The Real Consequences of Media Consolidation
Posted April 16th, 2009 by Jordan Berg
There are profound and immediate consequences of the current crisis of media ownership, in which only a few companies control nearly everything we read, watch and hear.
As corporations have increased their media holdings, news has become a commodity, and a profit-driven bottom line has replaced a dedication to real journalism. We are reminded daily of this breach of contract with our democracy when the corporate media routinely falters in providing the public with hard-hitting, quality journalism.
More profound is the way media consolidation is endangering our citizens directly, whether it is the media’s failure to ask tough questions about the Iraq war, report on the harmful effects of sentencing laws, or provide non-sensationalistic coverage of natural disasters that gives the public pertinent public safety information.
The Seattle Medium, a local, independent newspaper, highlighted one particular way Big Media is harming citizens: by failing to report on missing persons based on race.
The article’s investigation shows, “…national media operations often fail to present what is in fact a very diverse missing persons population,” instead focusing primarily on white victims.
Why the preferential treatment? The corporate news media approach missing persons as another news segment that will draw advertising revenue. In other words, only a certain segment of missing persons is viewed as important enough to cover.
Take, for example, Latasha Norman, a black Jackson State University honor student who went missing for more than two weeks in late 2007, and barely got the media’s attention. It was only after her body was found in Greenville, Miss., two weeks later that CNN picked up the story (only to quickly drop it).
At the same time, Stacey Peterson, a Caucasian woman who also disappeared, was becoming a household name due to constant media coverage on all the major TV stations. This is not to say that Stacey Peterson’s disappearance should not have been covered. But why weren’t both women given equal airtime when they went missing and needed the public’s eye to help find them?
The Seattle Medium’s article reported the difference between the two women was indeed race, including an ABCnews.com quote from the Jackson police chief who investigated Latasha Norman’s disappearance:
“It’s a small college in the South. It’s the daughter of simple people who maybe are not important outside of their circle, and maybe we don’t attach the same importance to them that we do for other people,” said Malcolm McMillin in the ABC article.
There are dangerous consequences when Big Media view people as commodities rather than as human beings. Instead of simply reporting on missing persons in the critical first few hours, the corporate media decide if the missing person will “play well” on TV.
What a perverse calculation: that a missing black woman is not worth mentioning because she may not get the same ratings as her white counterpart.
This disturbing trend makes it clear how important it is that we have diverse media ownership and diversity in the newsrooms. If owners and media workers were more representative of the U.S. population, missing persons who need media attention would have a voice to advocate for their inclusion.
According to studies by Free Press in 2006 and 2007, people of color make up 34 percent of the U.S. population, but own just 3 percent of all TV stations and 7.7 percent of full-power radio stations.
For many missing Americans, the ownership crisis is literally a matter of life and death. Information that is crucial to saving lives is being left out of the news cycle if it doesn’t turn a profit.
