13 - Concentration of Media

The media is too concentrated. Too few people own too much. There’s really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see, and hear. It’s not healthy.

          ---Ted Turner (American Media Mogul, Founder of CNN)

Digital multimedia sources dominate our society. New digital billboards on the side of the road, televisions, social media, even newspapers and magazines are rolling over to online publications. Printed media is becoming a thing of the past; it is a lot easier for people to lounge on their couch and absentmindedly absorb information than actively engage in reading. Especially with the coming generation of millennials and their technological “addiction” (constant need for technology), digital media is at its highest influence in history. This is troublesome, however, because the media is dominated by monopolies. Five companies own the overwhelming majority of media, print and digital alike.  This leads to a biased spread of media disguised as different sources, when really the same corporation owns all of them. How can the public construct its own opinion when it is always spoon-fed the same ideas, be them the entire truth or not, until these ideas become “fact”. There are always two sides to every story, yet if small groups of people own the majority of the media, there is no variety to the stories presented. This means that the public is pressed with this inherent bias to believe or think one thing over another and there is a lack of seeking further information. We see not only the application of this idea in Fox News through the documentary Outfoxed, but also the implications in our current political climate and the rise of "alternative facts".