I've been neglecting my blog lately, not for lack of ideas--I've got plenty of them--but more because I've been so busy with work that I haven't had the energy to write here. But I came across a site called Stopbigmedia.com, the other day and it intrigued me enough to write about it.
When I was a Journalism student in the late 1970s, one of my professors assigned the class a book by Fred W. Friendly (the same man who was Edward R. Murrow's producer in the 1950s). In the book, the name of which escapes me now, Friendly discussed the danger of consolidating media ownership into too few hands. In the late 1970s, that meant around 50 corporate owners. In the modern day, that is down to a precious few, and this site aims to stop further consolidation.
While I can't speak for this particular blog, I do applaud the sentiment of what they are attempting to do, and I hope that readers of my blog will contact their legislators and encourage them to prevent further consolidation of the media. One only hopes that blogs, podcasts and community journalism can help combat the rising tide of corporate media, but the more these big companies control the news (and entertainment), the more likely they are to control the flow of information and that is never a good thing for a free society.
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