Blog Post #10- EOTO Part 2

For my "Each one Teach one" project my group was assigned to research policy terms and concepts. I researched media consolidation and delivered a presentation about how it happens, how it affects the first amendment and the negative impacts it has on our society. Media consolidation is the ownership of mass media by fewer companies. Monopolies and oligopolies are increasing due to more companies merging together. A monopoly in business is a company that dominates its sector or industry. An oligopoly is when a market is shared by a small number of producers and sellers.

Basically, all of the media that we see is owned by fewer than ten major companies. That means that one of these companies owns multiple networks, magazines, and other major media publications. This has a major effect on U.S. citizens. According to Forbes, as of 2020, the largest media conglomerates are Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, AT&T, and ViacomCBS. Do you think that all of our media should be produced only by a few companies, would you like to see more of a variety in your news sources? Personally, it scares me that only a few companies produce news because I wonder what is happening in our world that they do not cover because it doesn't benefit them.

Media consolidation does have an effect on the first amendment. It specifically affects having a marketplace of ideas in our country. A marketplace of ideas was meant to allow all ideas to be open to the public, even the bad ones. Having an increasing concentration of control over information is a major threat to a nation’s desire to give its citizens a “broad choice” of media. Citizens need access to diverse opinions and perspectives in order to participate in our democracy which is threatened by big media companies and their agendas These conglomerate companies all have an agenda that they are trying to push at the American people. An example of this is the news channels CNN and Fox News. They are both huge media companies that always push their agenda and they do not show the other side of the story if it does not fit their political view. The American people are not given a variety of political views and news stories.

 

Critics of Media consolidation also believe it enables censorship. Monopolies like Google have been involved in lawsuits about cooperating with the government and censoring certain websites. Censorship is directly taking away someone's right to speak and directly taking away a marketplace of ideas. In my opinion, The algorithms on social media apps that people get their news from could be considered a minor form of censorship or very similar to it. These apps will customize the news feed to topics the individuals using the platform are interested in. This means that person does not see stories that do not fit the algorithm. For example, if a person reads news stories about social justice issues the algorithm only shows them those types of stories. That person can be completely unaware of anything happening in foreign affairs. This is not technically censorship but it does take away that person's right to have a varied news timeline and only give them one-sided news that fits their interests. This issue is becoming a slippery slope towards censorship.

Companies pushing their own agendas eliminate net neutrality. Net neutrality is “the idea, principle, or requirement that

 

Internet service providers should or must treat all Internet data as the same regardless of its kind, source, or destination.” Companies censoring which websites they allow on their networks directly affect net neutrality. We have seen news networks completely avoid topics because it does not fit their political views or help them gain views.


Media consolidation decreases the media's integrity by giving minorities fewer opportunities for voicing their concerns. It also gives U.S. citizens less diverse opinions. Not only does it give us less diversity in our news it creates more bias. The news networks we watch are biased because they do pour money into political candidates or policies. They will cover news stories that have a positive effect on the side their money is on.

Media consolidation is becoming a scary reality that I believe many Americans are not aware of. Without a variety of news, people can not fully form their own political opinions are be informed on what the government participates in. I wonder how media consolidation will affect the mass media in the next five years.