Page 60 - Push Back

limits of that discussion. They dictate the conversation and choose the subjects of public
debate.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At
the time, Ben Bagdikian was called “alarmist” for pointing this out in his book, The
Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote “in the U.S., fewer
than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass
media” — controlling almost all of America’s newspapers, magazines, TV and radio
stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He
predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies.
This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media
Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have
been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet
market.

In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows
that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation,
Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the
media industry in the U.S..
[Source: http://www.corporations.org/media/]
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Media Consolidation