User:Scottylaws/sandbox

Going to be adding a new section

Media Dominance

There is a few massive corporations that dominate the media landscape throughout the United States. Due to mergers and acquisitions, these companies have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read today. According to Bernie Sanders, corporate media shows what is important to their interests, instead of covering real issues the American people face daily.

In 1993, 90% of media was owned by 50 companies. Today, starting in 2011,the same 90% is controlled by 6 companies. These 6 companies include GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. These 6 media companies are broken down into sub companies, for example GE  owns Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, and Focus Features. News-Corp is broken down into Fox, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post. Disney is broken down into ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramar, and Marvel Studios. Viacom is broken down into MTV, Nick Jr, BET, CMT, and Paramount Pictures. Time Warner cable is broken down into CNN, HBO, Time, and Warner Bros. Lastly, CBS is broken down into Showtime, Smithsonian channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, and 60 minutes. 232 media executives control what media 277 million Americans consume. To put that into perspective, thats 1 media executive to 850,000 media consumers. These six big companies control 70% of cable and can make up to 275.9 billion revenue (2010 revenue for the big six). The media we receive by these 6 companies include movies which in 2010, their box office sales hit 7 billion, which is double what 140 smaller movie studios made in that year.

With these statistics being shown, is the corporate media telling their audiences valid news, or are they telling their audiences whatever the corporate media wants to hear. These decisions are made by media executives and they often have conflicts of interest when it comes to deciding what to put on the air. What is shown through media platforms is also due to big advertisement checks the media companies receive. The rich media executives care about the American people, but care a lot more about their massive paychecks. Why should the horrors that are going on in the United States be shown when sports companies like the NFL are paying to be shown on media platforms. Bernie Sanders said why isn’t there more climate change coverage shown through media? Why doesn’t CNN spend more time talking about overturning Citizens United? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the corporate media collect huge sums of advertising money from the fossil fuel industry and the super PACs that only exist because of Citizens United? In other words, why are they going to cause attention towards the crisis of climate change when the industry that causes climate change is providing hefty checks to advertise their industry. The more important the issue is to large numbers of working people in the United States, the less interesting it is to corporate media. The less significant it is to ordinary people, the more attention the media pays. Further, issues being pushed by the top 1 percent get a lot of attention, and issues that cause interest by representatives of working families, not so much.

Scottylaws (talk) 16:10, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
post peer reviewProf.bgreg (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2017 (UTC)