso than its revenue. I could see reasonable arguments the other way around too though. EDIT: Thanks njarboe for catching confusing ty…

s/profits/revenue

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#37

A big difference between the US media and the rest of the developed world seems to be a complete absence of state-owned/subsidized/run media. To me, this seems much more problematic than the limited competition between corporate media. In the US, it seems that news/stories/investigative reporting without some commercial interest to some company tends to go underreported. There is no money in being critical towards bu…

Whilst not state-owned, and only modestly state-supported, PBS, CPB, NPR, PRI, APM, and PRX produce programming and operate television and radio stations across the country.

NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered news magazine programmes are the 2nd and 3rd highest rated radio programmes by listenership.

(Rush Limbaugh comes in 1st.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_rad...

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#39

Isn't facebook already bigger than some of the firms mentioned in the articles? Or is it not counted as media?

Facebook creates no content whatsoever on its own. Its a crowd-funded link aggregator that earns revenue by ads.

It is a channel.

With 2 billion viewers / readers / listeners.

Re: 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

#40
Some might ask why this matters. The problem with these six mega-corporations is that they are controlled by a handful of billionaires and a few distasteful foreign governments that do not have the best interests of Americans in mind. These corporations own the US legacy media outlets (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc) and most of the larger online US news sites. They have, in my opinion, been quite effective at brainwashing a huge segment of society with regard to the important political issues of our day. I've long ago moved on to better news sources, but I don't personally know anyone else over the age of 30 who has also done that. It looks like it's going to be many decades before these giant media outlets finally lose their relevance. And that's a crying shame.
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