Media Consolidation holds Journalism at Knifepoint

We have been born and raised on the principles of freedom of speech, individual rights and freedom of the press.  We are Canadian citizens and those values are part of our identities.  We live in a democratic society and value autonomy, independence and individualism.  Those values and ideals are being jeopardized today through media consolidation; an increasingly and inescapably common practice.

Media consolidation is a major issue facing journalism today.  It is the concentration of media ownership; the process of a single, large organization acquiring or taking over smaller companies.  The image to the below illustrates the process of media consolidation in the past few decades.  The number of individual companies that have been merged into super-organizations is astronomical.  News Corp, Time/Warner and Viacom are examples of organizations with an ever-increasing reach across various industries and mediums.

In 1983, over 50 corporations controlled half of all broadcast media.  In less than three years, that number shrunk to 29.  Today, fewer than ten multinational media conglomerates dominate the mass media (Growing media consolidation must be examined to preserve our democracy, 2000).  If we continue on this path, what’s to stop a single organization from owning everything?  Where do we draw the line?

Media has the power to influence our values, beliefs and perspectives (Media consolidation, 2011).  We are bombarded by multiple mediums everyday; newspapers, radio, internet and books.  Media is pervasive.  The danger in media consolidation is that a single organization, a single company has the power to affect our lives profoundly.  In submitting to media consolidation, we, the audience, are offering up our control over content like a sacrificial lamb to slaughter.

Media consolidation challenges the concept of a free press.  With larger companies taking over multiple smaller ones, the diversity of voices becomes lost.  The few remaining dissenting voices have less power and sway in an industry that is monopolized by a bigger corporation.  J.S. Mill once said, “when the conflicting doctrines, instead of one being true and the other false, share the truth between them, and the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth of which the received doctrine embodies only a part (Mill as cited in Barlow & Mills, 2009, p.44).” Mill was a pioneer of the Liberal Press Theory and was known to search for the absolute truth.   According to Mill, the only way to reach the truth is to include every voice in a debate and the discussion will result in a solution that is as close to absolute truth as possible (Barlow & Mills, 2009, p.50).  This cannot happen if there are no alternative voices.  Media consolidation threatens the opportunity for debate and discussion.

Mill also stated that, “the quiet suppression of half [the truth], is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth by being exaggerated into falsehood (Mill as cited in Barlow & Mills, 2009, p.52).”  Mill recognized the danger of only listening to half the story or half the truth, which would be the case if media consolidation continues to increase.

In addition to the loss of diversity, we need to remember that media conglomerates are businesses.  As such, they are motivated by economic gain.  They have obligations to shareholders and investors; they do not exist solely to disseminate information or inform the public.  This, in turn, affects the type of content that is displayed in the media.

According to an article about media consolidation (2011) on the freepress website, media owners influence the following:

• What voices are heard or silenced
• Whether important issues get covered accurately or at all
• Who gets hired to produce the news
• How minorities such as women or different races are portrayed

Milliband further offers a Marxist critique on media ownership:  “the press, magazines and book publishing, cinemas, theatres, and also radio and television wherever they are privately owned, have increasingly come under the ownership and control of a small and steadily declining number of giant enterprises, with combined interests in different media, and often also in other areas of capitalist enterprise (Milliband as cited in Barlow & Mills, 2009, p.162).”  We depend on the media to be accountable to the public (Growing media consolidation must be examined to preserve our democracy, 2000).  The cartoon below illustrates this point nicely.  Media conglomerates are less accountable to the public and more accountable to their private interests.  Most importantly, they have the potential to grow so big and to gain so much power that they will only hold themselves accountable to rules of their choosing.

As more and more media outlets become concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, we are forced to question the validity of the freedom of the press.  This concentration of ownership may ultimately shape upcoming and emerging models of journalism in a negative way.  It could move journalism away from the search for the truth and accountability to the public to an even heavier focus on ratings, sales and infotainment.  Restrictions on media ownership are necessary to preserve the interests of an open and democratic society; to preserve the values of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of expression.

We currently walk a fine line of media ownership within Canada.  If we continue on this path of capitalist pursuit, ignorant of its consequences, we, as free citizens, may find ourselves bound by our own greed and apathy.

References

Bell/Rogers/Shaw – who/what do they own. (2011). Retrieved April 10, 2011 from http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/foq3v/bellrogersshaw_whowhat_do_they_own_a_very_long/

Growing media consolidation must be examined to preserve our democracy. (2000). Retrieved April 10, 2011 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/62357169.html

Media consolidation. (2011). Retrieved April 10, 2011 from http://www.freepress.net/media_issues/consolidation

Media ownership in the age of convergence. [Video file].  (May 2010) Retrieved from http://hstalks.com/main/browse_talks.php?father_id=453=250

Barlow, D. & Mills, B. (2009). Reading media theory:  Thinkers, approaches, contexts.  London, England:  Pearson Education Limited.

Williams Case: One step forward, two steps back

The Colonel Russell Williams case is old news.  What’s new about the case is that the coverage shed some interesting light on editorial practices and the choices facing modern media.

When the Williams murder case was on trial almost a year ago, it was heavily sensationalized in newspapers.  The graphic coverage was questioned by audiences and publishers alike and the question, “how much is too much and how far is too far?” was brought to the table.

Many publications and their individual editors made crucial decisions about the images used to support the articles about the Williams case.  John Cruikshank, publisher of Toronto Star, was the only editor to approve images of Williams posing in lingerie on the front page of the paper.  Cruikshank believed that the images were snapshots of reality and they should not be hidden from the public.  In contrast, The Globe and Mail chose not to publish photos of Williams in lingerie, citing that “readers have no choice in what photographs they see on the front page. They can choose to read the articles and to stop when it might become difficult, but not so with photographs (Lacey, 2010).”  The Toronto star published the explicit photos in what was believed as an act of true journalism and reporting while The Globe and Mail chose not to in an effort to protect their audiences.

The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail are only two of the many newspapers that struggled with how much content to release about the Williams case.  In Frank Mott’s chapter, “What is news,” he outlined the process of choosing newsworthy stories, saying that editors act as gatekeepers and decide which pieces are covered and how much space and priority they receive.  In the Williams coverage, editors had to gauge very carefully, the reaction of the public to the graphic content and the public consequences of releasing such material.  Since audiences were constantly tuned in to see what was happening with the story, editors had a lot of power over the public through the type and amount of information they released.

Mott lists certain elements of interest: violent conflict, suspense, disaster, horror, unusualness and appeals to sympathy that often determine newsworthy content.  He cautions, however, that they can “form an informal code – the unwritten but accepted rules of the ‘newspaper game,’ without much thinking or much wise guidance (Mott, 2006).”  The Toronto Star has a history of practicing yellow journalism and is a prime example of a newspaper that is formed on this ‘informal code’ as is evident in the explicit graphics and sometimes shallow content.

In extreme cases, such as the Williams trial, the true motives of editors and publishers are brought to light: the contrast between chasing a deluded sense of the truth or keeping it from audiences for their own protection.  Not all media will censor content; the decision to do so is simply the reflection of an individual editor.

Even though graphics varied across newspapers and media self-censorship was addressed, the story and the content remained the same.  Sadly, like Max Ways said, most newspaper stories still follow the traditional model that was developed in 1942 (Ways, 2006).  While varying levels of censorship may exist, the reality is that the same story is covered from the same angle with the same intent.  The media coverage of the Williams case shed the same light we always see on an already over-dramatized issue.  It could be described as an epic failure in the lost opportunity to take news stories to the next level.

References

Lacey, D.  (2010, October 26).  Has coverage of Col. Williams gone too far?  Or not far enough?  The Canadian Journalism Project. Retrieved from http://www.j-source.ca/english_new/detail.php?id=5759

Mott, F. (2006).  What’s the news.  In S. Adam & R.P. Clark (Eds.), Journalism:  The democratic craft.  Oxford: University Press.

Ways, M. (2006). What’s wrong with news.  In S. Adam & R.P. Clark (Eds.), Journalism:  The democratic craft.

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