Why is this being allowed?
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul of the new age, has now acquired controlling interest in DirecTV. Murdoch’s NewsCorp (now there’s a funny name) now controls movie and TV studios and news operations (the content), many channels (the conduit), multiple television stations in multiple cities, and now a mass media distribution channel so that he can control each step of the equation.
NewsCorp is one of the world’s largest media companies. In addition to the Fox television network and regional sports channels, it owns 20th Century Fox movie studio, Sky News, the FX cable channel, several U.S. television stations, and cable’s National Geographic Channel. The company also owns the Weekly Standard political magazine, TV Guide, several newspapers both here and abroad, including the New York Post, Harper Collins Publishers, the Los Angeles Dodgers and a rugby league in Murdoch’s home country of Australia.
Big business apologists like to point the finger at the perceived “diversity” of broadcast options engendered by deregulation. But I wonder how much real diversity there is when those 500 channels are owned by only 4 companies.
So many people bemoan the “Fox generation” and the dumbing down of television since Murdoch arrived on the scene (from Australia – why are we patriotic Americans allowing an Aussie to own so much of the mass media infrastructure of the U.S.? Perhaps Australia doesn’t allow it themselves). But no one seems to do anything about it.
Time to take action: protest the dismantling of rules by the Republican-dominated FCC, which allows a very few companies to own vast swathes of media outlets in this country. Stop patronizing the products of such companies as NewsCorp, Clear Channel, Comcast, and other monopolizing behemoths (tough, I know, since they have tendrils in so many places…). Support independent broadcasters, especially Public Television. Cancel your subscription to DirecTV and switch to Dish Network, which arose like the proverbial American success story and has no plans for world domination and control of information.
OK, what the global domination of just about every other industry by US enterprises such as…OH LET ME SEE… Pepsi, Coca Cola, General Motors, Ford, RCA, Universal, Boeing, and the greatest threat to economic diversity MICROSOFT. Yeah sure you can protect your industries, but how does the rest of the world protect theirs? Murdoch is now about as Australian as the 4th of July, so stop being prejudice. Its Globalisation, its a free market, its a product of democracy, SO GET USED TO IT!