For many years,
there have been laws limiting the size of media companies,
because these companies control the flow of information.
Unless you live in a cave, you know those rules are the
source of a fierce public battle. For business reasons,
media companies want the rules changed so they can get bigger.
Many advocacy groups are opposed to changing the laws. For
a busy parent, it's tempting to ignore the issue of media
conglomeration because it is complicated and technical.
After all, what does one family have to do with the business
practices of a gigantic transnational media giant?
The answer to that question is precisely the reason that
parents should care about conglomeration. The larger the
media companies grow, the less they are capable of responding
to the pleas, protests, and suggestions of parents. When
huge corporations own newspapers, TV channels, movie studios,
and cable TV service providers, it's hard to believe they'll
pay attention when parents raise concerns about the racy
language and chilling violence on the latest prime time
TV show. Not only is the size of the media giants intimidating,
their cross-marketing business plans are extremely powerful.
In the face of these interlinking media strategies, where
seductive messages come from all sides at once, one disgruntled
parent can feel like a bug on the windshield of a Mack Truck.
Media conglomeration means one company owns a large number
of media outlets of different types. One of the controversial
rules concerns the number of TV stations that a company
can own in any one city. Imagine if one company owned every
station in town. It's not difficult to see that family media
choices would be limited. Even if every channel made an
effort to be family-friendly-an unlikely scenario in an
age when the media believe that sex and violence keep audiences
in their seats-parents would still be faced with fewer choices
for their children. Simply choosing good media over bad
becomes much more difficult when only a handful of companies
decide what those choices are.
I admit that the media giants can be responsible for some
of the most family-friendly media choices out there. Disney,
for example, is synonymous with great movies for kids. In
the case of one media conglomerate at least, making money
can coexist with paying attention to the values of parents.
But not all the huge media corporations always see it this
way. And in Disney's case, some of its subdivisions produce
entertainment that many parents would find wildly inappropriate
for children.
As parents, we need to tell our elected officials that we
care about media choices. And we can tell the giant media
companies, as loudly as possible, that we want them to pay
attention to us. Lately, a solution to the downside of giant
media is being offered by the government in the form of
local control. That's a good sign. The more control we have
over the media outlets
David Walsh, Ph.D. is the founder of the
MediaWise Movement, a program of National Institute on Media
and the Family (www.mediafamily.org).
He has written seven books and is a frequent guest on national
radio and television.
