Media organisation*

Question 1

What do the basic/recent trends in media ownership and control suggest?

Answer 1

The number of companies controlling global mass media has significantly shrunk in recent years

Question 2

Who supports basic trends?

Answer 2

Bagdikian (2004) notes in 1983, 40 corps controlled the vast majority of all USA news media
- By 2004: media ownership concentrated in 7 corps

Question 3

What does Curran say about newspapers?

Answer 3

Ownership of british newspapers has always been concentrated in the hands of a few powerful ‘press barons’

Question 4

What’s an example of Curran’s point?

Answer 4

1937: 4 men owned near 1 in every 2 national and local daily newspapers sold in Britain
- Today: 7 individuals dominate the ownership of British national daily and Sunday newspapers

Question 5

When does Curran speak about newspapers?

Answer 5

2001

Question 6

Who controls TV?

Answer 6

mainly by 1 company, ITV plt
> access to satellite, cable and digital TV in Britain generally controlled by 2 companies
- News corp (owned by Robert Murdoch) owns Sky and Virgin Media (owned by Richard Branson)

Question 7

Why is media conglomeration occurring?

Answer 7

TV and global conglomeration (horizontal/vertical integration)

Question 8

What do NewsCorp own?

Answer 8

Newspapers, magazines, book publishers, terrestrial and satellite TV channels and film studies in several countries

Question 8

What’s horizontal integration (HI) in global conglomeration?

Answer 8

Ownership and control of the mass media: a complex business as the following examples illustrated
- Some media companies characterized by cross media ownership (HI)
- Refers to global media corps often cross media boundaries and invest in a wide range of media products

Question 9

What’s vertical integration?

Answer 9

• Some media companies have focused on increasing economic control over all aspects of the production process in order to maximize profits
• EG: film corps make movies and distribute them to their own cinema chains

Question 10

What’s diversification?

Answer 10

Some media corps arent content to focus on media products but have diversified into other fields

Question 11

What’s an example of diversification?

Answer 11

Virgin media: began as a music label and record shop chain but has expanded into a wide range of products and services including cola, banking etc.

Question 12

What’s synergy?

Answer 12

Media companies often use their very diverse interests to package/synergize their products in several different ways
- A company may use its global interests to market one of its own films through its TV channels, magazines and newspapers in dozens of countries at the same time

Question 13

What are the 2 reasons Doyle is talking about?

Answer 13

• All POV need to be heard for society to be truly democratic
• Abuses of power and influence by elites need to be monitored by a free media

Question 14

What does Doyle suggest?

Answer 14

Examinations of ownership and control patterns is important for 2 reasons
- Too much concentration of media ownership - dangerous and unhealthy
- Media has the power to make or break political careers, considerable influence over public opinion

Question 14

What’s an example of synergy?

Answer 14

Film often accompanied by a soundtrack album, computer game, ringtone or toy action figures

Question 15

When did Doyle talk about examinations?

Answer 15

2002

Question 16

What do pluralists argue?

Answer 16

• media owners generally responsible in the way that they manage info
• media content mainly shaped by consumer demand in the marketplace
• Only give the buying public what they want
• Editors, journalists and broadcasters have a strong sense of professional ethics
• acts as a system of checks and controls on potential owner abuse of media

Question 17

What about pluralists and democracy?

Answer 17

Suggests mass media are an essential part of democratic process because electorate today glean most of their knowledge of their political process from newspapers and TV
- Owners, editors and journalists are trustworthy managers and protectors of this process

Question 18

Who holds the power according to pluralists?

Answer 18

Media audiences bc they can exercise the right to buy or not to buy
- audiences wouldn’t buy the product if they don’t like the choices made available by media owners and if it’s biased
- media supplies what the audience wants than what the owner decides

Question 19

What do pluralists argue?

Answer 19

It’s practically impossible for owners to interfere with the content or newspapers and TV programmes because their businesses are economically far too complex for them to regularly interfere in the day to day running of the content

Question 19

What else do pluralists say about who holds the power?

Answer 19

If some viewpoints have a greater range of media representing them, its not necessarily biased
- merely reflects what the audience wants or views as important

Question 20

What else do pluralists say?

Answer 20

Concentrations of ownerships: product of economic rationality bc they can exercise the right to buy or not to buy
- Driven by the need to keep costs low and to maximize profits
- Globalization results from the need to find new audiences rather than from cultural imperialism

Question 21

What about public service broadcasting (PSB) like BBC?

Answer 21

Has a legal obligation to inform, to educate and to ensure that all programming is pluralistic and diverse
- I.e all sections of society are catered for
- Media owners restricted by state or government, controls
> in some societies, owners arent allowed to own too much media or different types of media

Question 22

What else is there note about PSB?

Answer 22

Many countries have cross ownership rules preventing people from owning more than one type of media
- Newspapers, TV and radio in Britain are subject to legal controls and rules imposed on them by the Press Council and the Office for Communications (Ofcom)

Question 23

What do Marxists believe about media organization?

Answer 23

Believe that in order to legitimate and reproduce this system of inequality:
- capitalist class uses its power to dominate institutions like mass media thus transmitting ruling class ideology
- function of these agencies to socialize the working class into accepting the legitimacy of the capitalist system and capitalist ideas
- ISA and False class consciousness (althusser)

Question 24

What do Marxists believe about media and ideology?

Answer 24

Believe that media owners (members of the capitalist elite) use their media outlets to transmit ruling class ideology
- capitalist system rarely criticized or challenged
- suggests that owners shape media content so that only ‘approved’ and conformist views are heard

Question 24

What does Miliband say about Marxism and media/ideology?

Answer 24

Argued that the role of the media is to shape how we think about the world we live in
- suggested that audiences are rarely informed about important issues such as inequalities in wealth or why poverty persists

Question 25

What does Tunstall and Palmer suggest in marxism and media/ideology?

Answer 25

Governments are no longer interested in controlling activities of media owners because they need their support to either gain power or hang onto it

Question 25

Who found evidence for the ideological nature of ownership and control?

Answer 25

Curran