My Beef With Big Media
…that’s the title of an article about the horrors of media consolidation. Not a big deal…until you realize that the author of said piece is Ted Turner.
This man is arguably the biggest media tycoon of all time, or at least was. I think Ted is pretty pissed that he built one of the largest media organizations around, then at the end of the day got bought by some dudes running a glorified dial-up service.
I’ll let you read the piece to see if what he says makes sense sense to you. But I would have to say I agree with the general theme of article: Media consolidation is creating an American monoculture. I’m not so worried about the fact that we hear the same news everywhere…it’s the news we don’t hear that disturbs me.
Also, look at the state of television these days. Most shows are fairly derivitive, and rarely do you find something that is truely original.
I think this also carries over into other mediums. Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of The Christ probably would have never been seen by the amount of people it has, if not for the fact that Mel ponied up the dough to distribute it himself. Disney poo-poo’ed Farenheit 9/11, because it “didn’t want to get wrapped up in a political movie in this election year”. I’m calling B.S. on that one. So it took the Weinstein bros (who co-founded the movie studio Miramax) to pony-up the funds to distribute that movie. A small, independant film-maker, with just as a potentially interesting story to tell…would never be able to do that in this type of climate.
And all of this also carries over into the FCC / Clearchannel / Howard Stern / Janet Jackson Boob-fiasco…which I also think is getting way to out-of-hand.
Here’s an excerpt from the ending section of Ted’s article:
I freely admit: When I was in the media business, especially after the federal government changed the rules to favor large companies, I tried to sweep the board, and I came within one move of owning every link up and down the media chain. Yet I felt then, as I do now, that the government was not doing its job. The role of the government ought to be like the role of a referee in boxing, keeping the big guys from killing the little guys. If the little guy gets knocked down, the referee should send the big guy to his corner, count the little guy out, and then help him back up. But today the government has cast down its duty, and media competition is less like boxing and more like professional wrestling: The wrestler and the referee are both kicking the guy on the canvas.
If you’re at all wondering what to do about this, check out the links below.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
FCC Chairman (Michael Powell) Blog