Big Media Won't Bring Good Things to Life

BIG MEDIA WON'T BRING GOOD THINGS TO LIFE
[SOURCE: Denver Post, AUTHOR: Cindy Rodriguez]
[Commentary] General Electric owns NBC, MS-NBC, Telemundo, Bravo, the Sci Fi Channel, Universal Pictures and large stakes in dozens of other media companies. Its television division produces "The Today Show," "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," "Dateline NBC," "Meet the Press" and "Hardball with Chris Matthews," to name a few. The media conglomerate made $157.2 billion in profits last year and reaches 99 percent of all U.S. households. It controls the news you watch, which has become kinder and gentler to government and corporations, while focusing on sex scandals, manhunts, and the big crime story of the day. That's the mantra of media giants, who are more concerned with profits than educating viewers. GE, just like Disney and Time Warner, are monsters with insatiable appetites. They want to control more media and would if there weren't Federal Communications Commission rules prohibiting big media from getting bigger. All that could change if the FCC has its way this winter and allows corporations to own more media outlets in the same city. It's not freedom when the media parrot what government officials tell them, which is what you can expect most of the time on TV news. Granted, newspaper reporters are more tenacious, but with stockholders demanding high profit margins it's a matter of time before they whittle away the staffs of newspapers to the point where we become glorified transcribers for government officials. If you care about who controls what you see on TV and want to stop big media from concentrating even more power, it's time to speak out.
http://www.denverpost.com/rodriguez