Review: The Media Monopoly

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The Media Monopoly
by Ben Bagdikian

Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807061794

When this book was first written back in 1983, it was a groundbreaking text; The Media Monopoly was the first book to consider the effects of consolidation in the media industry on American democracy.  Six editions and 18 years later, Bagdikian's work remains required reading for anyone interested in the increasingly restrictive economics facing the mainstream media.

While The Media Monopoly focuses almost exclusively on the newspaper industry, the conclusions it draws are applicable to any other type of media outlet in America.

Several factors are at play here - as newspaper conglomerates formed, the drive to please stockholders overshadowed the drive to inform the readers.  This led to a fundamental shifting of power into the hands of advertisers, who not only have a direct say in many of the stories that run in newspapers today, but often times actually write those stories themselves.

And because of the increase in advertising, did you know that newspapers end up increasing the cost to the reader?  More ads means a thicker paper, which increases production costs - and those costs get passed on to the reader as a higher subscription price.  In return, readers pay more for more ads and less news.

Then, there's the influence of the advertiser on what news is left: Bagdikian asserts that much of the control over news content is implicit in nature.  As a newspaper's advertising department becomes responsible for more and more pages, it's only natural that management makes news editors work with ad salesmen to insure 'proper' news is covered in 'proper' places within the paper.

By its very nature, this method of newspapering leads to a reduction in coverage of controversial stories - and while the Head Office doesn't send down a memo to reporters laying down the new law of the land, Bagdikian cites several examples of reporters who got burned when they tried to cover 'real news' in opposition to their papers' advertising departments; such examples stick in the minds of other reporters and are often more effective in promoting self-censorship than any memo could ever be.

Of course, some newspaper magnates have used their power to influence public opinion to their favor; Bagdikian cites the example of televangelist Billy Graham, whose post-World War Two rise to stature was completely funded and manufactured by two publishing magnates, William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce (then chief of Time, Inc.).  By mandating that their publications cover Graham extensively, they built him into a household name - a level of stature he continues to enjoy to this day.

The problem, concludes Bagdikian, is that any commercially-controlled media will become corrupted by the influence of money, even if aspiring media moguls begin their monopoly-building with the best of intentions.

That corruption works its way from the top down, ultimately determining the news given to the American public.  Chock full of statistics and studies to back up this conclusion, The Media Monopoly serves as one of the clearest warnings ever issued about the media's role in the erosion of American democracy - it's a shame that Bagdikian wrote this nearly 20 years ago, and since then the problem's still only gotten worse.