Today, most major news outlets in the United States are controlled by a handful of powerful companies, an anomaly called media consolidation. It is vital that Americans become more skeptical of the news fed to them by these huge corporate media outlets and find alternative means of learning about what is actually happening in this country and around the world. They will probably find that reality and what they assumed to be reality are  actually very different.

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There was a time when the nightly news was synonymous with the words objective, impartial, fair, and balanced. Reporters, newscasters, and their employers saw it as a duty and badge of honor to inform the public, as factually as possible, of the happenings in this country and around the world.

No longer. Instead of abiding by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, we have major media outlets and their Talking Heads blindly supporting “facts” as told to them by the government, corporations, and anyone else they deem worthy. Unfortunately, as the Iraq War has taught us, perceived truths are not always facts. Thousands of Americans and more than a million Iraqis died as a consequence. It is extremely disturbing that the mainstream media’s abject failure to do its job, with the public's apathy towards demanding that they do so, could result in a "mistake" of such magnitude.

In 1983, 90% of our media was owned and controlled by 50 different companies. Today, 90% of our news, whether we read, watch or listen to it, is dominated primarily by six media giants which each own an array of media venues, from TV and radio stations to newspapers and magazines to film and production studios. The names may change; the Walt Disney Company now owns most of 21st Century Fox and AT&T took over Time Warner, but the fact remains that ownership of the media has consolidated into the hands of the very powerful few.

The merging of so many media companies into today’s handful of powerhouses has been sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent government agency composed of five people whose duty it is to determine media policy and law. Created in 1934 by the Communications Act, the FCC’s role is to regulate interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable throughout the United States. It wasn’t until the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major reform of the policy since it was created, that large corporations were permitted to begin their massive consolidation of the media, resulting in the Big Six.

Comcast Corporation/NBC Universal
21st Century Fox
Walt Disney Company
Viacom
AT&T
CBS Corporation

Why should Americans be worried that only a small number of companies dominate so much of our news? Because with the Big Six’s enormous control over a wide spectrum of the media comes the ability to dictate what events they see as newsworthy (or not) on a massive scale. Especially worrying as these corporations no longer view news as a public service meant to disperse important information and facts but a means by which to make profits by entertaining viewers.

Today, the mainstream media determines the significance, and therefore coverage, of an event by ratings and the whims of the political and corporate entities to which they are beholden, not by what is considered to be in the public's best interest.

It appears that the public’s trust in the media has been declining for some time. According to the Gallup research company, which began its data collection on the topic in 1972, the public’s trust in the media peaked in 1976 but has seen a slow, downward spiral ever since. A September 2016 Gallup poll shows that the trend does not appear to be stopping, with 68% of Americans still not trusting the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.” A February 2016 Pew Research Center poll came away with an even more dire picture: only 18% of Americans had “a lot” of trust in the mainstream media, and only 22% had “a lot” of trust in their local news.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Americans should be very concerned. The organization created the World Press Freedom Index in 2002 and has since compiled data annually on every nation based upon a list of seven criteria categories and indicators. Their 2017 World Press Freedom Index put the United States, a country whose citizens believe it to be a bastion of freedom, at number 43; its first index gave the United States the number 17 slot.

Thankfully, the American public no longer needs to rely solely on one of the Big Six for their information as there are a growing number of independent news sources available to anyone with internet access. Please support Local Journalism.