Perpustakaan Universitas Indonesia >> eBooks (restricted)

The new media monopoly / Ben H. Bagdikian

Bagdikian, Ben H.
Deskripsi Dokumen: http://lib.ui.ac.id/opac/themes/libri2/detail.jsp?id=20355220&lokasi=lokal
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstrak

Perhaps owing to his print past at the Washington Post and his service as the dean of the University of
California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Bagdikian fretted mostly about the consolidation of the
newspaper business in the original The Media Monopoly. But with each successive edition, Bagdikian's
primary complaint has ambled away from newspaper consolidation to criticize the film-television-radio-
magazine-book-music empires. Today he writes, "In 1983 there were 50 dominant media corporations; now
there are five," pointing his finger at Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation, Disney, and Bertelsmann.
Only one of the "Big Five" (his term), News Corp., publishes much in the way of newspapersand its only
U.S. title is the New York Post.
These five corporations decide what most citizens willor will notlearn." Yes, the Big Five own or control
four major movie studios, nearly threescore cable channels, five broadcast TV networks, a satellite TV
operation, a thousand or more radio and TV stations, a big chunk of the publishing industry, and enough
magazines to start a paper drive. Butthe Big Five determine what the majority learns only in those places
where the newsstand sells only the New York Post and Time and where TV receivers have been doctored to
accept signals only from CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Fox News Channelwhich is to say nowhere.
If anybody decides what most citizens learn, it's the agenda-setting editors at the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. The TV news would go dark if it
couldn't crib from the Big Four Newspapers. NPR's Morning Edition would fall mute. The newsweeklies
would have to run more cover stories on ice cream, dreams, and guides to colleges.
For all the Big Five's alleged powers of mind control, consider the list of influential news organizations
besides the Big Four Newspapers they don't control. The top newspaper chains: Gannett, Knight Ridder,
Cox, Scripps, McClatchy, Landmark, Copley, Newhouse, Freedom, Hearst, MediaNews, and Tribune. The
Boston Globe. Newsweek. The various flavors of NBC News. The New Yorker and Conde Nast's other
titles. PBS. NPR. Reuters. AFP. AP. Bloomberg. U.S. News & World Report. Pearson. Hachette Filipacchi.
The Atlantic. The Economist. And scores of local TV stations.
In his January 2004 Reasoncover story, Ben Compaine calls Bagdikian's media consolidation worries
"overblown." The media industry isn't highly concentrated, he explains, running the numbers through one
widely accepted economic yardstick (the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index). And the media industry hasn't
become substantially more concentrated in the last decade. Compaine notes that Bagdikian obsesses over big
media acquisitions but ignores divestures. "Much of the best-known merger activity has been more like
rearranging the industry furniture," Compaine writes, citing the sale of Universal Pictures to Matsushita,
then to Seagram, then to Vivendi, and then finally to GE.
Bagdikian ignores the financial perils of media gigantism. Big isn't necessarily financially beautiful, as the
markets have taught CBS Inc. and other conglomerates. In 1986, CBS was the country's largest media
company, Compaine reports. It owned a network, a top record label, a magazine division, and a book
operation, among other assets. The combination proved fiscally unstable, and CBS dumped practically every
property but the network before being acquired by Viacom in 1999.
The synergies media companies hope to reap from their mergers and acquisitions rarely materialize.
Disney's absorption of ABC is a business failure. Time Inc. stockholders came to regret its union with
Warner Bros., and Time Warner stockholders lament the AOL deal. For better than a year, Time Warner has
been trying to divest itself of its book appendages, Little, Brown and Warner Booksno half-assed offer will
be refused.