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BEN
BAGDIKIAN The
Media
Monopoly
by Ben
Bagdikian
(Boston:
Beacon
Press,
1992
[1983]).
Easily the
most
famous
book among
media
scholars
in the
last 23
years.
Ridiculed
as
"alarmist"
when it
first came
out, it is
today
praised as
a
masterpiece
for the
unerring
accuracy
of its
predictions.
Bagdikian,
"the
dean of
American
journalism,"
warned
that
deregulation
of the
media
under
Reagan's
FCC was
leading to
corporate
ownership
and
monopolization
of the
media.
These
parent
corporations
are
conservative
and highly
active in
lobbying
Washington,
despite
the
media's
reputation
for being
"liberal."
Since
1983, the
number of
corporations
controlling
media have
shrunk
from 50 to
20, with
no sign of
stopping.
Once the
media
monopoly
is
complete,
information
in this
country
will be
centralized
and we
will have
effectively
abandoned
a free
press. predicting that by the 1990s, a half-dozen giant firms will control most of our media. In the process, the usual democratic expectation for the media -- diversity of ownership and ideas -- has disappeared as the goal of official policy and, worse, as a daily experience of a generation of American readers and viewers. Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly, 1993
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