Nicholas Barnard
Modern Political Philosophy
Dr. William Irvine
May 31, 2002
An argument for Media Ownership Diversification
John Stuart Mill argues in On Liberty that no person or government should be able to coerce or prevent anyone's freedom of expression. He further states that “if all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” (p. 16)
Arguably the ten most powerful “one person” in today's information distribution paradigm includes Stephen Case (Chairman AOL of Time Warner), Richard Parsons (CEO and Director of AOL Time Warner), Ted Turner (Vice Chairman and Senior Advisor of AOL Time Warner), Michael Eisner (Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, owner of ABC), Robert Iger (President, COO, and Director of The Walt Disney Company), Bob Wright (Chairman and CEO of NBC), Andrew Lack (President and CEO of NBC), Rupert Murdoch (Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, owner of Fox and Fox News), Arthur Sulzberger Jr (Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times), and Donald Graham (Chairman, CEO, and Director The Washington Post). Excluding the Internet these ten men direct what virtually the entire population of the United States consumes in terms of news, and therefore has the ability to shape thoughts and opinions by selectively providing information and presenting information in different lights. The single Matt Drudge, Harry Knowles, Lew Irwin, and Martin Eng's would be stuck in the corner screaming at the top of their lungs and not be heard because the control exhibited by the large media companies in providing information to the nation.
While the single voices routinely find and utilize other outlets to spread their ideas no medium has further influenced American minds and consciousness than television. The television pervades American homes; According to Nielson Media Research “Television is a fixture in U.S. households with virtually all U.S. households having at least one TV set, and three out of every four having multiple sets … In the average household, the TV set is on more than 7 ½ hours a day, every day of the week, every week of the year…” Given 103,874,000 households in the US according to the Census Bureau, more than 779 million person-hours of television are watched per day nationwide, or 88,872 person-years of television are watched per day. This gives the ten powerful “one person” each 8,887 person-years of eyeballs per day.
By comparison Matt Drudge's website receives a mere 2,289,457 hits per day on average. Assuming that each of these people spends ten minutes at his website this translates into only 1,044 person-years of eyeballs per day. These statisistcs derived from Druge's own website more than likely are inflated due to techinal issues, and computerized automatic hits. Assuming that a quarter of the accesses are extraneous or non-person based, Drudge's website only obtains 783 person-years of eyeballs per day. The big ten execuitives each obtain about eleven times the eyeballs that Matt Drudge obtains.
Taken as a whole this in all points to massive corporate ownership of the mediums which inform most Americans. The single voices are blotted out, with people adopting the opinions and thoughs of the talking heads on television, who are ultimately controled by the executives of large media companies.
By contrast newspapers, the Internet, and magazines are interactive mediums. The viewer actively must participate, by reading, flipping pages, and engaging with and interpreting the texts. Whereas television “is controlled by the sender, not the viewer. Images just flow, one after the next.” (Kaufman) Television also induces “alpha waves, a hypnotizing effect that a motionless mind enters.” (Kaufman) Placing any audience in a hypnotic state makes them more susceptible to what is being presented. Therefore an audience presented with an opinion in a televised format is more likely to be successfully persuaded and manipulated than an audience presented with the same opinion with the same arguments in a written format.
While in an explicit interpretation from Mill would lead one to conclude that both small independent reporters and those of television networks are given equal footing, the effects of television have an implicit effect of silencing the lesser reports. Television did not exist in Mill's time and as such he could not have anticipated its effects. Placing one set of opinions in an explicitly inferior medium deprives all society of “… the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with …” (p. 16) the small inferior report, which is perceived as being wrought with error.
Resolving this inequity without violating free speech as defined by the US Constitution, or the ideas previously presented by Mill is a delicate matter. Regulating television to reduce or eliminate the hypnotic inducing elements would be a futile task, but elevating the written word to include the hypnotic inducing elements along with computer generated spoken text would create a level playing field, but would most likely be unpopular, and ultimately unworkable.
Thus the best way to ensure that alternate, possibly true ideas and popular false ideas do not go unheard and unchallenged is the diversification of ownership of media outlets. While in recent years we have seen an unprecedented consolidation of media outlets, the value of providing multiple views so that the truth can be discovered far outweighs any fiscal or synergistic reasons for large media conglomerates.
Thus to logically follow Mill's belief in diversified voices, large media empires should be forced to break up into hundreds of smaller companies. While this would possibly raise costs, much of the cost saving that was derived from having large media empires could be maintained by separate companies providing non-biased support services. (e.g. printing houses for magazines, unedited news feeds complementing C-Span, etc.) Thus the benefits of large media conglomerates would be maintained with none of the n monochromatic opinion producing symptoms.
While diversifying the number of voices and ideas within America will most likely lead to several years of confusion and argument, America will come to resemble and think like the people that make it up, instead of the people who lead the large media conglomerates.
Thus the diversification of media ownership will ensure that Mill's ideas are brought into practice and it will force ideas out of dead dogma into living truth.
Works Cited
Kaufman, Ron. Review of Jerry Mander's Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television. Online. Internet. 31 Mar 2002. Available WWW: http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/Jerry.Mander.html
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. Ed. Elizabeth Rapaport. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 1978
Nielson Media Research. TV Viewing in Internet Households. 9 pp. Online. Internet. 31 May 2002. Available WWW: http://www.nielsenmedia.com/reports_available/TV%20in%20Interent%20Homes/TVinInternetHomes.PDF
US Census Bureau. No. 60. Households, Families, Subfamilies, and Married Couples. Online. Internet. 31 May. Available WWW: http://www.census.gov/statab/freq/00s0060.txt