Some Fun!

One of the first things first year media students are shown either in lectures or tutorials on media ownership is a pie chart showing the 'big five' or 'big six' or big whatever of media corporations and the companies they own.

The big five as far as I’m concerned consists of Time Warner, Walt Disney Corporation, New Corp, Viacom & GE. Bertelsmann, Sony & CBS all get honourable mention as well.

I can't find the pie chart anywhere but the Columbia Journalism Review has a pretty excellent listing of publications owned but not just the big whoevers but also a myriad of smaller media corporations. Have a look and see what vested interests your favourite publication has hidden away!

For me one of the worst things about the concentration of media ownership might operate at a local level. For example, in Australia we all know that our print media is essentially controlled by two companies - Fairfax and News Ltd (a subsidiary of News Corp) but when we say this what we're generally thinking of is the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph in Sydney or The Age and The Herald Sun in Melbourne. We think less about what that means for the way news operates locally. Where I live, for example, there are two publications, The Advertiser and The Chronicle , the former is owned by Fairfax Media, the latter by News Ltd.

Consider this on a wider level and you essentially have a dichotomy of messages being delivered to what is for all intents and purposes the same audience at two different points of attack. It is difficult to say with any certainty what kind of effect that might have on said audience but it certainly seems obvious that this kind of monopoly on information can be in no way a positive thing (except maybe if you happen to be Rupert Murdoch or John Fairfax). Less diversity of ownership means less debate and less debate means less hard questions being asked of those in power. I for one don't think its too much of a leap of imagination to blame the extremely lack lustre federal election and the equally frustrating result we all just witnessed, at least in part, on the lack of robust debate emanating from within our media outlets.