Throughout all of the EOTO presentations, there were many new ideas and concepts I had never heard of. The one that stood out to me the most was Ava Daniel's presentation about Media Consolidation. I already knew that all media was owned by big companies. However, I did not know that it was only owned by 6 companies. The six companies are General Electric, Newscorp, At&t(Time Warner), CBS, Disney, and Viacom.
During her delivery, she stated the several problems presented to the mass population because of the poor distribution. The biggest one is, it limits the country of the news that they see. If we can only go to six outlets to receive media the messages shown become biased. So most current events we will only get to see one side of the story limiting our knowledge of what is actually going on in the world. People are forced to go out and find other sources of media not owned by these stations, but not all people are willing to do this. A lot of minority opinions will not be represented on these outlets.
Journalists will not be able to state their own opinion working for these corporations. It is understandable that these businesses have an overall image and message they want to portray to their audience. Journalists who have dreams to work in these stations will be forced to portray this certain theme to the audience.
There were some pros to this problem though. The companies that distribute the media are not owned by
the government at all, meaning it weakens the government's power. Also, if people have an opposing opinion from the government it can be stated on TV. The consolidation is cost-efficient as well. Bringing multiple sources under a big umbrella limits the cost of certain things. Smaller companies get to keep their brand and the parent company takes on other costs, which does not end up being that much for them.
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