Media Studies - Media Ownership

 How does media ownership affect the way media is created?

According to James Curran & Jean Seaton:

- Mass media is influenced by political agendas and economic influences

- The digitization of the newspaper industry leads to journalists having less power, as editors can cut out and put in whatever they want.

- The mass media is operated and controlled by fewer and fewer companies

- Normal people have more power to change what appears in media.

Media Consolidation: 

Media Consolidation can be defined as the concentration of ownership of media sources.

In the US, 90% of media consumed is owner by just 6 companies; Viacom, Disney, Time warner, Comcast, News Crop, and Sony.

Some benefits of this may include customer convenience, less risk for the company (diversification of assets), greater market share, a larger audience (which leads to larger profits), a revitalization of struggling companies, and improved quality of media texts due to better funding.

However, this may also lead to a lack of competition, and thus to less innovation within the industry, leading to less innovation and more stale content.

This also leads to what is known as the illusion of choice. This means that although you have many options of media sources to choose from; since its all owned by the same company, all the messages and agendas broadcasted towards you are the same, just packaged differently.

Case studies: The Washington Post, Disney

Media ownership affects how media is created in multiple different ways. Depending on who/what owns the specific media, it leads to biasness in the news industry in how the news is reported, it affects how movies are produced based on the agendas of the owner/the company, and it affects how films are distributed towards foreign markets. These 3 subject matters will all be discussed in detail in this essay.

The news is one of the most affected forms of media when it comes to ownership. A prime example of how the ownership of media affects the media produced would be the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon, which is owned by Jeff Bezos. In 2019, when Bezos' affair with news anchor Lauren Sanchez was uncovered, a myriad of media organizations reported negatively on the scandal, calling Bezos a liar, cheater, etc. However, the Washington Posts article on the matter painted him in a far more positive light, asking whether or not it was Bezos' fault, and always used a positive vocabulary to describe him. This, was obviously because he himself owned it, and would not want his own company to paint a negative picture of himself. 

The movie industry is also affected in a myriad of ways by the company that owns them, and what their agendas are. A perfect case study would be the Walt Disney corporation, and how in 2009, they bought Marvel Entertainment, giving them the rights to all of Marvels superhero's, comics, and material. This led to Marvel having to conform to the "Disney agenda" and Disney's view. This made Marvel Movies far more family friendly than what the source material originally depicted. For example, the large amounts of blood and gore in Marvel's comics essentially disappeared when the live action movies were released, as well as the sexualization of women being eradicated, which was almost a staple of most Marvel comics. This was all done to follow Disney's family friendly values.

Lastly, media ownership also affects how films are distributed to different markets across the globe. Once again, the Walt Disney company serves as a perfect example here. To reach larger audiences, Disney airs movies in different markets like China. To do this though, they must first edit the films to make them more appealing to the Chinese market. For example, how in Iron Man 3 (2013), a film produced and distributed by Disney, the movie shown in American and European theatres was different than the Iron Man 3 seen in China. This is because they added scenes of Iron Man being saved by a team of Chinese doctors. This paints China in a positive light and leads to the Chinese government being more inclined to show the movie in Chinese theaters, leading to a far larger reach for the movie, and thus more profits for Disney,