In the midst of today’s major global transformations of economies, cultures, and societies, the best way to monitor the impact of transnational economies is through vigorous news attention and lively public discussion. Clearly, however, this process is being hampered. Starting in the 1990s, for example, news organizations, concerned about the bottom line, severely cut back the number of reporters assigned to cover international developments. This occurred—especially after 9/11—just as global news became more critical than ever to an informed citizenry.

We live in a society in which often superficial or surface consumer concerns, stock market quotes, and profit aspirations, rather than broader social issues, increasingly dominate the media agenda. In response, critics have posed some key questions: As consumers, do we care who owns the media as long as most of us have a broad selection of products? Do we care who owns the media as long as multiple voices seem to exist in the market?

The Effects of Media Consolidation on Democracy

Merged and multinational media corporations will continue to control more aspects of production and distribution. Of pressing concern is the impact of mergers on news operations, particularly the influence of large corporations on their news subsidiaries. These companies have the capacity to use major news resources to promote their products and determine national coverage.

Because of the growing consolidation of mass media, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain a public debate on economic issues. From a democratic perspective, the relationship of our mass media system to politics has been highly dysfunctional. Politicians in Washington, D.C., have regularly accepted millions of dollars in contributions from large media conglomerates and their lobbying groups to finance their campaigns. This changed in 2008 when the Obama campaign raised much of its financing from small donors. Still, corporations got a big boost from the Supreme Court in early 2010 in the Citizens United case. In a five-to-four vote, the court “ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections,” the New York Times reported.32 Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.” The ruling overturned two decades of precedents that had limited direct corporate spending on campaigns, including the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (often called the McCain-Feingold Act, after the senators who sponsored the bill), which placed restrictions on buying TV and radio campaign ads.

As unfettered corporate political contributions count as “political speech,” some corporations are experiencing backlash (or praise) once their customers discover their political positions. For example, in 2012, fast-food outlet Chick-fil-A’s charitable foundation “was revealed to be funneling millions to groups that oppose gay marriage and, until recently, promoted gay ‘cure’ therapies,” resulting in a firestorm of criticism but also a wave of support from others, the Daily Beast reported. In the same year, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife donated $2.5 million of their own money to support a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State, gaining praise and criticism from some Amazon customers.33

Politicians have often turned to local television stations, spending record amounts during each election period to get their political ads on the air. In 2004, spending on the federal elections in the United States totaled $4.14 billion, with a large portion of that going to local broadcasters for commercials for congressional candidates and (in swing states like Ohio, Iowa, and Florida) for presidential candidates. In 2008, spending on federal elections topped $5.28 billion, and in 2012, it surpassed $6.28 billion.34 But although local television stations have been happy to get part of the ever-increasing bounty of political ad money, the actual content of their news broadcasts has become less and less substantial, particularly when it comes to covering politics.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reported that from 2005 to 2013, the amount of airtime given to weather, traffic, and sports on local news broadcasts expanded from 32 percent to 40 percent. Meanwhile, over that same period, the amount of time spent on politics and government stories slipped from 7 percent to 3 percent. The study’s authors noted, “For some time, television consultants have been advising local television stations that viewers aren’t interested in politics and government, and it appears that advice is being taken.”35

Although television consultants might have concluded that local viewers aren’t interested in politics and government, political consultants are only increasing the onslaught of political television ads every campaign season. Thus there is little news content to provide a counterpoint to all the allegations that might be hurled in the barrage of political ads.

The Media Reform Movement

Robert McChesney and John Nichols described the state of concern about the gathering consolidation of mainstream media power: “‘Media Reform’ has become a catch-all phrase to describe the broad goals of a movement that says consolidated ownership of broadcast and cable media, chain ownership of newspapers, and telephone and cable-company colonization of the Internet pose a threat not just to the culture of the Republic but to democracy itself.”36 While our current era has spawned numerous grassroots organizations that challenge media to do a better job for the sake of democracy, there has not been a large outcry from the general public for the kinds of concerns described by McChesney and Nichols. There is a reason for that. One key paradox of the Information Age is that for such economic discussions to be meaningful and democratic, they must be carried out in the popular media as well as in educational settings. Yet public debates and disclosures about the structure and ownership of the media are often not in the best economic interests of media owners.

Still, in some places, local groups and consumer movements are trying to address media issues that affect individual and community life. Such movements—like the National Conference for Media Reform—are usually united by geographic ties, common political backgrounds, or shared concerns about the state of the media. The Internet has also made it possible for media reform groups to form globally, uniting around such issues as contesting censorship or monitoring the activities of multinational corporations. The movement was also largely responsible for the success of preserving “net neutrality,” which prevents Internet service providers from censoring or penalizing particular Web sites and online services (see Chapter 2).

With this reform victory and the 2008–09 economic crisis, perhaps we are more ready than ever to question some of the hierarchical and undemocratic arrangements of what McChesney, Nichols, and other reform critics call “Big Media.” Even in the face of so many media mergers, the general public today seems open to such examinations, which might improve the global economy, improve worker conditions, and serve the public good. By better understanding media economics, we can play a more knowledgable role in critiquing media organizations and evaluating their impact on democracy.