Media Consolidations Impact on News Coverage and Public Opinion

Abstract

Media Consolidation: Corporate and independent News Media Coverage Based on the reading and the video, Chomsky’s analysis pays special attention on how mass media shapes public opinion and support government policies through a number of filters. The model addresses media ownership, advertising revenue, sourcing of news, flak and anti-communist ideology as the five major filters that mass media uses to shape public opinion as well as support government policies (01:36-04:00). To this effect, one can argue that Chomsky and Edward Herman’s propaganda model offers a critical framework where the target audience understands how media, despite its democratic façade subtly serves the interests of elite groups and corporate power. Through the five filters, mass media process and disseminate information shaping the content and narratives presented to the public which influences what the public perceives as news thus shaping their opinion accordingly. While considering media consolidation, it is open that this trend has led a number of large corporations to dominate ownership of the media outlets thus controlling information flow (02:50-3:26). Unfortunately, such consolidation has profound implications for the diversity of viewpoints in regard to a range of issues that the mainstream news covers and release to the public. This is because, the corporate-owned media outlets remains driven by interests and motives of the shareholder thus prioritizing news and issues that are non-controversial or those that aligns with the interests of the corporate advertisers or owners. In such a case, the public opinion will remain manipulated by such selfish interest. For instance, while comparing corporate v. independent news coverage; there is always a loud difference in emphasis and perspective. What does this mean? In most cases, corporate media downplay critical investigations opting for news that maintain a status quo while independent media mostly covers general stories like social justice, among other areas...