By: Marianne Gyssels, AGS 4860

Make-Up Assignment for Absences

In this report I am going to review the book, The Media Monopoly, the fifth edition. This book was written by Ben H. Bagdikian, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. Bagdikian originally published this book in 1983 to warn the public about the negative impacts that corporate ownership and mass advertising have on the media.

The book is an enlightening exploration of the social and political ramifications of the declining number of corporations in control of America’s major media. Bagdikian takes his readers on a frightening historical journey which illustrates the problems caused by the vast changes which have occurred in media ownership. I found myself both enlightened and frightened by this book, which is summarized below.

The basic message of The Media Monopoly, is that Americans receive extremely biased news and information from today’s mass media. Often, the public doesn’t receive any information at all about key events which are definitely news. There are two key reasons for this serious lack of honest and open news reporting.

The first reason is that there have been so many mergers and acquisitions in the media industry that, today, fewer than ten corporations control America’s newspapers, books, magazines, movies, television and radio (p. xiii). That means the public is only exposed to the viewpoints and opinions of ten corporations. Any news or information that doesn’t fit with the attitudes, values or revenue goals of those ten corporations doesn’t get exposure in their media venues. Also, any information that is damaging to them or to another large corporation that they sympathize with, may be repressed or given so little exposure that the public doesn’t even notice it.

For instance, Times-Mirror newspapers did not report critical events surrounding a controversial project in the Los Angeles area. The Times-Mirror Company owns newspapers, cable systems, book publishers, agricultural and urban real estate, commercial printing plants, and other ventures. Due to their land interests, the company had regularly advocated for subsidies for agricultural water. This particular project called for a $2 billion, tax-paid canal system to be installed which would directly benefit one of the Times-Mirror subsidiaries. This was definitely a news item of interest to tax payers, yet the Times-Mirror newspapers did not report on it because they claimed it was not newsworthy (pp. 39-40).

In fact, a survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors "found that 33 percent of all editors working for newspaper chains said they would not feel free to run a news story that was damaging to their parent firm" (p. 30). With that much news being withheld from the public, it is overwhelming to consider the vast quantity of news of which we are unaware.

The second key reason that Americans are not receiving an adequate quality or quantity of news, according to Bagdikian, is due to the impacts of mass advertising. Mass advertisers are large chain companies that want to reach the largest audience possible. By advertising through chain media, they manage to reach a large audience.

However, the competition that does not exist in the media due to so many mergers, becomes reflected in the merchant base, too. Advertisers may only have the choice of one daily newspaper, even in a large city. The cost for them to advertise in the single, or limited, media source is high. Due to the limited media, advertisements go out to a large geographic area. Local merchants are smaller competitors that cannot justify the cost of ineffective advertising. Over time, the smaller competitors are driven out of business. The geographic area is then served by media that has no competition, and by large merchants who can afford the mass advertising costs.

These mass advertisers wield a disproportionate amount of political power due to their financial success. They form political action committees, lawyers and lobbyists to help influence public policy in their favor. The media share in that level of power also, for the same reasons and because politicians fear the media due to their power to print whatever they want (p. 120-121).

The benefit of mass advertising to the media is clear. In 1981, newspapers, magazines and broadcasters collected "$33 billion a year from advertisers and only $7 billion from their audiences" (p. 121). No small wonder, then, that the media are quick to repress or kill stories that are anti-advertiser.

The effect of this repression of news is a drastic decline in hard news stories, and an increase in what Bagdikian calls "fluff," like soft feature articles. The media reduce their costs by purchasing news cheaply from the wire services, thereby allowing them to reduce their number of reporters. They keep their mass advertisers happy, and increase profits at the same time.

The resulting decline in hard news stories means a decline in the quality of the media, though. A study was conducted where news coverage was analyzed for three full days for 25 chain papers (who were now a monopoly) and 25 papers that had failed due to the competition posed by the chain paper. In every case, the quality of the competitive papers was shown to be superior to the monopoly papers (p. 129).

Another decline in quality is due to the media toning down its political statements. This appeals to large advertisers who don’t want to be linked to radical positions that the paper may hold. For instance in 1996, Malcolm Forbes, Jr., admitted that his magazine Forbes favored advertisers by scheduling or altering editorial articles (p. xii).

In addition to the points described above, I thought the author made a lot of good points in this book, such as:

• Government apathy causing media monopolies. The government has consistently turned a blind eye to the mergers that have resulted in a few corporations owning most of America’s media. Instead of questioning the value and ethical drawbacks of having all media controlled by so few, the government has left media alone. Part of the reason is that politicians fear the damage an angry media corporation can do to them (p. 11).
• Political control by the media. Bagdikian gave an astonishing example of the power the media has over politics. Richard Berlin, who was president and chief executive officer of the Hearst Corporation in New York, wanted the Richard Nixon administration to exempt a group of newspapers from a law that forbids competing firms to agree on prices, while looking like they are competing. Berlin wrote two strong letters, one to Richard Nixon and the other to Nixon’s assistant attorney general in charge of antitrust. By using his powerful influence, along with his large peer corporations, Berlin was successful. For his cooperation with the major media, Nixon was awarded the highest percentage of newspaper endorsements of any modern candidate (pp 90-99).
• The public’s decreasing access to important information. Since the media are controlled by a few corporations, they can perpetuate myths in the public’s minds. For instance, media continue to blame labor unions for causing wages that damage productivity and drain the economy. The media also continuously claim that taxes on corporations are too high and threaten the economy. Both of these claims are untrue, but kept alive by the media (p. 44).

• Under-representation of certain groups in the media. There are large groups of people who are regularly ignored and routinely shown in a bad light. These are minorities, blue-collar workers, the lower middle class and the poor. Other groups like universities and government are often criticized (p. 47). The positive representations are showered on those with money, like famous public entertainment figures and the corporate elite.
• Content control by large advertisers and corporate executives. In the years after 1970 there were occasional criticisms of bad corporate behavior in the media. Public anger was high over blatant misbehavior of corporations, such as the defective gas tanks in Ford Pintos. Some of that anger found its way into the media, with stories about the criminal charges brought against Ford for neglect in the Pinto case. However, this coverage of corporate irresponsibility outraged corporate leaders. They criticized government leaders and the media. They raised the largest campaign funds in history and managed to elect a national administration that would reduce regulation of business. And, through the mergers, they gained power that allowed them to force reporters to get fired for coverage that was hostile to business (pp. 52-55).

I agree with all of the previously cited points. It is obvious that the author is an expert on this subject-matter, and he has backed up his allegations with facts, figures and examples. There was nothing I disagreed with.

There were a few things about the book that could have been better. I found the book to be a slow read. However, I’m not sure the author could have made such a convincing argument without all of the citations, facts and figures that were included.

I also though that Bagdikian could have made some savvy educated guesses about the future direction of media in America. Included with that, he could have offered various options for rectifying the current problems caused by the media monopoly in this country.

I found that, for me, this book was very eye-opening. It reinforced issues and problems with today’s media which we covered in class throughout the past semester. It also exposed me to the intricacy of the web of businesses that are interlocked through ownership and directorships. It is amazing that one corporation can own things from energy resources to food industries to residential real estate.

I didn’t realize the far-reaching power that some of these huge corporations have. That they can control not only what you see on TV, hear on the radio, and read in the news, but can even have books killed. This book touched me greatly. I never realized until taking this class and reading this book, that the information I receive is so redundant, controlled, limited and biased. I find that deeply disturbing. How can Americans make informed choices about anything, if they are not informed? It’s maddening to think that some money-monger is limiting my information on candidates, issues, public policy and news in general. That affects all of our lives, choices, future and livelihood.

Overall, I liked this book and would recommend it highly to others. I’m very glad I read it, and would recommend that future classes read this book as part of the curriculum. It gives a good overall perspective and history of media in America. It critically looks at the perils inherent in the current monopolistic system, where so few decide what the masses learn.

I liked this book a lot and highly recommend it to anyone who mistakenly thinks they are receiving news and information from the media. Bagdikian states well the effect the censorship of our information has on us. He says, "subtle or not, the ultimate result is distorted reality and impoverished ideas" (p. 45).

Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. (5^th ed.). Boston: Beacon Press, 1983/1997.

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