A Summary of Bagdikian's Book Called The Media Monoply

      The Media Monoply, Ben H. Bagdikian, 4th Edition, 1992, Beacon Press, Boston. The author outlines the fact that much of the media has been merging into or has been bought up by huge corporations. The media are called "vital instruments" that, he says, are "needed by major corporations to maintain their economic or political power." (Page 151.) The author finds the media too supportive of "businessmen," "wars," the "status quo," the "clergy," "drug companies," and tobacco companies. (Page 154.) Bagdikian seems bothered by what he says was the media's role in transfering Procter & Gamble's promotion of "Christian religion, patriotism, and profit making." (Page 155.) He gives examples of what he considers to be biases caused by media owned by large corporations. Examples of media biases against liberal or far left ideas are given. (Pages 52, 129, 130, 162, 205, 216.) Examples of the same against conservative or far right ideas are not given, but he does state that it happens. (Page .)

      When explaining that media heads exerted power over President Richard Nixon, Bagdikian does not find that conservative ideas were being thwarted, but rather that President Nixon caused grave "depredations on freedom of the press" by allowing for a Congressional bill which allowed for media chains to have local monopolies. (Pages 90-101.) A group which sponsored a news conference by Exxon is called "right-wing." (Page 65.) Nowhere in the book does Bagdikian point to the fact that politicians, all getting money from corporations, make statements denouncing fascism, but he does show concern that General Electric financed and allowed Ronald Reagan to make "speeches against communism, labor unions, social security, public housing, [and] the income tax," and that GE allowed Reagan "to augment the corporations' support of right-wing political movements." (Page 209.) It is implied that President Ronald Reagan bought his presidency, but no such claim is made of a Democratic president. (Page 191.)

      Bagdikian seems to place Republican politics as far right as communistic politics is to the left when he finds it problematic that the president of Warner Publishing, during the 1970's, defended and published President Richard Nixon's memoirs, but cancelled the printing of Noam Chomsky's Counter-Revolutionary Violence. (Pages 31-35.) That Chomsky book has a theme in line with the Chomsky book outlined on the present web site, namely What Uncle Sam Really Wants. Bagdikian equates media taboos in the US with media taboos in the Soviet Union. (Page 155.) Bagdikian shows concern when he says that two heads of large publishers made Billy Graham famous in the 1950's so that the preacher could preach anti-communism, but Bagdikian does not mention publicity of statements made by preachers against fascism or Nazism. (Page 42-43.) Bagdikian says that one of the publishing heads, William Randolph Hearst, helped to popularize Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist crusade of the 1950's, but Bagdikian does not mention media coverage of crusades of more recent decades, such as anti-racism, anti-white-racial-supremacy, and anti-fascism. (Page 43-44.)

      Bagdikian says the large corporate controlled media have played a part in allowing large corpations to pollute (pages 48-49), but he does not point out the major media's roles over the decades in exposing corporate polluters or in helping to drive public opinion against corporations on issues even in cases in which corporate views were presented inadequately by media. He says that the American news media grant "most favored treatment to corporate life" but ignored are "minorities, blue-collar workers, the lower middle class, [and] the poor." (Pages 47-48.) He says that the large corporate media have let racial problems fester until they exploded (pages 49, 181, 214), and that Ganette newspaper did not print black claims of discrimination (page 76). However, the author does not point out examples of the media exposing racial or ethnic discrimination, and neither does he give examples of media helping to drive public opinion in favor of racial preference policies favoring non-whites or non-Asians. The author does not point out that when one considers media coverage which occurred over recent decades and which concerned itself with the poverty existing in predominantly black or predominantly Latino neighborhoods, much of the coverage lifted some or all fundamental responsibility off of black or Latino individuals living with incomes below poverty level or in a lower-middle range and transferred it onto the government or whites.

      The author seems to be bothered by what he says is "periodic" criticism of "government, schools, universities, and nonestablished political movements." (Page 47.) Bagdikian seems to find it disturbing when he reports that The New Yorker stopped writing anti-Vietnam-War articles when the magazine found that such stories had lowered the average age of its readership, thus the average consumer power of its readership, and finally resulting in the reduction of advertising dollars coming in. (Pages 108-113, 117.) He writes that William Randolph Hearst pushed for the Spanish-American War and that the publisher was "irresponsible" for doing so. (Page 126.) He says that Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and E. W. Scripps considered themselves socialists or progressives who were helping "the great mass of the people" against "the wealthy few." However, Bagdikian describes most newspapers of the late nineteenth century as "moderate or conservative." (Pages 126-127.)

      Bagdikian closes the book with a call for an "international convention to set standards for the modern mass media." (Page 250.) He says that there must be "freedom of choice in the mass media" in order to sustain political freedoms. (Page 252.) He includes "conservative" ideas along with "liberal" and "radical" ideas when saying that social ideas used to be covered in the press in a better way before the rise of large media conglomerates. (Page 125.) The fact that politicians cannot be pigeonholed by labels is slanted leftward by Bagdikian as follows: some "Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists." (Page 175.) Bagidikian does say on a single occasion, however, that the media too quickly judges ideas "beyond the status quo" as either "communist on the left or fascist on the right." (Page 205.)

Posted at http://home.att.net/~phosphor on August 13, 1999.

Last editing was posted August 23, 1999.

Go back to list of artists awarded GRAMMY's.

Go to homepage.