6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America | Hacker News Reader

6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media in America

morriscreative.com

210 pointsknown138 comments

Some might ask why this matters. The problem with these six mega-corporations is that they are controlled by a handful of billionaires and a few distasteful foreign governments that do not have the best interests of Americans in mind. These corporations own the US legacy media outlets (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc) and most of the larger online US news sites. They have, in my opinion, been quite effective at brainwashing a huge segment of society with regard to the important political issues of our day. I've long ago moved on to better news sources, but I don't personally know anyone else over the age of 30 who has also done that. It looks like it's going to be many decades before these giant media outlets finally lose their relevance. And that's a crying shame.

What other sources do you use, I ask as an over 30 something who wants to see how the other half lives?

Eh. Tough question. You don't want to make the mistake of using sources with an opposite mindset to the prevailing media.

Prevailing media has a strong democratic bias. Opposing media has a strong republican bias (breitbart, oann, etc).

Better media doesn't give a shit. I suggest sott.net, global research, strategic culture, mises.org, the intercept, reason, opslens, the unz review, counterpunch, zerohedge.

KEEP IN MIND: all of these sources require a STRONG BS filter. It's like startups v established companies: lots of bullshit with diamonds in the rough thrown in. It's your job to find the diamonds. When you find them, they're totally worth it.

Those should get you started. In general, I tend to also follow a host of individuals on twitter of varying backgrounds to get a greater variety.

Brietbart and oann have strong republican bias but mises and reason don't? /:

From what I've read on Mises they are big on numbers, data, citing sources and logic. They don't deserve to be grouped with the others.

Mises are shills for failed economic theories and peddle dumb conspiracy theories.

Which failed economic theories and failed how exactly?

'Austrian' economics.

Failed how?

Austrian economics is just an outdated theory. Principles of Economics and Das Kapital were written within about four years of each other and while time was poking holes in Communism it was doing the same to Austrian economics. Here's a good argument against the Austrian school if you're really interested.

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm

So Newton's Laws of Motion are just "an outdated theory" because they were published in 1686?

And, I am sorry, but the paper you quote is just pseudo-intellectual drivel. If I could decipher anything from it, it boiled down to "because there is no such thing as perfect free market, therefore Austrian School is flawed".

Or something like that.

>So Newton's Laws of Motion are just "an outdated theory" because they were published in 1686?

No, the point is that science has advanced. The laws of motion are true because they've survived scientific critique over a long period of time. Aether isn't true because over time the scientific critiques built up and science moved on with new theories. Austrian economics is aether not the laws of motion.

>If I could decipher anything from it...

If you had trouble deciphering it I would suggest that you not subscribe to any economic school because you just don't know enough to pick.

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough".

-- Albert Einstein

You're free to criticize their economics, but their bias for everyday news tends to be more objective than that most others.

Correct. Mises and Reason are libertarian, not republican.

I've been enjoying The Economist and Aljazeera lately. Intelligent news that covers important things happening all over the world, not just the USA.

I'm also interested in the same question. It's hard to find news that is both covering important long-term issues and trying to seek the truth of the matter. Plus I get frustrated at how insular news in the USA is, many of the USAs problems have already been somewhat solved in other countries but the media rarely mentions them. So citizens and politicians waste time spinning their wheels and arguing about theoreticals instead of learning from experiments that have already been done.

NoAgendaShow.com; a podcast that covers a wide variety of topics. They are listener funded, so they arent subject to pleasing advertiser (as these 6 big corporation and most news outlets).

One of the hosts is also the 'co-founder of podcasting', took a company public and registered mtv.com, back in the day. They have a very interesting news media deconstruction process; Highly recommended.

Steve Jobs himself gave him the title "The Podfather"

> I've long ago moved on to better news sources

Any recommendations?

Here's a long list of YouTubers who cover the news. Some of these people I've never heard of, and some of them I'd stay far away from [e.g., Alex Jones]:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/which-youtuber-channel...

For online news aggregators... He's overly right-wing for my tastes, but the best truly independent aggregator I've been able to find is Drudge. I'm frankly stunned that after 20 years, the powers that be have not yet found a way to shut him down.

NYTimes

Heavily influenced by Carlos Slim, a Mexican arguably playing a bigger role in influencing our election than Russia.

Nakedcapitalism.com

I have a hard time finding news sources I can stand; basically all the major outlets just turn me off with their bias and verbose irrelevant analysis. Over the part year I've collected a few lesser known options you may find valuable too:

https://theintercept.com - mostly anti-propaganda efforts

https://phys.org - an aggregator often linking to primary sources

https://www.currentaffairs.org - political opinions that generally seem thought out

http://www.realclear(politics|world|*).com - a network of aggregators with a good balance

http://evonomics.com - economic perspectives I also don't mind reading.

I would really love to find more options - especially something in a debate format so I can judge arguments from multiple sides on an issue.

Current Affairs is insanely high quality. I endorse it fully.

Curious what are your sources. I have a few friends who are also anti-big news outlets and they link me to their alternative sources, which some of them are VERY ultra-right-wing outlets.

Bloomberg is okay for financial news.

Why let your self get wrapped up in global or national issues (real or fake). Instead, focus your efforts locally on things that make a difference to you every day.

Local things make no difference to people who end up moving every few years.

What I usually do is keep in touch with mainstream news and then go to opposing news and a variety of blogs/social media commentators trying to cover all sides. MSM is garbage. Interesting journalism happens at ProPublica, The Intercept, Monocle, heck I even read Breitbart.

Do you need sources for this? It was always self evident to me that people setup media companies in an attempt to own the narrative and somehow gain an advantage. What other reason could there be?

Well, no they certainly don't have the best interests of America at heart but mostly they're driven by greed. The owners of US newspapers are generally happy to give their news in liberal cities a liberal slant and their news in conservative cities a conservative slant. The problem used to be a lot more intense than it is now with competing newspapers being mouthpieces for competing political parties. But the rise of national broadcasting and the resultant economies of scale meant that the networks had to move to compromise coverage.

There's certainly something to be said for giving people the sort of news coverage that's good for them instead of the sort they want. Not reporting on disasters until all the facts are in. Never mentioning the names of mass murderers who are after fame. More statistics and less anecdote. But if given a choice the bad media will drive out the good (mostly).

You could solve the problem if you had a reliable source of philosopher kings we could set to rule over us. Until we find one I think we'll have to do with giving the people what they want. It's far from optimal but at least it corrects quickly when things go badly which is a lot more than you can say for most other things people have attempted.

What do you mean regarding "philosopher kings"?

It's a term from the Socratic canon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_king

> The problem with these six mega-corporations is that they are controlled by a handful of billionaires and a few distasteful foreign governments that do not have the best interests of Americans in mind.

I'm curious about why you've got the US government out of the equation. Do you really think that those "few distasteful foreign goverments" play a bigger role or collude more than the US government with those media corporations?

When I ditched cable TV about 7 years ago I lost track of these outlets. I can't say I've missed them. I occasionally open cnn.com if I'm bored, mostly because it's quick to type.

I have a (physical) subscription to the Economist, which is where I get all my serious news. I can't tell you how great it is to read the news without the page content shifting all around because of ads loading.

Given the 90% number cited in the headline, you are living a world few of us inhabit.

I ditched both TV and The Economist 20 years ago.

The latter was difficult. I was emotionally attached; it felt good to put that issue on the counter ("I'm smart, informed, discerning!"); and there was nothing else. But alas, as soon as The Economist started with their tech and software focus spreads it quickly dawned on me that these guys just know how to sound authoritative. That was a bad move on their part.

The Economist is largely owned by the Rothschild and Agnelli families.

I think, after the election and the billions spent on advertising and air time supporting one candidate and either ignoring or negatively covering others, and then all that ended up being for naught, there was a realisation that that somehow the traditional manufacturing consent machine has broken down.

And almost immediately Google and Facebook issued a press release about how they will be filtering Fake News. While there might be some genuine altruism and desire to make the world a better place, it was also a brilliant business move. They effectively jumped in and filled the void left in manufacturing consent market. They are signaling they instead of companies and political candidates investing their billions in CNN and NBC they should come to them now.

> These corporations own the US legacy media outlets (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc) and most of the larger online US news sites.

Even worse. They also own most of the local papers too.

What's even more troubling is that there will be more consolidation of the news industry in the future...

> It looks like it's going to be many decades before these giant media outlets finally lose their relevance.

Except that traditional media is moving into social media. Not only that, they have the ears of the social media magnates.

Google/facebook/reddit/etc have all had talks with traditional media companies and have started "favoring" traditional media in their algorithms/search results/etc. There are far more "nytimes/WaPo/etc" on social media today than a year ago or 5 years ago. Even on HN, look how much traditional media links we have here.

I don't think traditional media will go anywhere. As you said, they serve a valuable purpose - brainwashing large segments of the population.

A long time back, I bootstrapped a SaaS which was useful to my reporter friends. So I tried selling this to what I thought were small town local newspapers. I called up the editorial or business development contacts listed in the paper; whenever I got hold of them, I was redirected to Headquarters,which always was some sort conglomerate enterprise. That is when I learnt the hard way there is not such thing as a local or small newspaper: they are just local branches of conglomerates. I gave up because I did not possess the resources required for an enterprise sales cycle.

Keep looking, near me is http://www.kirklandreporter.com and http://www.nwnews.com. If you can't find one start one, leverage the software you built.

This graphic is out of date and has errors in it. It implies the Huffington Post is owned by Time Warner, which has never owned it. In fact, AOL bought it two full years after splitting off from Time Warner.

Additionally, it should be noted that Time Warner recently split its entertainment properties from its publishing properties [1], and doesn't account for the fact that the print publishing world is quite a bit different. Six corporations may own 90 percent of the world's media, but they don't own The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, or USA Today. Hmm.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/03/11/ti...

The article states it has a bunch of things that are no longer up to date, just before the graphic, doesn't it? It says here follows the infographic except this has changed and such and is now owned by this and that.

I didn't really feel like looking too deep into that infographic any more after that. I think it's weird, or lazy, given that this is the meat of the article, why not make a correct infographic then? It already looks like a smudgy 3rd generation copy of a JPG sent through whatsapp, so it could use some cleaning.

It doesn't need to recreate the "funny" clipart figures, just the bar graphs and the correct numbers.

Or they could've just taken the numbers, the correct who-owns-what, and written it as a story, which would've been shorter and easier to grasp than this "keep these errata in mind"-infographic.

I strongly suspect that this article got its upvotes because many people on HN feel it is an important topic to discuss, not because the quality of the article itself is that great.

A big difference between the US media and the rest of the developed world seems to be a complete absence of state-owned/subsidized/run media. To me, this seems much more problematic than the limited competition between corporate media.

In the US, it seems that news/stories/investigative reporting without some commercial interest to some company tends to go underreported. There is no money in being critical towards business (except extreme cases) for the media companies, who depend on good corporate relations for advertising income. Critical reporting towards businesses is not happening and government mistrust is promoted with nothing to balance this.

I think that a healthy media climate needs a mix of commercial and public journalism, that balance each other out.

As someone living in the Netherlands, there are several popular TV shows on public TV that, I think, could never exist in the US, because they would be seen as harming corporate interest. An example being a program investigating the background, production and health aspects of all kinds of food.

We have NPR and PBS, but no large/official federal apparatus. I think a big part is the history of suspicion of government (part of America's founding myth, etc) but there's also always been a robust private media in the US. Lots of Founders, eg Ben Franklin, were publishers.

Whilst not state-owned, and only modestly state-supported, PBS, CPB, NPR, PRI, APM, and PRX produce programming and operate television and radio stations across the country.

NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered news magazine programmes are the 2nd and 3rd highest rated radio programmes by listenership.

(Rush Limbaugh comes in 1st.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_rad...

Culturally, many people would dismiss state-owned media perspective as a kind of Pravda. Because of the cultural perspective, two things would happen: firstly, politicians would think it's OK to instruct such media to follow a particular party line; and secondly, journalists and presenters that are the visible face of the media would also follow the party line, because they think that's where the money is coming from, so it would be stupid to do otherwise.

The cultural perspective is widespread and it's at the core of many Americans' cynical approach to the government. "We're from the government and we're here to help" are genuinely scary words to these people; they have not bought into the idea of government as a social contract, or the idea that a consensus of principles could lead to publicly funded media without excessive political bias. Instead, many Americans view government as a necessary evil that we only institute to restrain our worst vices, and if the government shows up, it's because something went badly wrong; that the best government is no government, which we would have if we acted morally.

> two things would happen: firstly, politicians would think it's OK to instruct such media to follow a particular party line; and secondly, journalists and presenters that are the visible face of the media would also follow the party line, because they think that's where the money is coming from, so it would be stupid to do otherwise.

In my experience the opposite is true.

eg in Austria:

* politicans aren't allowed to interfere w/ the state owned programming and it's usually deeply rooted opinion in those institutes to be independent - they are a service to the people of the country not the current government

* private media are usually considered to be in favor of the party that pays them the most in ad spending and follows their own political agendas

* state owned news shows are usually known to be more critical (we done the research, stop BSing please) towards politicians than private ones (which politicians obviously consider unfair)

obviously in reality everything is shades of grey and not black/white. eg journalists still tend to have own political worldviews and report biased with them. but state owned doesn't by default mean propaganda channel.

I know; but Americans don't, and a state owned channel would be run by Americans, viewed by Americans and judged by Americans. It would be American, ie be an instrumental tool of power.

Most western european countries have public media that operate independently from the government.

Many forms are possible: the British BBC single broadcaster model to the fragmented model of my country with many competing broadcasting associations. I think most models work out well enough.

Of course, comparing to Pravda is a straw man argument: I was promoting a balance between (independent) public and commercial media

I'm Irish and live in the UK; I understand your perspective. I don't think the BBC would work in the US, though, for cultural reasons I tried to outline. The political economy is structured such that it would be fatally lopsided.

> many Americans view government as a necessary evil that we only institute to restrain our worst vices

I'm tempted to say "Why do so many Americans hate America?" It seems like a sort of anti-national nationalism.

Pretty sure it's the two-party system giving people a non-choice between options that really nobody wants. They've been calling it picking between the lesser of two evils for as long as I can remember.

The real question is why they settle for this.

Look at the recent elections, those two people were supposed to be the best candidate options for presidency from the entire population? Really none of the people in the entire nation were better suited for this job?

... on the other hand, the two-party system in the UK is not much better, but they still manage to have the publicly funded BBC. fortunately :)

What about Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe?

Also all the other media organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy?

PBS?

Netflix shows all kinds of stuff about how food and big business can be bad. Since they subsist on fees alone, and not on advertising, I guess they can be more free to show what people want. The good news is that with the internet, you are free to access whatever news source you want. I personally don't even have a TV subscription, because I can find what I want without annoying ads online anyways.

This is blatantly inaccurate and outdated, which is not to say that there is not massive media conglomeration but rather the information presented is inaccurate.

This link is also reblog spam from a BusinessInsider reblog spam from some other "frugaldad" (FRUGALDAD sounds like a legitimate source of media conglomeration news, doesn't it?) site from 2011, and even BI stated it was inaccurate and outdated back then making it even more so now in 2017.

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-...

As for the inaccurate info... for starters....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_NBC_Universal_b...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBCUniversal

Anyway. Nobody bothering to check on this stuff, even in a highly intelligent community like HN, is a great example of how inaccurate or untruthful garbage spreads online.

I strongly suspect that this article got its upvotes because many people on HN feel it is an important topic to discuss, not because the quality of the article itself is that great.

While still small, Netflix probably represents one of the bigger threats to the Big 6. Of course, this makes it a prime merger target. [0] Netflix is not mentioned in the article.

[0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/15/better-buy-the-wal...

The question then becomes which is better, the current big 6 or the new big 6 headed by Netflix.

I'm thinking how Netflix compares to the traditional media. On demand services have much less control of what we're going to watch. Bigger catalog -> better service -> less control.

One would think the Internet offers the biggest catalog, yet here we are - you are free to read your news from any source and I mean any source, however the influence of big media remains. Choice and freedom doesn't mean a better informed audience.

I am reminded of a quote that made an impression on me years ago but which I'm unable to attribute:

"If you don't believe ownership matters, you're not playing capitalism anymore."

Really, you shouldn't need to go to such a reductionist extreme to find stats like these troubling. "Tone at the top" is a real enough phenomenon, and you're not going to have much variety of tone at the top if there are only a few tops.

What is that quote from?

Isn't facebook already bigger than some of the firms mentioned in the articles? Or is it not counted as media?

Media is a misnomer. Facebook and most new sources are advertising companies.

I think you'd have to agree on this. A corporation's main revenue stream is their business regardless of how diversified they are.

So Google is a search-driven advertising company.

Facebook is a social-networking-driven advertising company.

This all depends on what % of revenue is ad-based.

The other tech giants, Apple and Microsoft (Oracle, Samsung, SAP, Huawei, …) actually make most of their money selling combos of hardware, software, and services.

Perhaps Amazon is unusual in that it's a web-retailer? I just checked and AWS[0] only accounts for 8% of their revenue as of Feb. of this year.

It looks like we won't have an end to data-slurping until we somehow invalidate the ad revenue model.

[0] https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-web-services-posts-3-5b...

AWS may be 8% of Amazon's revenue, but I believe I've read AWS is disproportionately profitable (compared to Amazon's retail segment). I'm not sure what the exact numbers are, but I think it you can make a reasonable argument that a company is defined by where its profits come from moreso than its revenue. I could see reasonable arguments the other way around too though.

EDIT: Thanks njarboe for catching confusing typo

s/profits/revenue

Facebook creates no content whatsoever on its own. Its a crowd-funded link aggregator that earns revenue by ads.

Although you are correct, it is not a stretch to say that Facebook "controls" the media in deciding what to show, and how it is shown.

In this way, you could say that "Facebook Controls [a significant portion] of the Media in America"

"Media Filter"?

When distribution is bottle necked to a single or few locations, the difference between content creation and content consumption blurs significantly. If its not distributed - its not seen. The same net effect as not ever being created.

Absolutely. The value of media is solely in distribution, irrespective of the original source. Distribution is kind of baked into the definition.

A term like "media filter" only has value in distinguishing between "traditional" media and companies like Facebook. But, strictly speaking, Facebook is as much the media as traditional outlets and, in this context, those outlets are merely sources for Facebook.

But, their algo determines what everyone sees in their timeline!

It is a channel.

With 2 billion viewers / readers / listeners.

The two billion figure is not an accurate one. Two billion users (not individual persons) rely entirely on Facebook as their primary source of news. I don't think the relevant figure is more than a few millions.

I'm sorry, but what part of this are you disagreeing with?

That Facebook is a media channel?

That it doesn't in fact have 2 billion MUA, as claimed?

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/

That some other channel is more significant?

That there is another information channel to which a similar number of people dedicate 50 minutes of attention to daily?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-t...

"I don't think" is ... a rather weak level of substantiation.

If this infographic is to be believed: https://twitter.com/jmalvpal/status/869297376439173121, then FB ad revenue is greater than all newspaper ad revenue combined.

It's very plausible. The NY Times has always been a behemoth compared to even other large papers (such as the LA Times or Boston Globe). Peak recent revenue (2006) was around $1.9 billion for the NYT.

Facebook will hit near $38 billion in sales this fiscal year.

Facebook is happy collecting money from those large players and small players. They aren't a content generation group in and of themselves.

Their primary differentiator in the US is that, unlike TV outlets, they're not really accountable to specific law. As we've seen in the last election, it's very likely groups used targeted Facebook ad buys to violate various state laws in the types and targeting of messaging they used (and before anyone gets their hackles raised, this is a quadpartisan phenomenon).

So yeah they funnel content but they have no editorial process.

I know hardly anyone likes the MSM (myself included), however is this stat so bad? Is it anything unusual for any other industry?

Mature industries consolidate - its just a fundamental nature of the growth process. How many corporations control packaged chicken? cell phones? cement?

No doubt the voices behind such "X mega-corps control Y" are in fact just advocating for legislation changes to mandate that they get a seat at the table.

The very concept of "MSM" is a bit of an anachronism in this age. Not even sure why we should talk about it. There are youtube channels broadcast from a garage that get more daily views than Anderson Cooper ever will. Best thing is to just switch off the TV and let the dinosaurs slowly die...

Yes it's bad.

It doesn't really matter if it's "usual" or not, that's a different question.

Most industries consolidate into large behemoths that are incredibly inefficient and only stay in business due to patents and buying up all the resources (e.g. cell-phone companies, comcast, certain chip-makers). Innovation dies.

And you're right, it's happening right now with youtube defeating the these corporations, and that's good. But if one of these companies somehow bought youtube from google, that'd be bad, because consolidation (especially around distribution of information) is typically bad.

>But if one of these companies somehow bought youtube from google, that'd be bad, because consolidation (especially around distribution of information) is typically bad.

So youtube2.com can never be created? How long has Instagram been around?

Furthermore, your premise is financially flawed. How is the bankrupt NYT going to buy google?

The MSM is turning into the "horse buggy whip" situation. Its an old, out-dated industry that is dying. Who cares if eventually only 3 businesses controls "ACME Horse Buggy Whips" -- its not really something to panic about.

The point is that big companies with financial backing will use market advantage to stifle competition before it gets a chance (e.g. buying up the spectrum for cell phones, lobbying to prevent broadband competitors, patenting very basic concepts, buying up competition in its infancy).

You can argue they missed the boat on buying youtube and putting it to their own ends (e.g. YouTube prime is only comcast subscribers). It sounds like you want to disagree with me, but my two points are [and you haven't really provided arguments against either]

1. There is insufficient competition in the market (cell phones, ISP, computer parts, and many others). Much of this is due to deliberate actions by larger companies to protect their pie.

2. The consolidation of media is bad for consumers, and its death is good. The level playing field of a public internet made all the difference.

We need to start enforcing the Clayton Act again. It forbids any mergers or acquisitions that might substantially lessen competition in any line of commerce or in any activity affecting commerce in any section of the country. Taken literally that would prevent almost all acquisitions of any large companies that in any way compete with each other.

> Is it anything unusual for any other industry?

Isn't that a big problem? Monopolies and oligopolies are crippling capitalism. The "too big to fail" conglomerates become just a part of the political system instead of the economic one.

With the media industry, it gets worse, as it has an important role in keeping the democratic and economic powers in check.

> No doubt the voices behind such "X mega-corps control Y" are in fact just advocating for legislation changes to mandate that they get a seat at the table.

Is not that fair? Shouldn't all parts of society be represented in the industry that consolidates the cultural values of a nation? Why should only economic power have representation in the media? It is one person one vote, not one dollar one vote.

>Is not that fair? Shouldn't all parts of society be represented in the industry that consolidates the cultural values of a nation? Why should only economic power have representation in the media? It is one person one vote, not one dollar one vote.

Your dollar is your vote. You choose what industries you support by where you spend your dollars (or cast your eyes in this case).

You have the ability to hurt these corporate boogey-men by simply not giving them money / attention. You already have this power, you don't need a politician to give it to you. Use it.

The 'vote with your dollars' premise is flawed; the very nature of monopoly is to erode choice by consolidating market position and using influence (government, market) to maintain position which tends to mean creating barriers for more choice / new players to enter the market.

> Monopolies and oligopolies are crippling capitalism.

There's nothing happening now that is new. That has been repeating for 150 years post the Civil War industrial boom in the US. There are few examples of new, high competition industries not consolidating down to several big companies that stand above the rest.

Retail? Mom & Pop shops -> Walmart, Target, Sears, Amazon, BestBuy, Kroger, Costco, CVS, Walgreens, etc.

Software? Little companies circa 1970s, 1980s -> Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, etc

Search engines? Lycos, Hotbot, AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite, MSN, Inktomi, GoTo, etc. -> Google

Steel? Dozens of steel makers -> US Steel

Oil? Dozens of refiners -> Standard Oil

Automobiles? Hundreds of car makers -> Ford & GM

Thousands of radio stations -> SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon

Hundreds of auction companies -> eBay

A thousand newspaper classified ad sections -> Craigslist

A thousand computer makers -> Dell, HP, Gateway, IBM, Apple, etc

These are all the same conceptual scenario playing out.

That process is not in fact a bad thing. The only bad thing is if you allow the enlarged companies / winners (ie the companies with superior products/service/price/combination), to then prevent new competition through regulation (or direct violence). If you do that, then you get obnoxious airlines, or companies like Comcast, or crap automobiles such as what GM and Ford were producing for a few decades until a wave of foreign competition arrived (GM and Ford being prime examples of utilizing government to aggressive prevent competition).

There's no scenario where even bad Capitalism (usually a combination of abusive government and abusive companies conspiring) doesn't kill itself. US Steel for example was killed by potent, nimble, cheaper foreign competition. GM and Ford had to figure out how to make higher quality cars again, as Toyota (and others) stole a huge amount of their market.

I can't think of even a few examples where such consolidation has occurred, resulting in a horrible dominant product/company, in which the government hasn't played a primary role in ensuring said company's survival via regulatory protection. External to that, the market topples the eventual winners time and time again.

Kodak was a monster in photo/camera, now where are they? Sears, toast. US Steel, toast. Pennsylvania Railroad? Doesn't exist. Pan-am? Doesn't exist. Standard Oil? A bit player, split into pieces, in a far larger global oil market. Microsoft? The Windows empire has been largely neutralized by Apple, Android, Linux in general, etc. Intel? The ARM army has put them in a box. Cisco? They're being made increasingly irrelevant by innovations such as those by Facebook in the datacenter, software is eating their pricey hardware. IBM? Who? Xerox? Irrelevant, largely toppled by Japanese competition. Alcoa? Smashed by China etc. Ford and GM? A dozen big foreign competitors took half their market.

For market competition to flourish having at least a few dozen competitors seems necessary to me. People in the same business talk and run in the same circles. If just half a dozen people control a market then unspoken rules can develop and signaling can be done with prices on the open market. If there are 50 competitors then active organized collusion will be necessary, like the trusts of the Gilded Age.

The point of the post still stands with control mostly being in the hands of a few corporations, but it is really outdated. The article does mention AOL isn't owned by Time Warner anymore and Comcast owns NBC Universal along with GE never owning Comcast.

Here are the corrections I can point out. I'm not trying to be pedantic or douche. Just in case someone wants to know up to date info and a bit more info on the control of media. Here we go:

Infographic saying "read watch or listen" is incorrect as what we read is more diversified.

Time has spun off from Time Warner. News Corp split. Fox should be the name up there. News Corp is still big in its own right with its newspaper, books, and other assets.

If you want to say the above splits still have the same shareholders, then Viacom and CBS should be featured as one. National Amusements/Sumner family owns both.

The key company missing is Sony. And no mention of the big 3 in music - Sony, Time Warner, NBC Universal. Sony is also one of the big 6 in film.

Netflix should probably be included at this point. Hulu is owned by Time Warner, Disney, Fox, Comcast.

The part saying Time Warner's 178 million users read news each month is out of date now with the spinoff. Reddit alone gets more users per month now with over 200M per month.

Going along with that, magazines are more diverse. Condé Nast (also controlling stake in Reddit), Time, Hearst, and about 3-4 other companies control most of that industry. But not 90%.

Newspapers are much more diverse in ownership and control, but the infographic doesn't mention that too much so leave that.

Clear Channel went through a few things and is now iHeartMedia. You could also mention Sirius XM for radio. They took a stake in Pandora and will probably completely buy them out. Sirius XM themselves are controlled by Liberty Media/John Malone.

Could potentially mention other tidbits of companies like Vice and Vox having minority stakes owned by the big 7 media companies. It's also unknown how Oath owning AOL and Yahoo will fair under Verizon control. Lots of users and readers there.

I think that's all I got. Again not trying to be pedantic or douchey. Just pointing info out. If I got anything wrong, let me know.

exactly. Leaving out Sony, Advanced Publishing, iHeartMedia, Hearst, Gannett, tronc, Meridith invalidates the number 6.

what's worse is that iHeart is even in the infographic, but the graphic author conveniently decides not to count it

Haha yeah. Thanks for replying! Maybe I should turn my comment and yours into a blog post at this point. Was hoping for more responses and discussion.

I didn't even begin mentioning the big newspaper companies like you (Gannett, tronc).

Funny you mention Advance Publications because of reddit. reddit is beloved compared to these other media empires, but its ownership stakes aren't revealed. There's no idea how much of it is owned by Advance Publications :p.

It's worse in the UK, 3 companies own 70% of the newspaper readership. They have huge political influence, especially Rupert Murdoch, who all prime ministers would try to schmooze https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/21/uk-media-plura...

Good you still have the BBC.

Who are liberal, modern day liberal, which is worse.

Is it? How so?

Considering Fox is the only reputable news outlet left, I don't support the negative connotation you imply.

This is an add for Morris Creative Group LLC. Although I would say anti-ad, as their slick graphic is out of date. But I might not be going deep enough and the out-of-date graphic has not been redone on purpose like a Nigerian Prince email having misspelled words and grammar mistakes.

> 232 media executives control the information diet of 277 million Americans. > That's 1 media exec to 850,000 subscribers

More like 1,194,000 subscribers. How can one take such a presentation seriously when the authors fail at basic arithmetic?

This is what happens when you don't enforce anti-trust laws.

> when you don't enforce anti-trust laws

And that is what happens when you accept the legalized corruption of the political system, in the form of lobbying. The same stakeholders control the media corporations and the politician who should regulate them.

This is what antimonopoly/antitrust laws should have been used against, but in this merger and aquisition market, the people with the power to invoke them are too corrupted and regulatory captured to do it, and so the people suffer.

Side note: in the past posting or talking about this was easy grounds to be dismissed as a "conspiracy theorist".

They stir the pot because people consume their content like it's going out of style. It will only get worse. Don't give them the eyballs, clicks, views or anything else they can measure and generate revenue from.

Everyone of us have more important things to do in life.

Why is GE on this? They don't own NBC. Should be updated for 2017. It's not 2011 anymore.

I noticed that, too.

Clear Channel is also not Clear Channel anymore and do not own 1100 stations.

It is interesting the conversation it has started in this thread even though it is based on false and out of date information. I guess people just accept the infographic as reliable truth and go with it.

Except that media is much more than TV and newspapers. More and more people turn their backs on traditional media and get their information from a blend of many internet sites and witness videos on youtube and so on. And I only see this trend growing in the future.

This is true. However, online media is becoming more and more concentrated(and manipulated) as well. Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, Google, and 4chan all make up a large chunk of our online media, and it should be apparent to most people at this point that each of those sites are either controlled by a company, country, or PR team. It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing a decline in trust of online media in the future, too.

To point: fake news. Whether a particular undesirable-to-power news item is fake or not, the news can be labeled as fake.

The well is being poisoned as we speak.

In Europe, generally, 1) webmasters are usually responsible of the comments left in their webpages by their users, and 2) webmasters have to make clear what their names and addresses are.

Myself, sometimes I've thought of creating a forum or a community, only to be turned away when I think of that. Do you think 4chan would have ever existed if moot had had to put his real name and address there, and if he was legally responsible of what people published in 4chan? Impossible.

So all online communities will always be concentrated in the US, at least for the foreseeable future. :(

I don't believe the issue is US-vs-nonUS. I believethe issue is internet "capital" concentration, which will emerge regardless of national origin. There is a networking effect that makes it difficult to start a successful platform, and those in power will eventually work to maintain or strengthen their power.

Pew keeps tabs on this.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/15/state-of-the...

The problem in my view is that somebody still needs to do the original reporting. From what I can tell most internet sites just comment on what other sites are writing but they rarely add any new information to the mix. They just comment on existing information.

We still need organizations that can afford to undertake long investigations.

Here's a video on Noam Chomsky and manufacturing consent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU

Scary how much of an effect how few can have on so many, just wait 'til they all are owned by one person (it'll happen)

That is true but it is more a distribution problem, if you add more companies and shuffle the sector again it will stabilize in few corporations again.

When I see the polarization around health care in the media I find it really scary. That polarization is not a reflection of the citizens, that most want better health care for everyone, but of a few voices paid with a lot of dollars.

This same thing has happened before, like for example in Italy were Berlusconi abused the media to get favorable ratings. It is part of the tyrant-wanna-be cookbook.

I suggest getting involved in New America / Open Markets and directly participate in tackling this problem. The downside to this group is that a number of its funders are, in fact, monopolists themselves.

https://www.newamerica.org/open-markets/

There's a note in the text, but the infographic is way out of date.

And both parties misuse media. One example: http://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaign...

How does this compare to media ownership in other countries?

I'm not sure ownership is as significant as it's made out to be, at least in the case of the New York Times and Washington Post.

Better than just 1 corporation

America is like a capatalist dream. People seems to trust money and companies more than their own government and laws.

And one head of state attacks one network.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/88150314716807168...

shakes head

And Obama used to bitch about Fox News. Now granted, Trump complains a lot more, but then again, what other president has been scrutinized by a news network about how many scoops of ice cream he gets?

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