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56 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Critical but Uneven Manifesto on the Corporate Media, July 8, 2004
This review is from: The New Media Monopoly: A Completely Revised and Updated Edition With Seven New Chapters (Paperback)
This is the newly updated version of Bagdikian's classic tome *The Media Monopoly* which first appeared in 1983 and was prescient enough to reach six editions by 2000. While dismissed as alarmism, with each edition of the book the problem of corporate media consolidation became worse, and now we are down to just five mega-conglomerates controlling almost all media content, and subsequently most political and social thought among the American public. Bagdikian is an expert commentator on the effects this has on popular democracy and social justice, and the problem has become so bad that it became necessary to create a completely revised text, rather than just a "new" edition of the old book with some tacked-on updates. This powerful manifesto by Bagdikian sometimes suffers from a lack of focus. One frequent weakness is his tendency to opinionate on the social issues he uses as examples of poor mainstream media coverage. Examples include homelessness and smoking, in which Bagdikian forgets his analysis of media control issues and embarks on long expostulations of his own personal politics. A more general issue is his tendency to drift into political science as applied to modern corporate conservatism and crony capitalism. These are subjects in which Bagdikian is certainly proficient, and they are the root causes of the horrific state of American media. However, Bagdikian frequently drifts from useful media analysis to occasionally cranky political tirades that detract from the focus and power of the book's main points. And even though this is a completely new edition, much of the text has still been copied verbatim from the old versions of the original book, leading to odd appearances of stories and examples from the 1960s and 70s, some of which have little modern relevance. The new chapter on the internet gives the impression that Bagdikian is barely familiar with that realm, as he gives remedial introductions to concepts that most of us are long familiar with. Other writers and analysts have now taken the issue of corporate media control and produced outstanding treatises that surpass Bagdikian's groundbreaking work (I especially recommend Robert W. McChesney). However, Bagdikian is still the originator and when he's focused, his insights into the social and political damage wrought by our corporate media are still powerful and prescient. [~doomsdayer520~]
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The production of "public opinion" in the 21st century, February 13, 2009
This review is from: The New Media Monopoly: A Completely Revised and Updated Edition With Seven New Chapters (Paperback)
Whoever wondered, like me, what happened to quality journalism, should read this book. After Reagan won the presidential election in 1980, conservatives began attacking the Fairness Doctrine. "The Fairness Doctrine required stations to devote a reasonable time to discussions of serious public issues and allowed equal time for opposing views to be heard." That seems like a pretty good definition of quality journalism to me. How can you ever imagine editors to defend a view contrary to their own professionalism? This is only possible in a world where media conglomerates grew so big that they don't like other big corporations being attacked. The author says : "Before newspapers and their conglomerates began buying broadcast stations, in 1969 when the Supreme Court ruled that the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional, the majority of newspapers editorialized in favour of the Fairness Doctrine. But by 1984, when newspapers had become part of the growing conglomerates that owned both newspapers and broadcast stations, those newspapers had reversed their positions and editorialized against the Fairness Doctrine. At least 84 percent of newspapers editorials then argued that the Fairness Doctrine should no longer be required."
When I was a small boy, I was still taught at school that the press is a warrant for our democracy. I suppose they don't teach that anymore. The free press doesn't exist any longer. The media are now part of the establishment. Five media conglomerates own the most newspapers, magazines, publishers, movie studio's and radio- and television channels, and the author calls those by their names : "These five conglomerates are Time Warner, by 2003 the largest media firm in the world; The Walt Disney Company; Murdoch's News Corporation, based in Australia; Viacom; and Bertelsmann, based in Germany. Today, none of the dominant media companies bother with dominance merely in a single medium. Their strategy has been to have major holdings in all the media, from newspapers to movie studios. This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history".
Welcome to the "democracy" of the 21st century. Whoever is interested in a historical perspective of the brainwashing of the American people that started in the 20th century should also read Alex Carey Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (History of Communication).
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and Informative, January 13, 2007
This review is from: The New Media Monopoly: A Completely Revised and Updated Edition With Seven New Chapters (Paperback)
With "The New Media Monopoly", Ben Bagdikian delivers one of the best books on the modern state of the media ever written. He describes in fascinating detail the events that have surrounded the growth in the concentration of media ownership. Unlike some other texts covering the same topic, Bagdikian's writing is very readable and captivating. However, he does seem to provide more anecdotal evidence to support his observations than hard numbers. I would highly recommend accompanying this book with Robert McChesney's "The Global Media", which covers basically the same trends, but provides more hard data. McChesney also focuses more on the larger business dealings of media corporations that have lead to their consolidation rather than Bagdikian's typically smaller examples.
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