Global Media Reality Check

MIT's Benjamin Compaine has an excellent piece in Foreign Policy rebutting claims that the media are getting more concentrated, that corporate bean counters are killing "good" journalism, that media coverage drives foreign policy, etc., etc., etc.

He even takes on the popular notion that regulating the media is the only way to safeguard that phoniest of reified abstractions, "the public interest." He writes in part:

…relaxing broadcast regulation may expand competition. When News Corp. put together a fourth network in the United States in 1986, the timing was not random. It followed two regulatory decisions: the Federal Communications Commission raised the limit on local licenses that a single firm could own from seven to twelve and waived a rule that kept TV networks from owning their programming. The first change allowed News Corp. to assemble a core of stations in larger markets that gave it a viable base audience, and the second sanctioned News Corp.'s purchase of 20th Century Fox, with its television production studio. Fox was thus able to launch the first successful alternative to the Big Three in 30 years. Its success also paved the way for three other large media players to initiate networks.