MSM: Not From Concentrate

Matt "Mittens" Yglesias ponders a recent editorial in The Nation that tries to straddle the line between stoking anxiety about media concentration and… uh… acknowledging obvious reality. Domestic media have become less concentrated over the last decade, and (more importantly) the Net means it's easier and far more common to get the perspective of foreign media. And as Matt notes, the absolute amount of concentration is less important than which outlets are concentrated. That some one big corporation controls a cable news channel and Cat Fancy and eight bridal magazines, while the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are independent strikes me as rather less ominous than if the reverse were true. Media analyst Ben Compaine deflated media monopoly mania in one of Reason's more terrifyingly illustrated cover stories back in 2004.