In today’s society, the economic function of the media industry is paramount to all other functions under its umbrella.  With the advent of the internet, the role of the media has transformed from an information pipeline to a consumer driven cash cow for the elite.  While instant access to information and global connectivity of the masses has the potential to greatly benefit society, the concentration of media ownership has corrupted the industry by turning it into a cesspool of empty consumerism fueled by an exploitative drive for profit. While our ability to communicate back to media producers through comments and viewership gives us a sense of agency as users, our consumer patterns contribute much more to the exploitative system than our voice. This is ultimately detrimental to the progress of society as this media oligopoly perpetuates global mass inequality and enslaves the masses to consumerist aspirations in an effort to offer us a feigned sense of agency over ourselves in the broader sense as “free” citizens.

Private, for-profit media companies generate their money streams primarily through advertising and paywalls (Croteau et al., 2022, p.92). While both offer an avenue of revenue, paywalls are designed for a more dedicated audience, giving advertisements broader reach making them the more profitable path for media owners. If the drive for profit is the primary motivation behind media producers’ decision making, and advertisements are the primary source of revenue, then running ads supersedes the importance or relevance of the actual content they produce and promote. The message becomes secondary, making what is profitable more valuable than what is useful or beneficial to society. Prior to the evolution into the corporate conglomerates that emerged in the 1980s, respectable television news was widely regarded as a necessary public service and as such was accepted as and expected to be insulated, for the most part, from the pressure to turn a profit. This new conglomerate model has corrupted that social ideology, resulting in “increased bottom-line pressure, even in areas of the media that used to be partially insulated from such pressure” (Croteau et al., 2022, p.97). This exposes a broader issue regarding the increasing concentration of media ownership which is the concurrent concentration of power within the greater context of societal impact.

We tend to believe in the United States that our primary concern in terms of power over our communication avenues is ensuring the government does not interfere with our fundamental First Amendment right to freedom of speech by engaging in government sanctioned censorship. We ignore, however, the very real corporate censorship that derives as a consequence of media conglomerates (Croteau et al., 2022, p.97). It is difficult to see the immediate danger of our information being filtered before we even get a chance to dissect it ourselves because it is not the government doing it, nor is one party the sole distributor of information. This concept was addressed best by famous comedian, George Carlin who once said, “You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities and fraternities, they’re on the same boards as directors, they’re in the same country clubs; they have like interests, they don’t need to call a meeting, they know what’s good for them, and they’re getting it. And there used to be seven oil companies, there are now three, it will soon be two, the things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice. There are two political parties, there are a handful of insurance companies, there are about six or seven information [outlets]; but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors because you have the illusion, you have the illusion of choice” (Films For Action, 2014). Carlin’s ideas on corporate convergence really highlight how a lack of media pluralism can manifest as political power. While there may be certain laws against monopolies in this country, it is easy to see how ideas that question the fundamental social arrangements media conglomerates benefit from are difficult to find, such as critiques of the increasingly unregulated[1] capitalist economic system that breeds inequality (Croteau et al., 2022, p.99).

The most pressing danger of this overarching corporate influence is their interest in the United States Military Industrial Complex and their ability to influence the media as well as our politicians, and subsequently, the masses. American Journalist, Ben Bagdikian contributed the concentration of ownership, paired with increasing horizontal integration, to the perpetuation of this issue, predicting in 2004 that “the absence of competition in the media industry will lead inevitably to homogeneous media products that serve the interests of the increasingly small number of owners” (Croteau et al., 2022, p.102). Today, the largest defense contractor in the United States is Raytheon Technologies. Their largest shareholders are made up of Capital Group Companies, Vanguard Group Inc, State Street Corp, and BlackRock Inc. (Fintel, 2024). The largest media conglomerates belong to AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Disney, Newscorp and Viacom (Nalbandian, 2022), all of which have Vanguard and BlackRock Inc. as controlling shareholders (Maas & Chung, 2023). The danger intensifies with the realization that over 50 members of Congress along with their spouses “own between $2.3 and $5.8 million worth of stocks in companies that are among the top Defense contractors in the world,” several of whom sit on committees responsible for the funding of defense and weapons institutions (Shaw & Moore, 2020).  As war and conflict increasingly ravage people and planet, this level of controlling interest is certainly a major cause of concern for the whole of society, but who’s going to tell them?

Works Cited

Croteau D, Hoynes W and Childress C (2022) Media/Society: Technology, industries, content, and users. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Films For Action (ed.) (2014) George Carlin on conspiracies. Films For Action, YouTube. Available from: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/george-carlin-on-conspiracies/ (accessed 12 February 2024).

Fintel (ed.) (2024) VFINX – Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares Portfolio Holdings. Fintel. Available from: https://fintel.io/i/vanguard-index-funds-vanguard-500-index-fund-investor-shares (accessed 13 February 2024).

Maas J and Chung H (2023) Who owns what? top investors shuffle their securities holdings in the media and entertainment sector. Variety, Penske Media Corporation. Available from: https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/paramount-warren-buffett-blackrock-vanguard-fidelity-13g-1235539586/ (accessed 12 February 2024).

Nalbandian M (2022) The big six’s Big Media Game. Pathfinder, Parkway West Pathfinder. Available from: https://pwestpathfinder.com/2022/05/09/the-big-sixs-big-media-game/ (accessed 12 February 2024).

Shaw D and Moore D (2020) The members of Congress who profit from war. The American Prospect, The American Prospect, Inc. Available from: https://prospect.org/power/the-members-of-congress-who-profit-from-war/ (accessed 12 February 2024).

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[1] When I say “increasingly unregulated” I am referring to legislation such as Citizens United V. FCC which granted the almost unfettered ability to financially influence our political system by propping up political candidates who ensure the protection of laws and regulations that benefit the elite corporate class