global media ownership: all articles

Sparks fly when the media ownership debate brings together leading media experts to explore these issues. Legendary media critic Robert McChesney gets the ball rolling with a trenchant critique of corporate convergence. Ben Compaine says he’s got it all wrong. As the debate deepens the temperature rises - it’s an enjoyable ding-dong. Taking in case studies from Korea and Japan, Italy and Hungary, Pakistan and Broadway, we put their arguments to the test.
Wednesday 17th September

Regulating for freedom: media lessons from Australia

Paul Jones, 17 September 2003
Australia is often cited as an exemplar of the failure of media policy to guarantee the quality and independence of broadcasting. But in its development of arguments about ‘freedom of communication’, this outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire offers a surprising lesson in the significance of local experience in promoting a culture of informed citizenship.
Wednesday 22nd May

Global media concentration: shifting the argument

James Curran, 22 May 2002
The combative debate on media ownership has highlighted the importance both of new global megacorporations and of the multiplicity of the commercial landscape. But, concludes openDemocracy’s media co-editor, the combination of money and power in sustaining media oligopoly and monopoly continues to pose serious questions about the state of democracy.

McChesney's mistakes

David Elstein, 22 May 2002
If Compaine needed any justification for labelling McChesney ‘extremist’, this argument is it.
Wednesday 8th May

A world without absolutes

Benjamin Compaine, 8 May 2002
Benjamin Compaine concedes that most participants in openDemocracy’s media ownership debate sympathised with Robert McChesney, but draws from its global perspective support for his claim that pluralism and diversity are compatible with a market-based system.

It's a wrap? Why media matters to democracy

Robert W. McChesney, 8 May 2002
The renowned critic sees in the inadequacies of US coverage of Enron, the 2000 election, and the ‘war on terrorism’ ample evidence of his argument that the dominant media system fails democracy.
Thursday 14th March

Media concentration: the Italian case-study

Raffaele Mastrolonardo, 14 March 2002
Silvio Berlusconi already controls three of the four main private TV channels in Italy, but he is intent also on using patronage to dominate Rai, the public sector network. When the prime minister of a country and its most powerful media magnate are the same person, how healthy can its democracy be?

Can Berlusconi do no right?

Ruggero Ranieri, 14 March 2002
The state of Italian television, and Berlusconi's role in it, is less one-sided than Mastrolonardo suggests. By helping to challenge state monopoly in the past, and responding to changing audience preferences, Berlusconi has not just used his media influence for political ends. The variegated Italian television landscape may lack for quality, but it cannot override people’s democratic choices.
Wednesday 27th February

Stumbling Goliaths, dithering Davids: unpicking the mythology of the media mogul

David Elstein, 27 February 2002
David Elstein, formerly one of Rupert Murdoch’s senior executives and founder of the UK’s Channel 5, details the trials and tribulations of global media’s Mr Bigs, and challenges the conventional view of their unchecked media power.

<i>Grandes gigantes</i>: media concentration in Latin America

Silvio Waisbord, 27 February 2002
A perspective from Latin America adds a refreshingly different perspective to the debate on media ownership. Giantism (and duopoly) increasingly rule the continent, but among the explosion of content there are spaces of diversity and seriousness.
Wednesday 13th February

Public broadcasting, media ownership and democratic debate in Japan

Dr Barbara Gatzen, 13 February 2002
In Japan, the near-fifty year incumbency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and the best efforts of Rupert Murdoch, have not yet managed to destroy the conception of ‘public service’ as a deliverer of honest and comprehensive news. But political pressure and media rivalries make the space for serious, critical, independent journalism a constrained one.
Wednesday 30th January

Media monopolies versus editorial independence: signs of hope in Korea

Aidan White, 30 January 2002
The spread of corporate power in the media is a serious threat to quality, independent journalism. But a global perspective is a healthy counter-balance to pessimism: as Korea illustrates, progress in taking on unwarranted media power is possible.
Wednesday 16th January

Why media mergers matter

William Hoynes, 16 January 2002
The information that people receive through the media, and the ideas and arguments they can access, help to shape their decisions as citizens as well as consumers. Thus, discussion about the evidence and implications of the pattern of media ownership is ultimately about the character of a democratic society itself.
Thursday 20th December

Lullaby of Broadway? Big media and the future of commercial theatre

Jonathan Burston, 20 December 2001
New York’s theatre district is the classic American ‘melting pot’. The unique Broadway distillation of Jewish, black and gay influences proved its spiritual mettle in the wake of 9/11. But can its combination of quality experience, commercial toughness and quasi-religious optimism resist the longer-term threat from bland, franchised ‘megamusicals’?
Thursday 6th December

Media freedom, or regulation?

Paul Macdonnell, 6 December 2001
It is in relation to media policy that the left shows its true anti-democratic credentials. It precisely doesn't want freedom of speech.
Wednesday 5th December

Voices from the Hungarian edge

Ildiko Kaposi, 5 December 2001
A small, post-communist, market-oriented central European state is in its way one of the best viewing-points from which to judge the argument about global media trends. In Hungary there is an explosion of commercial broadcasting, a beleaguered but surviving public realm, and diversity in the newspaper sector. This is not a monolith, but is it freedom?
Tuesday 4th December

The media still needs ownership regulations

Granville Williams, 4 December 2001
Cutting back ownership rules makes eminent commercial sense but bodes ill for quality news journalism.
Thursday 29th November

Ownership is only part of the media picture

David Hesmondhalgh, 29 November 2001
Both McChesney’s and Compaine’s views of media ownership are incomplete and reductive. The complex relationships between owners and publics, and the space for anti-conformism even within popular culture, require a flexible understanding that avoids the pitfalls either of monolithism or complacency.
Thursday 22nd November

The workable real versus the absolutist ideal

Benjamin Compaine, 22 November 2001
Robert McChesney’s criticism of the media ownership system depends on a form of absolutism that, without evidence, deplores existing diversity in the name of an ideal alternative. What would the latter look like?

The market adds choice - and quality

David Elstein, 22 November 2001
The new media economy has not extinguished competition. Globalisation and diversity can and do co-exist.
Wednesday 14th November

Media corporations versus democracy: a response to Benjamin Compaine

Robert W. McChesney, 14 November 2001
In the wake of Benjamin Compaine’s challenge, Robert McChesney reaffirms his view that the concentration of media ownership is a danger to democracy, as it augments the limitations of a corporate and commercial system. This is a global issue, and not simply a US one. But since US media corporations are so powerful and influential across the world, the conclusions that follow from a focus on the US experience have a much wider relevance.
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