Who Owns the Media and What are They Doing With It?

Courtney Conway

October 22, 2019

Media Criticism
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When discussing corporate control over an industry, one likely thinks of monopolies. In

regards to the media though, there are six large corporations that own almost all the media

industry: Disney, National Amusements, TimeWarner, Comcast, News Corp, and Sony. (Team,

2019). Each corporation has their stake in any combination of television, print, internet,

investments, ventures, or music and is able to put out the content they wish. This type of

corporate control is called an oligopoly, which is defined in Media in Society as “domination by

a few - usually four to seven - big corporations” (Campbell, Jensen, Gomez, Fabos & Frechette,

2014, p. 167). Because these companies own each step in production and have the ultimate say in

what happens, they control what kind of media content is put out and what stories are

emphasized. This is all determined by what is going to make these big media corporations the

most money. These older media companies consolidated by buying out their competition, but

giant tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple that used to be on the sidelines are getting

a piece of this media control and are rising in the media industry as well by consolidating and

producing media content across their various platforms (Molla & Kafka, 2019). These big

companies owning most of the media not only limits the quality of content and variety, but is

also a threat to democracy, free speech, and privacy. The results of this type of corporate media

control is a media that is overrun with content that can be violent, overly sexualized, and

designed to make people scared. The content produced is all to make these companies and the

politicians they work with even more money, regardless if it’s harmful to society overall.

A large part of where these big media conglomerates are making their money is not only

through entertainment content, but through advertisements. No other society in history has been

able to match the productivity of capitalism (​Advertising & The End of the World​, n.d.​), and
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that’s likely because of the high volume of advertising. Everyday, the average person is exposed

to 3,600 commercials (​A​dvertising & The End of the World​, n.d.​). Advertisements are also

personalized to the consumer, and so it increases exposure to products one may be interested in.

Platforms well known for offering the consumer ads based on their personal information are

Google, Facebook, Baidu, Yahoo, and Microsoft, and in 2015, these companies accounted for

19% of all the global advertisements flowing through all media (O'Reilly, 2016). Because

consumers are so overrun with advertisements, advertising companies had to transform their way

of presenting advertisements so it felt less in your face, and was more subtle. Robert

McChesney’s ​The Age of Hyper-Commercialism​, discusses the fact that “as most media

consumers tend to be turned off by ads, advertisers have turned to new and innovative ways to

reach their audience. It seems that the more traditional model, in which advertising is separate

from content, is giving way to a new model in which advertising is fused into the content itself,

thus giving consumers no real way of avoiding ads other than foregoing the content all together.”

(Brizzard, 1970). A popular example of this new type of integrated advertising can be seen

through movies and television. Advertisers are looking for places that aren’t already full of

advertisements (​Behind the Screens: Hollywood goes Hypercommercial, n​ .d.), so this type of

media content that has is it’s own story or entertainment value already built in is perfect to

integrate products into. A famous situation this happened in is at the 2014 ​Oscars​ when host

Ellen DeGeneres took out a Samsung smartphone to take a selfie with famous guests at the show.

“While the stunt felt spontaneous, it wasn't entirely unplanned. As part of its sponsorship and ad

pact for the ​Oscars​ with ABC, the TV network airing the show, Samsung and its media buying

firm Starcom MediaVest negotiated to have its Galaxy smartphone integrated into the show,
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according to two people familiar with the matter. ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co.” (Vranica,

2014). This type of integrated marketing allows them to advertise during the show rather than

just during the commercial breaks, and allows them to market to the public when they may be

unaware of the fact that they are being marketed to.

Perhaps the largest market the media is looking to advertise at is children. “Advertising

exploits individual insecurities, creates false needs and offers counterfeit solutions. It fosters

dissatisfaction that leads to consumption. Children are particularly vulnerable to this sort of

manipulation.” (Beder, n.d.) Children are more susceptible to advertising because advertising

makes them feel like having these items will make them happy. Marketers have their eye on kids

because of their increasing buying power with their desire to spend money and their ability to

influence their parents spending (​Consuming kids: the commercialisation of childhood, n​ .d.).

Children are also spending more of their time looking at media because they don’t yet have other

responsibilities, so they are a market that is available for viewing advertisements. They also often

times don’t have to worry about spending their money on the necessities, so they are willing to

spend their money on products, making them an easy target for big media companies. A statistic

to prove this is the fact that in the United States, “​there are over 57 million school age children

and teenagers who spend about $100 billion each year of their own and their family's money on

sweets, food, drinks, video and electronic products, toys, games, movies, sports, clothes and

shoes. Additionally children 12 and under spend more than $11 billion of their own money and

influence family spending decisions worth another $165 billion on food, household items like

furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, the family car and other spending”
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(Beder, n.d). While they may not seem like the ones in charge, children are a strong force in

marketing and in consumerism.

Parents should focus on the effects this marketing can have on their children, but another

media affect they should be concerned with is the increasing theme of violence across all forms

of media. By the time the average child is eighteen years old, they will have witnessed 200,000

acts of violence and 16,000 murders (Media Violence: Facts & Statistics, n.d.). Big media

corporations are creating this type of media so consistently because it is easy and cheap to do so,

but they are not considering the effect it has on consumers. “It is difficult to set down in a

definitive way what effect media violence has on consumers and young people. There are a

number of reasons for this, but the main issue is that terms like “violence” and “aggression” are

not easily defined or categorized. To a child, almost any kind of conflict, such as the heated

arguments of some talk-radio shows or primetime news pundits, can sound as aggressive as two

cartoon characters dropping anvils on one another” (Violence, 2014). Whether it’s violent video

games, violent tv shows, or violent movies, the theme of violence is rampant across media

platforms. Why is this the case? Because this type of media is easy to produce, and sells well to

the public. Seeing this violence in the media normalizes certain views of the world and causes

people to view the world as a scarier and more violent place than it actually is (​Mean World

Syndrome,​ n.d.). According to an article published on CNN​,​ “The issue of violence on TV has

been stirring buzz due in part to the recent release of a study by the Parents Television Council

which stated that ‘some of the most violent TV-14-rated shows on broadcast TV have similar

levels and types of violence as TV-MA-rated cable TV shows.’” (Hanks, 2014). This type of

media being exposed to young children makes them feel numb to everything that’s happening,
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and normalizes this type of violence. It’s not just fictional violence that is being broadcasted

across media, it’s violent acts on the news that are scaring people into thinking the world is this

dangerous place overrun by violence. It’s all deliberate to give these big media companies

power. In regards to the news, when violent things like school shootings happen, the media

focuses on the horrific violence rather than the real issue of gun control to protect the politicians

that help them keep their media oligopoly. It was only after the Orlando nightclub shooting that

FOX news covered the issue of gun control (Wemple, 2019), and that was because the politics

behind it and the issues it would bring was beneficial to the interests of the big media companies

that own news stations like FOX. Broadcasting violence instead of things that people will find

entertaining and enjoyable, or discussing topics that they need to be informed about all comes

from the heads of these big companies and is all done strategically to make these companies

money and to keep them in power.

Not only is the media becoming increasingly violent, it is also incredibly sexualized.

Movies, Television shows, social media sites, songs, and news are all laced with sexual themes.

Sex is an easy topic to produce and one that translates across all cultures, so its the easiest and

cheapest way for these big media companies to create content. It also creates headlines, so it’s an

easy way to get clicks on online news sites to make money. This overly sexualized media has

harsh effects on children though and exposes them to sex earlier than they would have been

having not grown up with such easy access to media. In 2011, a study done that stated that the

amount of music listened to by children aged 8-18 has increased by over 45 percent, and also

found that modern lyrics compared to lyrics written in 1959 contain far more sexual references.

This type of over exposure causes them to think their peers are having more sex than they
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actually are, and makes them think they too should be engaging in sex, putting them at risk for

STDS and teen pregnancy (Epstein, 2018). Television too is highly saturated with sex, with the

the number of sex scenes seen on television doubling from 1998 to 2005 (Whatcott, 2011).

While many people may think the effects of traditional TV may not be as strong because it feels

like most streaming is moved online, but the average home still has a TV set on more than seven

hours a day (Campbell, et al., p. 165). An example from the movie and television industry that

shows oversexualization is the popular movie series ​Fifty Shades of Grey​. This movie glorifies

sex and it’s place in a relationship. By doing so, the film gives a false idea about what love is and

about what consensual sex should be like, and is offering a generation of people a terrible role

model for what a relationship should be like. It normalizes this sexual abuse and mistreatments,

and disguises it as love. In an open letter shared online, one mother wrote to her children that

“she shudder[s] to think that you are going to grow up with stories like this to model

relationships on and that you or the people you date will mistake this for ‘normal.’” (Lewsen,

2019). This type of abusive relationship is glorified across many films and television shows, and

once again, it is done so because it’s easy and cheap to create. Big production companies don’t

have to hire talented writers to write an intricate love story, they can just shoot sex scenes and

fights between the man and woman because it doesn’t require much dialogue. It’s all a money

making scheme, and yet it is affecting the people watching it because they are then modeling

their relationships after what goes on, but that’s not how real life works.

These media companies are not only creating false content that has a negative effect on the

public, these big media companies are a threat to democracy, free speech, and the privacy of

consumers. “The boom in commercial media because of large corporations and advertisers has
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led to a shriveling and dilapidation of democracy” (​Rich Media, Poor Democracy,​ 2003). They

are using technology to take advantage of consumers and their private information, and trick

them with advertising. There are many examples of this, but an important one was exposed

through the Rupert Murdoch Scandal. He is one of the big heads of the powerful media

organizations and owns many media companies, and was exposed for hacking voicemails to

gather gossip for his “News of the World” organization that operates out of the United Kingdom.

“Headlines don’t have to be troubled with the truth” (​Murdoch’s Scandal​, n.d.), and his company

used the hacking of voicemails to gather data from people’s voicemails to create stories,

regardless of if they were true. This is a violation of their rights, and it caused legal

ramifications. An example of how this violation of rights is going on in the advertising world can

be seen through mirrors developed in China to make a person look happier in a dressing room

than they actually are so that they’ll be more willing to purchase a product (Waldman, 2013).

This is taking advantage of people and is a money making tactic.

This importance of consumerism in modern society and the desperation to make money

regardless of the ethical issues has been criticized most famously by Karl Marx. “Marx warned

that capitalism’s tendency to concentrate high value on essentially arbitrary products would, over

time, lead to what he called ‘a contriving and ever-calculating subservience to inhuman,

sophisticated, unnatural and imaginary appetites.’ It’s a harsh but accurate way of describing

contemporary America, where we enjoy incredible luxury and yet are driven by a constant need

for more and more stuff to buy.” (McElwee, 2018). Critics of media today use Marx’s theory to

study the ways dominant groups and the ruling elites in our society, specifically the rulers of the

media, maintain their power by controlling production of content. (Campbell, et al., p. 167). The
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ruling elite and the rich are controlling the wealth by taking advantage of the public and using

psychology to keep them buying products they are convinced they need, and are helping this

ruling class get even richer. Instead of advertising products the way they truly are, they are using

psychology and people’s personal information for their own personal gain. For example, to

figure out which Super Bowl advertisements did the best that year so they can replicate these ads

later on, Omnicom Group’s Annalect data platform decided to gather data from random members

of the public by using facial recognition technology to figure out which ads they really liked

(Mishcastillo, 2016). Rather than asking people’s opinions formally, this marketing data is being

taken through their devices. This type of advertising allows brands to market to the public at

their most vulnerable, and gives them the information they may not have had otherwise. It’s a

violation of people's rights to privacy and takes the power away from the people and givesit to

corporations. Another example comes from the company NeuroFocus, who says it has the

technology to tap into people’s brains for neuromarketing (Penenberg, 2012). This type of

technology being employed is scary to think about, and only futher emphasizes the fact that the

media is only gaining more and more control, and thus more and more profits. If the public

doesn’t begin to fight back against this type of corporate control, the future will only become

even more based around media content. An episode of the Netflix show ​Black Mirror​ created a

hypothetical episode on what it would be like if the media began to trickle into society, and the

results were a heavily mediated society where their presense on social media determined their

real life. While this may seem far fetched, there is an app being developed in China that

combines your credit score with who your friends are and where you shop, and the results affect

whether or not you can do basic things like rent a car (Khal, 2018). This just shows how much
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control the media is gaining, and if the rest of the world begins to adopt this kind of technology,

it will only make this already heavily mediated society that much worse. That type of media

control is a violation of people’s rights because they can’t be forced to participate in things like

that, and their media presense shouldn’t have an effect on what their real life is like. In the

United States, citizens have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and this type of

media control and the adoption of this type of media technology is a violation of all three of

those rights.

While the media control continues to grow, the powerful men at the head of these big

corporations are only getting more money, while the rest of the population struggles to keep up.

“These millionaires – who account for 0.7% of the world’s adult population – control 46% of

total global wealth that now stands at $280tn. At the other end of the spectrum, the world’s 3.5

billion poorest adults each have assets of less than $10,000 (£7,600). Collectively these people,

who account for 70% of the world’s working age population, account for just 2.7% of global

wealth” (Neate, 2017). These media billionares are pushing the idea of a materialisic society

using tactics that give them control, while the rest of the population falls into that and buys the

products that only makes the ruling elite more money. These media oligopolies decide where

society is headed by putting out content, and they are in control of what the media is saying and

thus what topics of conversations are important to the general public. It’s important to look

outside of this though and look for unbiased sources from alternative media to see the things the

mainstream media isn’t discussing, and to find the topics that aren’t emphasized yet. These

corporations having control of most of the media sets limitations on what is put out there because

it all has to fit in their best interest, making it a threat to democracy, free speech, and privacy.
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This heavily violent and sexualized mediated content are shifting societal views and normalizing

behaviors that are harmful to society. It’s essential for all people to be able to critize the

mainstream media and think independently. This type of consciousness comes from being aware

of the fact that the media is a money making industry designed to make people buy products and

to make the rest of society stay in line with the ideals pushed by the ruling elite.

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