Anthony Jimenez SYG 2000 Professor Richards 2/12/11

Participation 2 -Media Concentration

In our ever more connected society, the importance and influence of the mass media has reached unprecedented levels. The mass media is the main disseminator of information in developed countries, and it handles staggering amounts of data. However, I believe that there is a problem with the mass media, and that is that too few people actually hold the reigns of the press, television networks, and other large organizations whose main task is to spread information. When too small a group controls such a large and complex system (the media), there exist too many possibilities for these small groups to take advantage of their near limitless power over information; it is for this reason that I believe that the conflict theoretical perspective best describes the issue of media concentration. The conflict view holds that this small group of people intentionally manipulates the media to their own ends through processes such as gatekeeping (controlling what media actually makes it into the public) and media monitoring. These processes allow the owners of large mass media corporations to put their own self serving bias to any information that they choose.