The Decline and Fall of Our Mass Media

One can find the basic facts -- if one searches them out here and there in various of our newspapers, npr, internet communications, whatnot. But for the most part the last place to look now is to our main TV and radio media outlets. News, if it gets through, is all too often delayed and distorted with self-serving spins. One must become an independent researcher to find out what is really happening wherever. I shall try to use this medium as much as I can to cull from these sources what looks to be reality and to pass it along. Please feel free to contribute. Ordinarily I don't pass on single postings, but try to reconfirm whatever from several sources. So please do not be offended if I do not immediately pass along whatever. Needless to say there are some responsible reporters on this and that, but they tend to be drowned out by the shouters down. Needless to say no democracy can function without access to basic facts.

Here is a sample report on our media from a New Hampshire newspaper sent on by one of my Yale classmates:

Appeared in our Keene Sentinel tonight. This is at a time when the Bush administration has launched an ideological attack on PBS. Are there implications for the "free press" any democracy needs?

Monday, July 25, 2005

Do you know where your ‘mainstream’ news comes from?

Peter Phillips

Monday, July 25, 2005

Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population — the majority of people living in the United States. Mainstream media include a number of communication organizations that carry almost all the news and information on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of news sources.

However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream population — nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead, it is more accurate to speak of big media in the United States today as the corporate media and to use the term in the singular — as it refers to the singular monolithic top-down power structure of self-interested news giants.

A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the 10 big media organizations in the United States. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of directors of the 10 big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate-sized university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations.

In fact, eight out of 10 big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and The Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca-Cola and J.P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests.
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