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Media Conglomerates And It’s Impact on Journalism

Posted by: | November 18, 2009 | No Comment |

Whenever a average hardworking citizen who comes home from a long day of school, work, or at the gym, they want to learn what happen in today’s news. Whether you get your news from CBS, ABC NBC, CNN, FOX NEWS, or a independent local news affiliate, these networks are owned from a companies that impact the television and journalism today.

For example, NBC is owned by General Electric, and soon to be owned from Comcast Corp, should the deal falls through within the next weeks. ABC is owned by Disney, along with ESPN family of networks. FOX is owned by Rupert Murdoch, which also owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and satellite provider DirecTV. CBS is owned by CBS Corporation

So how do these media conglomerates impacts journalism? Well, it is very complex as you think it is.

First off it leads to more opinionated journalist then traditional journalist. A traditional journalist will report the story, the facts, and more insight on the story itself based on the source he or she provides. An example is shown in this report from White House correspondent Jake Tapper from ABC News.

Then here is opinionated Journalism, which offers his views on the a certain issue in addition to reporting the facts and providing in-depth analysis. An example would be former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs reporting on the issues of race in America.

While conglomerates is good for business terms for media platforms, it gives producers a cheaper way to provide more news and insight, instead of objective reporting.

Viewers are more likely to see more political pundits on cable news networks, voicing their opinion on a  certain area. Sometimes the media fails to report both sides of the story and not uncover hard evidence such as the decision to go to the Iraq War and the upcoming book on Sarah Palin.

Also in Lou Dobbs’s clip above, anchors sometimes fail to be newsworthy, not reporting the facts, and instead voicing opinions that can harmful to other individual figures or a competing outlet.  You can make the case that media conglomerates lead to the rise of sensationalism in the 21st Century.

Nevertheless, media conglomerates are here to stay in journalism world for at least the foreseeable future.  The impact it has is very mixed on some viewers and other pundits, but it offers a cheaper alternative for these networks on reporting the story.

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