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Old 04-18-2007, 04:42 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Media Ownership and Telecom Consolidation

I'm interested to know how people feel with respect to government policy regulating two enormous American industries: media and telecoms.

I thought this amusing (and very brief) video from Colbert would be a nice way to start off. It demonstrates the reversal of all the anti-Trust victories of the 90s.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...85759717366066

This excellent article by Ted Turner (you know, of CNN, TBS, etc) talks about how the level playing field that existed when he was building his media empire has been destroyed by deregulation, thereby stifling innovation and discouraging quality media. He describes it approximately as 'watching someone knock down the ladder that I just climbed.'

My Beef With Big Media
How government protects big media--and shuts out upstarts like me.
By Ted Turner   click to show 


Linky.


Here are the questions I want to pose: do you buy arguments that regulation designed to enforce competition benefits - or harms - the industry, consumers, or the country as a whole?

Is the issue linked to your position on regulation of business in general, or are telecoms and media a special case of market failure?

In short: 1) is there a problem? 2) what is the problem? 3) how do we address the problem?

I have not thought through a concrete position on this yet, although I am inclined to think that consolidation on this scale stifles creativity and breeds inefficiency. I would welcome any outside information on the matter, including a perspective on the political context against which deregulation has occurred.

Last edited by hiredgun; 04-18-2007 at 04:48 PM..
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Old 04-18-2007, 11:18 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Good topic, hiredgun.....I think that we are screwed....and that screwing us is the objective of the consolidation.....and I come to post, well prepared. Since the major media does a poor job of covering the details that I am posting here, I have to resort to presenting sites that have a bias towards opposing the media consolidation trend and the people behind it. This should give folks who disagree with what I'm presenting, an advantage in challenging my points and the support for them..... I believe that the rapid consolidation of broadcast media took off during the Reagan era, and that Reagan backed the deregulation to give conservatives the advantage that we see Salem Comm., as an example, enjoying today. This trend has been instrumental in the SCOTUS ruling that was announced yesterday. I happen to believe that the Court decided in a way that puts the life of the unborn fetus in a superior status to that of the woman carrying the fetus, and that this was the goal of the message from the consolidating conservative media.....


Quote:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1332

Extra! November/December 1995

Media Monopoly: Long History,Short Memories
ABC Was Born Out of Fear of Media Consolidation

By Jim Naureckas

What's wrong with media mergers? A look at the history of ABC--the network that the Walt Disney Company is in the process of swallowing up--illustrates nearly every argument against consolidation of media ownership.

ABC can trace its origins back to 1919, when RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, was created by a consortium of General Electric, Westinghouse, AT&T and United Fruit. RCA and its allies controlled the patents for radio, and had a virtual monopoly until the alliance was declared to violate antitrust laws in 1932.

In the meantime, RCA had launched the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) which controlled two radio networks known as the Red and Blue networks. In order to reduce NBC's overwhelming dominance of the broadcasting industry--which threatened to monopolize the embryonic television medium--the Federal Communications Commission ordered NBC to sell one of its networks. In 1943, the Blue network was sold for $8 million to Edward J. Noble--the conservative businessman who invented Life Savers--and became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

In 1953, the ABC TV network, struggling in third place behind NBC and CBS, merged with the Paramount theater chain--itself a product of antitrust actions that separated the movie studios from their theater chains. The breakups in the film industry were necessary, according to the Justice Department, because if the producers of a media product like film also controlled the distribution of that product, then the public would be denied the free access to competing ideas envisioned by the First Amendment.

The ABC/Paramount Theaters merger raised similar objections--two FCC commissioners voted against approving the merger, saying that it threatened to create a "monopolistic multimedia economic power." (Networks of Power, Dennis Mazzacco)

More successful protests were launched in 1966, when ITT, a multinational powerhouse and major military contractor, attempted a friendly takeover of ABC. Critics charged that ITT--which had financial interests in some 118 companies--would be tempted to slant the news to assist its international dealings. "A company whose daily activities require it to manipulate governments at the highest level is likely to be left with little more regard for a free and independent press...than for conscientious government officials," three of the seven FCC commissioners charged (Tube of Plenty, Erik Barnouw).

Nevertheless, a majority of the FCC board approved the merger, arguing that ITT owning ABC would be no different than the RCA conglomerate owning NBC. Commissioner Nicholas Johnson retorted: "To say that because RCA owned NBC, ITT must be allowed to acquire ABC, is to say that things are so bad there is no point in doing anything to stop them from getting worse." (Tube of Plenty)

Despite FCC approval, the Johnson administration's Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to block the takeover to protect ABC's journalistic independence. Faced with protracted litigation, ITT withdrew.

But a very different Justice Department existed in 1985, when ABC was bought for $3.5 billion by Capital Cities, a media company with a somewhat mysterious past--then-CIA Director William Casey was one of its founding investors. (Casey, in fact, may have actually held down the price of ABC stock at the time Cap Cities was acquiring it, by asking the FCC to strip ABC of its broadcast licenses in retaliation for negative reporting on the CIA--L.A. Weekly, 2/20/87).

The way for the Cap Cities takeover was paved by the deregulation drive of the Reagan era. While networks could previously own only seven stations, under Reagan that number was raised to 12--allowing Cap Cities to combine the ABC affiliates it owned with ABC's owned-and-operated stations. (ABC News contributed to Reagan's re-election in 1984 by censoring several reports exposing administration corruption--Mother Jones, 11-12/85.)

Under Cap Cities' management, ABC--like the other two networks, which also changed hands in the '80s--was under heavy pressure to cut costs and make its news operations profitable.


See FAIR's Archives for more on:
Disney/ABC
<a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=7&issue_area_id=6">Corporate Ownership</a>
<a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=7&issue_area_id=58">Telecom Policy</a>
Quote:
http://www.salem.cc/aboutOverview.htm
Salem is a leading U.S. radio broadcaster, Internet content provider, and magazine and book publisher targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values. In addition to its radio properties, Salem owns Salem Radio Network®, which syndicates talk, news and music programming to approximately 2,000 affiliates; Salem Radio Representatives™, a national radio advertising sales force; Salem Web Network™, a leading Internet provider of Christian content and online streaming; and Salem Publishing™, a leading publisher of Christian-themed magazines. The company owns and operates approximately 100 radio stations, including stations in 23 of the top 25 markets.

Salem Communications consists of the following businesses:

RADIO BROADCASTING

* Owns and/or operates approximately 100 radio stations, the majority of which are in 23 of the nation’s top 25 radio markets
* Christian Teaching and Talk format
* Contemporary Christian Music or Salem’s branded FISH® format
* News Talk Format

SALEM RADIO NETWORK® (SRN)

* Talk, music and news programming
* Syndicates more than 190 hours of daily original programs
* More than 2,000 affiliates in 305 markets nationwide

SALEM RADIO REPRESENTATIVES® (SRR)

* The country’s premier media advertising sales firm targeting advertisers who wish to reach Christian and family-themed audience
* Represents more than 400 radio stations, Salem’s owned and operated stations and all SRN products
* 14 offices nationwide
* Vista Radio Reps™ serving clients through contemporary Christian music and conservative News Talk radio formats.

SALEM WEB NETWORK™

Industry-leading websites for Christian and conservative opinion content and a leading provider of online streaming for Christian ministries, CCM and gospel music

<b>* Townhall.com</b>
* OnePlace.com®
* Crosswalk.com®
* ChristianJobs.com
* Christianity.com
* SermonSearch.com
* Churchstaffing.com
* Crosscards.com™
* Crossdaily.com
* Crosswalkplus.com
* Lightsource.com
* TheFish.com
* CCMmagazine.com
* Salem radio station websites


SALEM PUBLISHING™

A leading publisher of Christian music and ministry magazines

* CCM Magazine®
* Homecoming Magazine®
* Singing News™
* Preaching Magazine
* Youthworker™ Magazine
* Crosswalk.com Magazine
* Faith Talk Magazine
* Xulonpress.com

Digital Publishing

Xulon Press
Quote:
http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=260
Secret Society
Just who is the Council for National Policy, and why aren't they paying taxes?

by Sarah Posner, Contributor
2.21.05

.....Who Is Behind CNP?

While the law does not require a tax-exempt organization to disclose the names of its members (in order to protect their ability to exercise their constitutional right to freedom of association privately, if they choose), it does require disclosure of the officers and directors of these organizations, and this information is available to anyone with access to the Internet. And some CNP members, often in the context of bolstering their conservative credentials, have proudly revealed their CNP membership, even though CNP's policy is to keep membership a secret.

CNP was founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye, the right-wing, evangelical political motivator and author of the "Left Behind" serial, which chronicles a fictional Armageddon and second coming (in which the non-believers are left behind while believers are carried off in a rapturous moment without their clothes. It gives an eerie ring to the No Child Left Behind Act.) LaHaye's empire includes his fingerprints on a number of evangelically-oriented, right-wing political action groups, his wife Beverly's Concerned Women for America, along with the twelve "Left Behind" novels, which, according to the author's own website, have sold 55 million copies world wide since their introduction in 1995. The original directors, as listed with CNP's articles of incorporation filed with the Texas Secretary of State in 1981 were, along with LaHaye, Howard Phillips, a long-time conservative activist with plenty of conservative groups under his wing, and Bob J. Perry, a Texas businessman who has long donated vast amounts of money to conservative causes, including the tort reform effort in Texas. Last year, Perry gave over $8 million to conservative 527 groups, including $4.5 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and $3 million to the Progress for America Voter Fund, which spent over $35 million running pro-Bush and anti-Kerry ads during the campaign and is now backing Bush's Social Security privatization.

Today, CNP's Board and roster of known members is a who's who of the radical right, and a sampling includes former Reagan cabinet member Donald Hodel, also President of James Dobson's Focus on the Family; Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, who has served on CNP's board, as have Grover Norquist, President of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform and Paul Weyrich, President of the Free Congress Foundation; Holly Coors; T. Kenneth Cribb, President of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; and Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Council, which provides a media network through which it disseminates radical conservative ideology and propaganda.

CNP's tentacles also reach into a community of well-connected activists who advocate for the imposition of fundamentalist Christian ideology in public life and have succeeded in forcing their agenda in the Bush Administration. Besides the well-known affiliation of Dobson and Hodel, just one example is the Home School Legal Defense Association, which has paid CNP dues so that Michael Farris, its executive director, could attend the meetings. Farris has since also become President of Patrick Henry College (PHC), founded in 2000 for home-schooled students. PHC aims to "prepare Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding" and "to aid in the transformation of American society by training Christian students to serve God and mankind with a passion for righteousness, justice and mercy, through careers of public service and cultural influence." Janet Ashcroft, the former Attorney General's wife, and Barbara Hodel, Hodel's wife, also serve on PHC's Board of Trustees. PHC's academic dean, Paul Bonicelli, was appointed by Bush to a private U.N. delegation to promote biblical values in U.S. foreign policy. Farris, along with Hodel and Dobson, were on hand with Bush at the signing ceremony of the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. PHC Students have gone on to work for Karl Rove and for the White House Office of Public Liaison, and students and faculty are frequently invited to be on hand for White House and inaugural events. The fact that the school's choir sang at a CNP meeting – when the meetings and membership are a closely guarded secret – testifies to the ties between the school and CNP.

CNP's Tax Exemption: A History of Broken Promises....

......Where Are The Media?

Probably the most-talked about CNP speech that both the organization and the speaker refused to make public was George W. Bush's speech to a CNP meeting in 1999, when he was first running for president. The Internet is rife with speculation about what Bush said – or promised – at this meeting. But Bush the candidate refused to release the text of the speech, citing CNP's own internal policy of closed meetings. And the CNP, of course, refused to release it for the same reasons.

There was a small flurry of media coverage of candidate Bush's refusal to release his speech, but it soon died down and CNP slipped into hiding again. Since then, only two major news outlets have published stories devoted entirely to CNP, and while both discussed the organization's secrecy, neither questioned the propriety of it. In May 2002, ABC News ran a piece on their web site called, "Inside The Council for National Policy: Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of," which outed some high-level Bush Administration officials as speakers at a meeting at a "ritzy hotel" in Tysons Corner, Virginia. The article did not question whether it was acceptable in a democracy – not to mention legal – for a Supreme Court Justice (Clarence Thomas), White House counsel (Alberto Gonzales) and close Bush advisor (deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison Timothy Goeglein, himself an evangelical Christian who has said that Bush is "God's man,") to give secret speeches or have secret meetings with a secret organization subsidized by the American taxpayer.

At the time of the 2004 Republican National Convention, the New York Times ran a brief story on CNP's meeting in New York, described as "'a pep rally' to re-elect President Bush," buried on page 10 of a Saturday paper. The article disclosed some high-level attendees, including Under Secretary of State John Bolton, Assistant Attorney General R. Alexander Acosta, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and revealed, well after the fact and for the first time in the American press, that Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had attended a meeting "not long after the Iraq invasion." The article did virtually nothing to add to the public discussion of CNP's activities or to question its tax-exempt status.

<b>And while the mainstream media is asleep at the switch, CNP members' access to conservative media outlets enable them to collaborate and disseminate their propaganda. One example is Bozell and the Media Research Center, the mission of which is "to provide the conservative movement with the marketing and public relations tools necessary to deliver its message into the 21st century." Another example is that five directors of Salem Communications Company are or have been officers and directors of CNP: Salem's president and CEO, Edward G. Atsinger, III; Stuart W. Epperson (host of Truth Talk Live, a radio show broadcast on Salem's radio network); Roland S. Hinz (who is also president of Hi-Favor Communications, which has purchased radio stations from Salem to implement a Christian format in Spanish); Hodel; and Judge Paul Pressler (a retired Texas judge who has made a career of advocating a conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention). Salem owns over 100 Christian broadcast radio stations, is the provider of Christian programming on XM Satellite Radio, and recently agreed with America Online to provide the only Christian talk radio station on the AOL Radio Network. Last year, Salem was ranked in the top 100 in Fortune Small Business magazine's list of fastest growing small public companies. Salem is the seventh largest owner of radio stations in the country, and while it barely rivals Clear Channel at over 1,200 stations, the combined Christian broadcasting power of Salem and American Family Radio -- a project of the American Family Association -- would rank them fourth, just behind powerhouses Clear Channel, Cumulus, and Citadel. Many Republican House and Senate candidates, as well as the Bush/Cheney campaign, the Republican National Committee, and the Republican Majority Issues Committee, the issue advertising committee formed by DeLay, have been the beneficiaries of not only Atsinger's largesse, but that of Salem Communications' political action committee as well.</b>

How The Conservative Media "Covers" CNP

Members of the conservative media – many of whom have CNP ties – have on occasion reported on CNP meetings and suggested a CNP hand in shaping Administration policy. In May 2001, World magazine, which is edited by Olasky, reported on its website that CNP, "a confidential network of several hundred highly influential conservative business leaders," received "lavish attention from the White House" at its twentieth anniversary conference. World reported that CNP's "elite Gold Circle Club met May 3 at the White House with chief strategist Karl Rove and President Bush," that Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke at a "private Gold Circle dinner," and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to the entire group. Records of White House staff whose sole function is to advise and assist the president are not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, but a speech given to an organization that essentially receives public funding is not a "government record." It is a document that the public is entitled to see and would see if the IRS were doing its job. Similarly, records of federal courts are not subject to FOIA, but all the Supreme Court justices, except Scalia and Thomas, have posted their speeches on the Supreme Court website. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Justice said that "a written speech was not prepared for the Attorney General to deliver to the Gold Circle Club dinner in May 2001, because the Council had asked the Attorney General to participate in dinner conversation only and had not requested any formal remarks from him."

Around the same time ABC published its piece on the CNP meeting, in May 2002, the conservative press filled in some additional details. At that CNP meeting, which took place ten months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a writer for the ultraconservative NewsMax participated on a CNP panel about the war on terrorism. (NewsMax's president and editor is Christopher Ruddy, who formerly wrote for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Richard Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and is the author of the conspiracy-mongering The Strange Death of Vincent Foster.) The writer, Dr. Alexandr Nemets, reported that among the 500 "prominent" attendees, "several high-ranking officials in the Bush administration made speeches and participated in panel discussions." He reported a complete uniformity of judgment – at a meeting attended by Bush Administration officials when the Bush Administration would still pretend for several months to try diplomacy – that Saddam needed to be deposed with military force. According to Nemets, everyone at the meeting agreed that:

Saddam's regime should be toppled as soon as possible...America should not wait for the fall of Saddam's regime...[which is] organized exactly along the lines of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party that ruled Germany in 1933-45. Saddam's regime – just like Hitler's – won't implode due to internal problems...At the same time, America, in its strikes against Iraq, will not be the aggressor but the leader and the united force of all the opposition groups inside Iraq – the Kurds, Shia minority, etc. This will greatly facilitate the military operations against Saddam.

Nemets further reported that the attendees had ruled out military action against the other members of the axis of evil, Iran and North Korea.

One year later, about two weeks after Saddam fell, both Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke at the CNP meeting in Washington. The attendance of the Vice President and Secretary of Defense (during a war) was not reported at all by the American media, but was reported by several papers in Alberta, because the Albertan Economic Development Minister Mark Norris attended the meeting. (Norris, through a spokesman, claimed that a copy of Norris's remarks at the meeting was "not available.") The purpose of Norris's trip, as reported in the Calgary Herald, was to "meet with a secretive and influential right-wing think-tank in a bid to mend fences over Canada's refusal to join the war in Iraq, and help Alberta companies win rebuilding contracts." But, according to a Ministry of Economic Development press release, Norris was there also to promote Alberta's oil production from its oil sands and to encourage trade with the United States. (In 1998, when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, Inc., its Brown & Root subsidiary won a $160 million contract from a Canadian company, Syncrude Canada Ltd., that was extracting oil from the Albertan oil sands.) But Cheney's and Rumsfeld's attendance managed to stay under the radar screen of the American media.

Somehow, however, CNP's long-standing secrecy policy managed to slip by a Defense Department freedom of information official, and the Pentagon released Rumsfeld's speech under the Freedom of Information Act. The speech was a thank you for CNP's Thomas Jefferson Award for Servant Leadership. Rumsfeld was introduced by Hodel, who at the time was CNP's President. Rumsfeld gave a brief speech in which he likened the war in Iraq to the American Revolution, admitting that work remained to do to secure the peace there. He went so far in the analogy as to quote Thomas Jefferson as saying, shortly after the Revolution, that "'we are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.'" Rumsfeld loved the Jefferson quote and recycled it in numerous speeches, all available on the Internet. He repeated it in a May 27, 2003 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and in a speech to – ironically – the Council on Foreign Relations that same day, a July 4, 2003 speech at the Pentagon, and even in a May 17, 2004 speech at the Heritage Foundation in which he also discussed Abu Ghraib, where prisoners could not even expect a chair, much less a bed of any kind. One notable difference in the CNP speech was the bone Rumsfeld threw to the group whose members' bedrock belief is that America is a Christian nation, when he said that "Jefferson and the founders firmly believed that ours was a nation set here by Providence to serve as a beacon of freedom for the world."

Other conservative elected officials continue to speak at CNP meetings and go unnoticed by the media........
more here:
on this page http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=114561
in this post:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...88&postcount=5
...or evaluated another way.....with other reporting, "the Examiner" article in the OP is a BS "hit piece" by partisan "hack", Charles Hurt....<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2180067&highlight=chARLES+HURT#post2180067">last noted</a> as he performed as a partisan "hack", for washingtontimes . com .....
Can we all make a "pact" here....not to post articles by media outlets with owners who are Brett Bozell, Rev. Moon, or.....CNP - Council for National Policy Members? Unfortunately, this makes the following ineligible:

washingtontimes.com - Rev. Moon
newsmax.com - Brett Bozell
mrc.org - Brett Bozell
cnsnews - Brett Bozell
townhall.com - CNP via Salem Communications <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=cnp+Edward+G.+Atsinger&btnG=Search">CEO Edward G Atsinger III</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cnp+Stuart+W.+Epperson&btnG=Google+Search">chairman Stuart W. Epperson</a>
SNR (Salem News Radio) - http://www.salem.cc/peopleKeyEmployees.htm
<b>examiner.com</b> - see bottom of this post for details.....

.....The owner of "the Examiner", and examiner.com <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200502030002?offset=20&show=1">Philip F. Anschutz</a>:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...np&btnG=Search

Council for National Policy (CNP) -A- Member Biographies
Philip F. Anschutz - CNP 1984; founder and president oil company, The Anschutz Corporation. Hon. Richard K. Armey - CNP Member 1984-85, 1988, 1996, 1998; ...

www.seekgod.ca/cnp.a.htm - 122k - Cached - Similar pages
Seek God - Council For National Policy (CNP)
CNP Name List By Alphabetical Listing (By Page-click Letter), Jun 1, 2001 ... Senator John K. Andrews, Jr., Dr. John F. Ankerberg, Philip F. Anschutz, , Hon ...

www.seekgod.ca/topiccnp.htm - 85k - Cached - Similar pages
Media Matters - Right-wing slant for free in DC's new daily paper ...
The new paper is owned by Denver billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, an Evangelical ... Who else is on the CNP? James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Alan Keyes, ...
mediamatters.org/items/200502030002?offset=20&show=1 - 48k - Cached - Similar pages

Last edited by host; 04-18-2007 at 11:26 PM..
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Old 04-19-2007, 06:55 AM   #3 (permalink)
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The consolidation of television and movies is disconcerting but because it is a high overhead and thus advertising driven medium, it is inevitable without government intervention. I view television as 95% entertainment anyway and I put very little stock into network or cable news. PBS documentaries are about the only source of consistent quality journalism I have found on TV.

What is more alarming to me is the consolidation of print news. Print should be the last bastion of pure journalism but the increasing commercialization of print media is following in the path of television. Last I heard the New York Time, LA Times and Washington Post were the only print publications with journalists on the ground in Iraq and the LA Times was being pressured by investors to pull out.

THE NEWS SHOULD NOT HAVE INVESTORS

Internet may soon be the only reliable source for news. Even with the thousands of yahoos posting mostly nonsense, I see very little difference between that and tv news. Hopefully, serious, dedicated journalists will turn to the internet as an alternative to corporate news houses to preserve relevant and uncensored journalism.
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Old 04-19-2007, 08:45 AM   #4 (permalink)
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Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sho Nuff
The consolidation of television and movies is disconcerting but because it is a high overhead and thus advertising driven medium, it is inevitable without government intervention. I view television as 95% entertainment anyway and I put very little stock into network or cable news. PBS documentaries are about the only source of consistent quality journalism I have found on TV.

What is more alarming to me is the consolidation of print news. Print should be the last bastion of pure journalism but the increasing commercialization of print media is following in the path of television. Last I heard the New York Time, LA Times and Washington Post were the only print publications with journalists on the ground in Iraq and the LA Times was being pressured by investors to pull out.

THE NEWS SHOULD NOT HAVE INVESTORS

Internet may soon be the only reliable source for news. Even with the thousands of yahoos posting mostly nonsense, I see very little difference between that and tv news. Hopefully, serious, dedicated journalists will turn to the internet as an alternative to corporate news houses to preserve relevant and uncensored journalism.
I highlighted and raised the one fact that stands out most to me.

Doesn't matter if you break up "the corporate" ownership to the media. Truly doesn't.

What already has happened in the media industry and almost every industry is you have the same people investing in the whole industry, not just one company.

So (just an example), Ted Turner may own x number of shares of stock in AOL-Time, however, he also owns less than 5% in NewsCorp, Disney, NBC/Vivendi, Tribune, etc. Then the mutual funds, the corporate, institutional investing arms that Turner is vested in, probably own huge chunks of each. The same goes for Murdoch and Redstone and politicians, political party bigwigs, Wal*Mart, Bill Gates, anyone who needs to use the media to "make sure" the have some form of safety netting.

See here's the thing, they say they are "driven by advertising dollars". Ok, but how many of us truly let advertising affect what we buy? If we did we'd be out changing shampoos, dish soaps, toothpastes daily.... doesn't happen. Most people are very brand oriented or look to find the best bargain. Sometimes an ad may help the person make up their mind but not really.

So why do companies spend BILLIONS every year? Why will one company spend MILLIONS for (1) 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl?

Because, the people who own the company advertising have money in the media and it helps the bottom line on the media side. Because the people who own the company advertising and paying big bucks expect a return, (i.e. favorable stories, bad stories that will affect business brushed under, etc.)

As for print media, it was never as "free" as people make it to be. The reason most cities had at least 2 papers were because they each biased and slanted the stories to their political views. TV and radio just ate into their advertising revenue and forced mergers, consolidations and closures. The print also always relied on "the wire services" again controlled by the few.

Actually, I think this day and age could make newspapers great again, they can become more independant, and use the internet more, rely less on the wire services and find a renaissance.

But those are just my ramblings....
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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"
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Old 04-19-2007, 09:48 AM   #5 (permalink)
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pan.....(and Sho Nuff.....for that matter....) in comparison to a "set up" begun in the '80's to dismantle the anti-trust protections and the "fairness doctrine", to advance an agenda of an allied politically conservative and fundamentalist christian "movement", led by an extremist secretive organization (CNP....) that is reported to have picked the current president (after a 1999 speech that he gave to the group that remains secret to this day.....) and is a prerequisite for "vetting" any serious republican 2008 presidential contender, and is bent on consolidating the media to further it's goals of "christenizing" the government, eliminating women's right to legally choose not just whether to have a baby or have access to safe, clinical abortion, but even to use birth control.....(the movement has been completely successful in South Dakota, and now in making late term abortion illegal in all of the US, even in the case of medical necessity to save the "host" of the fetus, and to privatize (eliminate) Social Security insurance and retirement benefits.....while it uses the financial resources of it's dozen plus billionaire members to bring about the biblical scenarios in the middle east that it deems necessary to bring about "rapture"......to name just a few of the benefits it seeks via it's consolidation of the US media.....don't you think that the concerns and consequences of media consolidation that you two raised in your posts, are trivial, in comparison?

(on edit....an aside to roachboy; I can agree that my political views and interests are currently "too narrow", when compared to considering US politics in the way that they used "to be played"....pre-1981.....but I believe that my views are no more narrow than the focus a pedestrian might have on a vehicle hurtling towards him while he is in a crosswalk half way between one curb and the other. I see these times as unprecedented, as far as the extremeness of the entrenched christenized conservative republican national "leadership", the spectacle and the consequences of the invasion of the DOJ and the rest of the executive branch, by Liberty University alumni, installed by the Bush designated head of OPM, and former dean of Liberty U., Kay Coles James.....a combined group of "grads" and "administration" from a "University" created and mentored by christian crazy man, Pat Robertson.....when added to hundreds of other similar insults to our government, constitution, and society, by "these people", and I don't think that my politcal writing is yet near narrow enough.

roachboy, have you ever before observed an organization, other than CNP, that has successfully consolidated so much influence and achieved so many results, with so little exposure, examination, and news and pundit coverage?
Too few are putting all of this together. It manifests itself in the Abramoff "story", and the Plame "outing" story, and now in the firing or the US attorneys/ Carol Lam/ traitor Randy Cunningham stories......but it is all the fruit of one "grand plan", the co-ordination of which, when combined with the ideological zealotry and the religious fervor, may yet be formidable enough to send us into world war, or at least into a fundamentalist religious government with constitutional protections neutralized by the 5 SCOTUS justices that it has produced......)

Last edited by host; 04-19-2007 at 10:13 AM..
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Old 04-19-2007, 11:52 AM   #6 (permalink)
 
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hail folks---i am in the middle of doing other stuff, so will be very short...

a) the effect of the entire situation within which information ciruclates in the states is the reduce information to a commodity. this is a problem, but one that cuts across the question of ownership.

b) consolidation is a separate matter that i'll try to get back to

host: i agree with your assessments--if you got the idea i didnt, then the fault lay with my writing--what i meant by narrow was that the effects of such organizations as the cnp runs well beyond the matter of who they are---so i should maybe have put my remark about narrowness more in terms of complimentarities of approach---that's more accurate a term. i think the post you refer to was meant mostly as a response to your sense of frustration with the devolution of some aspects of the politics forum, particularly around the imus thing---as a proactive bt of encouragement between comrades in a similar struggle than a critique of your reseach focus in itself. to be clear, i find what you have been doing to be very valuable, a good fleshing out of an important referencepoint, even as the kind of arguments that i might make tend to work on different grounds--in the end, complimentarity.

ok, no time, gotta go.
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