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Mainstream media is the term often used to describe the
collective group of big TV, radio and newspapers in the United
States. Mainstream implies that the news being produced is for the
benefit and enlightenment of the mainstream population-the majority
of people living in the US.
Mainstream media include a number of
communication mediums that carry almost all the news and information
on world affairs that most Americans receive. The word media is
plural, implying a diversity of news sources.
However, mainstream media no longer produce news for the
mainstream population-nor should we consider the media as plural.
Instead it is more accurate to speak of big media in the US today as
the corporate media and to use the term in the singular tense-as it
refers to the singular monolithic top-down power structure of
self-interested news giants.
A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished
conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten
big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118
people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten
big media giants.
This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate
size university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the
corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In
fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on
boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post
both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while
the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members
who share a seat on Pepsi.
It is kind of like one big happy family
of interlocks and shared interests.
The following are but a few of
the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the
US:
- New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and
Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi
- Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun &
Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody's
- Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block,
Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels
- The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar,
Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering
Plough, Wells Fargo
- News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments
- GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco,
Coca-Cola, Dell, GM, Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan,
Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble
- Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee
Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples,
Yahoo
- Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle,
Lafarge North America
- Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman
Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi
- AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder,
Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton
Can we trust the news editors at the Washington Post to be fair
and objective regarding news stories about Lockheed-Martin defense
contract over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe that ABC will
conduct critical investigative reporting on Halliburton's
sole-source contracts in Iraq?
If we believe the corporate media
give us the full un-censored truth about key issues inside the
special interests of American capitalism, then we might feel that
they are meeting the democratic needs of mainstream America.
However
if we believe - as increasingly more Americans do- that corporate
media serves its own self-interests instead of those of the people,
than we can no longer call it mainstream or refer to it as plural.
Instead we need to say that corporate media is corporate America,
and that we the mainstream people need to be looking at alternative
independent sources for our news and information.
Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State
University and director of Project Censored a media research
organization.
www.projectcensored.org Sonoma State University students Bridget
Thornton and Brit Walters conducted the research on the media
interlocks.
www.commondreams.org
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