There Is No Media Monopoly…
By many useful metrics, some offered here, the empirical reality does not support any notion that in the United States, in 2004, consumers of content via the media have fewer choices of sources or fewer choices in diversity for any type of content that has been available in the past. Other than an anecdotal story here or there, there is no suggestion that the managers of major media companies are individually or in concert fostering a political ideology or suppressing an ideology through the media properties they program. To the contrary, this paper examines and debunks numerous consolidation myths.
That's the opening of an important new paper by media scholar Ben Compaine, who wrote our January 2004 cover story on the myth of media monopoly.
The study is online here (as a pdf).
Our cover story is online here.