Sunday, 29 July 2012

Week 3. My "global media empire"

This week’s suggested topic is “my global media empire”. What would it look like? How would it operate? but to be honest, I think I’d rather discuss the effects of these media empires and I have two reasons for this.

  1. Before fantasising my empire, I feel it’s necessary to outline how political climates can help media sources both prosper and erode.
  2. I find myself morally opposed to the idea of a global media empire.

You see, one of the defining features of big media is that it has the ability to “limit diversity” because of the power it holds (Steven, P 2003). Not only can it influence our knowledge but it can control exactly what is or isn’t our knowledge, what we hear and what we don’t. We see this in companies such as Murdoch’s News Corporation and 
Fairfax Media.

While most of the world enjoys a level of diversity within the media, some nations are subject to news in a manner that can be compared to a dictatorship or a one-party state. Mexico’s ‘Televisa’ holds ties to the authoritarian rule of Mexico’s government, the PRI and Brazil’s ‘Globo TV’ was able to rise to prominence alongside the nation’s military dictatorship.

So how do we stop this? To me, the clearest answer is government intervention. Countries such as Britain and France play a stronger role in their own media service and insist on certain principles the media must uphold. But relying on a government creates its own issues. Much like media empires, they have a bias and an agenda. It seems the power and effect of the two can be closely compared.

Credit: Robert Milner


Steven, P 2003, ‘Political economy: the howling, brawling, global market place’, The no-nonsense guide to the global media, New Internationalist, Oxford, pp. 37–59.

No comments:

Post a Comment