Media Ownership

It is very telling that mass media today is often referred to as a "media industry." This term implies that mass media is no longer concerned with merely relaying information to the general public. Instead, media is engaged in producing a product, akin to industries such as manufacturing.

This paper examines the media industry from the production perspective. It looks at how news coverage is itself a manufactured product, a result of specific corporate interests. While "mass media" itself is a broad term, this paper focuses specifically on broadcast and print news coverage, a part of media that is supposed to be tailored to the public interests.

The first part of this paper looks at the concentration of media interests. In a democracy, the competing individual news outfits are supposed to act as independent checks and balances. However, the concentration of media ownership into a few corporate giants...
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