Diversity In Ownership

Pattern number within this pattern set: 
307
Ryan Gilbert
Problem: 

Today media corporations argue that when a company is able to monopolize a market, they can provide a more diverse array of cultures and voices than if that media landscape was broken into independently owned outlets. To use radio as a simple example, executives claim that when a corporation owns the majority of a market, the number of different formats increases dramatically. While this is often true, it has nothing to do with diversity of access to the airwaves.

Context: 

In the consolidating world of corporate mass media, large companies are touting mergers and monopolistic ownership practices as being conducive to diversity of programming and community representation in broadcasting. This claim of diversity is a facade that circumvents and ignores the idea of true community access.

Discussion: 

Our media and information systems do not exist in a vacuum from the capitalist structure. Because you must either own or hold stakes in a news or entertainment company to have any semblance of control over its content, the rich control our news and entertainment. While community-operated media does exist in nearly every city, its saturation and distribution into the communities is extremely low because of financial restrictions. The news and entertainment offered by these resources are vastly diverse from the corporate-owned outlets, often representing conflicting accounts and stories. Because the conflicting programming often represents the viewpoints of a different social class than of that which owns the corporations, this programming rarely makes it into the mass media. The corporate owners claim they can provide an adequate diversity of community voice, when in truth the diversity they provide is severely limited by their moneyed interests.

Solution: 

The absolute only way to ensure a diverse media in a class society is by ensuring diversity of ownership. Ownership is the final control on content and distribution, and a non-diverse ownership will continue to protect a non-diverse array of interests. For this reason, ownership diversity is the first step in bringing about community voice and access in our media.

Pattern status: 
Released