In The Endless Chain Ben Bagdikian discusses the centralization of American media into the hands of a small number of individuals and corporations. This process occurred as part of a planned attempt to control the media, as Bagdikian notes that “it is the open strategy of major media owners to own as many different kinds of media as possible.” (Bagdikian, 173) There are currently only twelve corporations in the United States and four in Canada that control virtually all of the mainstream media. The people who run these conglomerates generally have the same “private political and economic goals,” since they are, of course, very rich and interested in using that money and influence for their own gains. (Bagdikian, 173-174) Through gaining control of a wide variety of media outlets, from cable TV to newspapers to books, they are able to develop a “guaranteed audience” for their message. Bagdikian argues that the “guaranteed audience” is essentially a “captive audience,” which corporations can use to attain both “money and influence.” Using economies of scale, media conglomerates are able to make huge profits from their business, more importantly, however, is their ability to exercise influence on the public and the government. Through their control of a wide range of seemingly independent news sources, corporations are able to exert “dominant influence over the public’s news, information, public ideas, popular culture, and political attitudes,” which then translates into influence on political elites. (Bagdikian, 174)
I recently watched a documentary that serves as a perfect case study for Bagdikian’s theory. In Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, director/producer Robert Greenwald discusses the extremely partisan nature of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s news empire, with particular focus on FoxNews. Murdoch has actively sought to own hundreds of media outlets worldwide, and he has been very successful. Greenwald estimates that Murdoch’s outlets presently reach about 4.7 billion people around the globe. This man is a conservative-Republican ideologue, and he promotes a partisan right-wing agenda on his stations unashamedly. The CEO and Chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, was a strategist for former Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush Senior. It is no wonder that Fox News has acted like a cheerleader for the present Bush administration. While claiming to be “fair and balanced,” Fox News has been anything but; the station hosts many more Republicans than Democrats, the ‘journalists’ consistently provide partisan commentary on events, and the news cover focuses on Bush administration issues such as supposed ‘family values’ (read: Christian fundamentalism) and ‘terrorism’ (read: fear-mongering and racist portrayals of Muslims). The O’Reilly Factor, a Fox News program hosted by Bill O’Reilly, is a perfect example of a strongly partisan program masquerading as journalism. O’Reilly advances a particular viewpoint, he focuses on issues such as emergencies, values, and terrorism, he seems to consciously work at promoting fear among the American public, and he brutally attacks anyone who thinks differently than himself. This sort of behavior might work on the 700 Club, but it should not claim to be journalism.
Through concentration of a large portion of the media in the hands of a man such as Rupert Murdoch, who has no desire to present “fair and balanced” stories, American democracy, and Canadian through cultural association, loses one its most important tenets, free speech. Although we may still have the ability to say what we want, Murdoch limits the range of discourse and manipulates the mind of a large percentage of the public into believing things that are not true. According to a PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll from October 2003, 67 percent of Fox News viewers believed that there was a direct link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, something that is patently not true. Unfortunately, in modern democracy, being misinformed does not prevent one from voting in an election and this fact can have a great impact on the issues discussed in a campaign and the approaches advanced for dealing with them.

B. H. Bagdikian. “The Endless Chain.” In Introduction to Communication. USA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2005. 173-184.

The Center for American Progress
Robert Greenwald. “Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism”
http://www.rapetheweb.com/cartoons/#

www.foxnews.com