5 corporations own nearly EVERY tv station, book, magazine, newspaper, and radio station- is this a good thing

Question

the 5 corporations are: Time Warner, Viacom, Murdoch's News Corporation, Disney, and Bertelsmann of germany. do you think that a corporate monopoly on media, which is most people's main source of information, undermines democracy?

Answer 1

Democracy, since when have we had a Democracy? Anything we had that looked like democracy went away in 1913 when we gave control over all our money to the world's richest bankers with the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Answer 2

The White nationalist groups have been warning you about this for the past 40 years.

http://www.stormfront.org/jewish/whorules.html
http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4231

I really have to rebut something that a later Answerer said. fermi_of_borg wrote:

"Presumably a free market always offers the opportunity for someone to come up with a better way of doing things and out-compete even giants if they don't change their own strategies."

It might work that way in an Ayn Rand novel, but that's not how it works in the real world. Bill Gates is among the capitalist "giants" who proved that such thinking is wrong. The market has a massive inertia, and the first entrepreneur to fill a niche can sometimes cause the market to commit itself to his product. Consider, for example, Windows.

Although better operating systems than Windows have been developed, none of them has yet taken the market away from Microsoft. And none of them is ever likely to, either. Too many people have invested too much of their money in software that runs on Windows.

Each computer user would wait until there was a lot of accessory software written for the new system before he changed over to it. And the major software talent wouldn't begin to write software for the new system until enough computer users had changed over to it.

Neither the makers nor the users of the software want to move first. They're both thinking: "Why should I take a big risk? I'm making money (or getting stuff done) with Windows, even if it is glitchy sometimes."

And that means that just about nobody will make the switch, not even if the new operating system is better.

The same kind of problem exists for anyone trying to build a new mass media empire in parallel with the one the Jews own and propagandize with. It's much tougher going than it would be, if Randian ideas really worked in the business world. The superior product does not always win.

I have to respond to something else he said, also.

"...We ARE seeing alternatives to the media sources you cited. Many people use the Internet, blogs, and word of mouth for news, all of which are hard for any one company or group of companies to control. The only undemocratizing element in this case can be laws and governments which try to restrict activities..."

The government is the entity that created the Internet in the first place. The Internet began as a national security communications project, to provide for the national defense if the USA was attacked by nuclear missiles. Only after the groundwork had been done did private enterprise get into the act.

Although it's true that the government is a threat to free speech on the Internet, the biggest reason is that the Jews don't like it that there exists a mass media that they DON'T control. In order to curtail free speech on the Internet, they're hatching all sorts of pretexts.

Some Jews upload gigabytes of child pornography, for example; then other Jews pretend to "find" it and start yelling for laws to regulate the content on the Web, and somehow the kiddie porn always gets moved off-stage while "hate speech" (a.k.a. exposes of Jewish subversive activity) becomes the new focus.

Answer 3

It would depend on how they do business.

Presumably a free market always offers the opportunity for someone to come up with a better way of doing things and out-compete even giants if they don't change their own strategies. Therefore IF we have a free market AND IF consumers want unbiased information THEN they will get it, from some upstart if not from the big five.

On the other hand, many large companies use their money and influence to crush competition, even competition that produces better products than themselves. Their hold on the market can force their suppliers and consumers to comply with their wishes to a degree, because no product (or a vanishingly small amount of good product and nothing else) may be worse than a supply of poor product.

Fortunately your question may be irrelevant - these days we ARE seeing alternatives to the media sources you cited. Many people use the Internet, blogs, and word of mouth for news, all of which are hard for any one company or group of companies to control. The only undemocratizing element in this case can be laws and governments which try to restrict activities... fortunately, most countries have been unsucessful in this so far!

Answer 4

I tend to use the Internet... haven't watched tv news in ages. The Internet is much more open (at the moment anyway).

I don't know that five companies is too few, however. Five may be a good number, but there are more than that. Salem Communications, ClearChannel, etc. are focused on radio. Belo for tv and newspaper, and the list goes on. I don't think you have to worry about a monopoly with these and the ubiquitous independent web reporters

Answer 5

It's a good thing for Rupert Murdoch (who BTW also owns MySpace).

Serious answer- yes, it does undermine the democratic process, which assumes a free press, and a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints.

If a person wants to make an informed choice, and huge corporations own all their sources of information, it reduces opposing viewpoints and narrows the scope of available information.

Good question!

Answer 6

The entire media conglomerate situation has gotten way out of hand . There used to be laws in place to stop these type of monopolies , but those have since been changed , allowing the current chaotic situation to continue , and grow like some kind of monster .Although at this point there is probably no going back .

Cheers !

Answer 7

Answer NO! Why did you not ask this question in the Entertainment category? Yes the corporations and the government are intentionally brainwashing the public with propaganda in a orchestrated fashion few are aware many fall victim to the set traps information wise etc!

Answer 8

This is why I'm trying to cut TV, magazines and Newspapers out of my life. I listen to the general public on yahoo groups, unfortunately they mostly misquote what they get from the big 5.

If only the people who create the news would speak out. Now that we have the internet we can phase out the mass media.

Answer 9

I learned about this in college. It's also really frightening to think that there are many people who are members of the Board of Directors for mor than one of these corporations. It's all legal, but this seems like a huge oligopoly to me.

Answer 10

It is supposed to be called a monopoly of trade, but I think that has stopped being recognized as an unlawful thing.