Shafer on the Media monopoly

August 23rd, 2004 | by aobaoill |

Jack Shafer’s spirited attack on Ben Bagdikian in Slate makes fascinating reading. It relies however on some fairly obvious logical flaws. The most striking of these is a presumption that since Bagdikian names the five predominant firms in media ownership, if you can find smaller corporations who own a sizeable stake of a particular sub-field, this disproves Bagdikian’s argument – the prime example being Clear Channel and radio. Of course, Bagdikian does recognise ‘next tier’ corporations, and his critique is of the increasing corporatisation of media ownership in general, with the top tier companies being the most obvious, and being magnitudes of size larger than other corporate media groups.

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