The Media Monopoly
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Media Monopoly is a book by Ben Bagdikian.
In 1983 Bagdikian authored a widely cited and acclaimed work, The Media Monopoly, which was published by Beacon Press after it was rejected by Simon & Schuster. Richard E. Snyder, Simon & Schuster's president, was, according to Bagdikian, "vehemently opposed to the manuscript, because, among other reasons, [Snyder] felt it made all corporations look bad." The book examines the increasing concentration of the media in the US in the hands of corporate owners, which, he argued, threatened freedom of expression and independent journalism. He wrote that some 50 corporations controlled what most people in the United States read and watched. Bagdikian argued that "media power is political power."
The book went into 5 more editions—in 1987, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2000. In 2004, The New Media Monopoly was published, essentially the 7th edition of the original. In 2000 Bagdikian stated, "Every edition has been considered by some to be alarmist and every edition ends up being too conservative." In this latest version, Bagdikian wrote that the number of corporations controlling most of the media decreased to five: Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann.
He argued, "This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history."
The book became a "standard text for many college classes" and, along with Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, in the opinion of Neil Henry, is a work that is the "most widely cited scholarly work about the effects of economics on modern news media practices, including market and political pressures that determine news content."
The book was criticized by some for alleged bias and inaccuracies.
The Christian Science Monitor, though accepting such problems, declared that it is a "groundbreaking work that charts a historic shift in the orientation of the majority of America's communications media—further away from the needs of the individual and closer to those of big business."
