NEWS INCORPORATED: Corporate Media Ownership and Its Threat to Democracy

The last decade has seen a blossoming of Internet and cable television news sources—and, say many critics, a deterioration in the quality of reporting. The problem, according to Cohen and his left-leaning colleagues, is the ever-increasing concentration of media outlets owned by only a "handful" of massive corporations. In 1983, for example, a seasoned media insider estimated that 50 companies controlled 90% of America's news diet; by 2000, that number had plummeted to six. While Republicans and Democrats both take issue with what they consider a bias in news coverage, the core of this book's argument is that the system is too top-heavy, and that the corporations that own the news organizations wield too much control. For example, there's the case in which a Fox TV executive defends the spiking of an exposé on agricultural product provider Monsanto with the assertion that "we paid $3 billion for these stations; we'll decide what the news is." The contributors to this fine and serious-minded volume (which include MSNBC columnist Eric Alterman, Mother Jones publisher Jay Harris and former FCC chair Reed F. Hundt) exhaustively diagnose the problem of corporate-owned media from a variety of angles and, to their credit, don't hold back on addressing the obvious dilemma: what to do about it? (They suggest everything from disseminating news through Web logs to writing congresspersons to put pressure on the FCC.) Photos. (Feb.)