Tuesday, July 01, 2003

Media Power comes to those who own our media

"It doesn't really matter who owns news outlets," read the headline on a column by Deborah Coddington.
But it really does matter because ownership of media confers power, and power can be abused. Consider this example. Two reporters for an American television station were working on a story critical of the giant chemical firm Monsanto. They were asked by their bosses to soften their report. They refused and were fired.
The station had recently been bought by a company owned by Rupert Murdoch. Defending their firing of the reporters, the station executives explained: We paid $3 billion for these stations. We will decide what the news is.

· The news is what we tell you it is [NZHerald ]
· Communications policy to the book publishing industry [Creativeindustries: Documentfile]