Kill Your Television
The scourge that is Media Corporatism.
The scourge that is Media Corporatism.
MEDIA CORPORATISM
“Corporatism, or corporativism, refers to a political or social organization that involves the association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.”
HISTORY
Congress passed the Federal Communications Act in 1934, and the Federal Communications Commission was created to monitor it. Rather than selling frequencies, the FCC granted individual parties station licenses. Licenses granted by the FCC were temporary and had to be renewed. Furthermore, licensees had to demonstrate to the FCC that at least some of the programs they aired were in the “public interest.” This public-interest requirement came to be defined as “news” and was conceived as a countervailing force that would prevent broadcasting from falling entirely under the sway of market forces.
In 1996, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. It was the first comprehensive overhaul to the Communications Act in over sixty years.
Within the Telecommunications Act of 1996 contains the contentious Title 3, which allows for media cross-ownership. While Title 3 functions under the liberal guise of letting “anyone enter the communications business,” it’s the deregulation of media.
The truth is that Title 3 ended up expediting the consolidation of media companies across platforms. A trend that has not slowed down.
In 2003, the FCC, under Michael Powell, set about to re-evaluate media ownership rules. And in June of that year, the FCC voted 3–2 and “approved new media ownership laws that removed many of the restrictions previously imposed a limit on media ownership within a local area. The changes were not, as is customarily done, made available to the public for a comment period.”
Some of the new media ownership rules are as follows:
Single-company ownership of media in a given market is now permitted up to 45%.
Restrictions on newspaper and TV station ownership in the same market don’t exist (this means one corporate entity could feasibly be responsible for ALL “news” available for you to ingest — not bad if you live in an urban environment because there are options…atrocious in a rural one).
Previous requirements for periodic review of broadcast licenses have been changed. In the past, there was a “public interest” component of a license. “Public-interest” = news. Licenses are no longer reviewed for “public-interest” considerations. In other words, a broadcast license owner has no social responsibility.
All of this raises doubt on the integrity of the media in the United States.
The corporations that fall under the umbrella of Media Corporatism have one interest above all others, generating income and ultimately money for their shareholders. That is in direct opposition to what is beneficial to the American public.
It’s safe to say that at least one large multi-national is involved in disseminating media to you. Whether it’s the creation, or distribution, of the media, sometimes, it’s all of it, “wing-to-wing” — think Comcast or AT&T.
As Naomi Klein points out in her book Shock Doctrine, “When you control what Americans watch, hear and read, you gain a great deal of control over what they think. They don’t call it ‘programming’ for nothing.”
Or, as Marshal McLuhan said, “Control the media, control the message.”
As recently as 1983, more than 50 corporations controlled most broadcast media disseminated in the United States.
Today, most broadcast media is controlled by six companies: Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, CBS, and Comcast.
In an article from the New Statesman in 2001, as media conglomeration was on the upswing, Australian journalist John Pilger wrote:
“Long before the Soviet Union broke up, a group of Russian writers touring the United States were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. In our country, said one of them, to get that result, we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What’s the secret?”
Like American politics, our media has bifurcated since 2016. But that needn’t result in the media’s discarding of what remains of their civic responsibility. Or should it? Don’t fool yourself into believing that the media must inform you. They have but one duty:
I’m not against corporations making money; I don’t feel profitability should come at the expense of hoodwinking and deceiving the American public.
Historically speaking, Hollywood and television aren’t known for providing MENSA level programming or objective news programming. And today, all the networks (and streamers) are owned by publicly traded companies. And since they’re no longer responsible for having any “public-interest” programming, that means they’re chiefly beholden to the greedy little fucktard clique of Wall Street.
Profitability, not entertainment, not information, and least of all, innovation is the name of the game (the accessibility of high-speed internet around the country is a discussion for another time).
We’re left with the same conundrum that has existed since the dawn of advertiser driven media:
Who is shaping the editorial and creative content of the content providers?
Is it Wall Street? To some extent.
Is it advertisers? Yes, to an even more considerable degree.
Is it the castrated leadership of these multi-national media conglomerates? That’d be a hard yes.
You can argue that streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu provide an alternative. For entertainment, they do. And, by and large, they’re crushing it. But keep in mind, unlike their cable and commercial television counterparts, their business model does not have a history associated with “public-interest” programming.
Pre-pandemic data shows that “public interest” or news programming has declined in recent years. Counterintuitively, ad revenue has increased.
According to a Pew Center Study in 2019:
The average audience for morning news programs declined 4% in 2018
The average audience for TV Sunday morning political talk shows fell 8% in 2018
The average audience for network evening news broadcasts has been flat.
Meanwhile, between May and July of 2020, ad revenue among cable news networks went up:
Fox News Channel went up 44.3%
CNN gained 28.4%
MSNBC was 11.8% higher
Anecdotally, this suggests two things:
Advertisers are fine with the networks’ polarizing messaging because they feed into the advertiser’s belief system.
Despite all of the inflammatory comments bandied about, on either side, there is very little information presented. You’re more likely to get pertinent information from a think piece in Highlights Magazine.
News consumption via television, although declining, remains the most popular platform:
81% of those 65 and older get news from television often, as do 65% of those 50 to 64
36% of those 30 to 49 get information from television, as do 16% of those 18 to 29
Not surprisingly, for news websites and social media, the reverse is true:
42% of those 30 to 49 get news from websites and news apps, as do 27% of those 18- to 29
Broken down further:
For these youngest adults, 36% get news on social media, topping news websites, 16% get information from TV, 13% from radio, and 2% from print
Print is dying …much like its readers:
39% of those 65 and older get news there often, and about 18% of any other age group do.
Ultimately, the gap is closing on how people get their news — 49% of adults get their information from television, and 43% get news from news websites or social media.
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW
If we consider that all six of the major media conglomerates are publicly traded multi-nationals, they tacitly take their direction from the eedjits on Wall Street and advertisers. Whether overtly and covertly, these companies are editing news to fit their demographic or the demographic of their advertisers (sometimes both). Regardless of where the direction comes from, the ultimate result is lack of information, or disinformation because …the companies have one mission … to gin up their revenues to hit Wall Street’s guestimates.
Finding a well informed, unbiased opinion about any subject via traditional media is a virtual impossibility.
Arguably, this is being done for two reasons:
To subjugate and numb the masses.
To fatten the wallets of the corporations and the elite.
The push for profit over information is paramount to media. And since the average American watches close to four hours of television a day, that suggests between advertising, the braying president, the sycophantic talking heads, and their corporate shilling counterparts, very little real information is presented.
MEDIA OLIGARCHY
Over the past twenty-five years, the Media Corporatism has seen information become weaponized and politicized through the profit of media consolidation. The primary weapons they wield are the power of influence that accompanies enormous profits and the power of suggestion that accompanies such a broad reach.
Forty years ago, there were 50 media outlets. Today there are six; if you don’t think that matters, then you are actively complicit.
One can argue that there are dissenting voices on the internet. While that’s true, that’s like saying the revenue generated by vinyl album sales compares to streaming services revenue. Neither should be discounted, but one accounts for 420 million dollars in sales and the other 8.8 billion. So, yea …one has an extraordinary reach, the other, not so much.
Pay attention to what you’re hearing, what you’re reading, and what you’re watching.
The current president has spent close to four years, braying about “Fake News.” During any coup d’etat, the incoming regime’s first thing to shutter is …the media. (see the previous comment from McLuhan “Control the media, control the message”). If, by some chance, he doesn’t get a second term, anticipate seeing Trump TV within a year or two.
These are terrifying times for the majority of Americans.
Please exercise your vote on November 3.
Please support independent journalism.