Power and Media Industries

James Curran and Jean Seaton

ON THE NEED FOR DIVERSITY - "diversity is in the public interest - but modern societies suffer from collective attention deficit disorders [...] the public interest has to work harder to be noticed, and we need agile but resourceful media to do that"

Digital technologies have access to the internet, and this means that people have access to a much wider range of things.

I good way to describe the range of media is as a MONOPOLY, and this is when someone has the exclusive ownership of something.

 Rupert Murdoch is the CEO of News Corporation, which owns the Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times. Not only does News Corp own these newspapers, they also own ITV, Fox, National Geographic and Sky.

A conglomerate is a large corporation which consists of multiple smaller companies. A subsidiary is a smaller company owned by a larger corporation. DISNEY is a good example of a conglomerate, as they own Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar and Vice. By doing this, not only have they removed some competition, but they also extend their audience from younger children and families to people in their 20s who are interested in more mature things.

Advantages to having a monopoly is that you will remove the competition, and therefore this means that you will receive much more profit. Another advantage is that you can control your audience in that you can choose what they want to see and therefore manipulate them into having the same ideologies, especially as the more companies you own the more influence you have. Having a Monopoly means domination of media industries. Generally, conglomerates don't take risks with the media products they product, and this is if the focus is on creating profit. This leads to a limited variety and less creativity and lower quality.

Monopolies "extend their range of business and political connections, increase their corporation's prestige, and, through judicious editorial appointments, contributes to the maintenance of public opinion favourable to the private enterprise." - James Curran and Jean Seaton.

 ALTERNATIVES TO CONGLOMERATION:

  • A partnership where they keep their own profits, who come together to make products
  • Unionisation, where people make their own decisions
  • A limit on how many companies you can own
  • Boycott the companies so that their products don't make profit
  • Make our own media!!
Curran and Seaton also said that the media should have nothing to do with the government, and therefore people can have more choice and therefore feel more intellectually fulfilled than they would if they were given the same thing all the time. There should be more competition rather than people just buying each other out. 


 An Independent Producer is someone who is free from outside control. 

 An institution is a media industry with its own specific identity and ideologies.

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