Critical Analysis - Journalistic Markets

Ben Bagdikian, a journalist of Armenian decent published ‘The Media Monopoly’ in 1983, which has since been renamed ‘The New Media Monopoly’.

Ben fears that by 2010 there will only be five major owners controlling the media market in North America.

This is due to wealthy owners merging or buying out smaller corporations for financial gain.

An example of this in today’s journalistic market is media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch who owns the News Corporation.

News International is the main UK subsidiary of News Corporation, which owns: ‘The Times’, ‘The Sunday Times’, ‘The Sun’ and ‘The News of the World’.

News Corporation owns a variety of other media outlets, including BSkyB, Fox Broadcasting Company and Sky Italia, which currently has four million subscribers.

In 2005 News Corporation’s assets were valued at $55 billion, whilst in 2004 its newspaper revenues increased from £686 million to £831 million.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail and General Trust are one of the largest media companies in the UK. In 2004 the Daily Mail and General Trust made profits of £234 million resulting in a turnover of £2.1 billion.

he company currently owns: ‘The Daily Mail’, ‘Mail on Sunday’ and the ‘Evening Standard’.

Northern and Shell PLC, founded in 1974 by Richard Desmond, owns UK based newspapers: ‘The Daily Express’ and ‘The Daily Star’ as well as popular lifestyle magazine ‘OK!’.

Northern and Shell plc was once notorious for publishing dozens of pornographic titles, prior to their sale to Remnant Media in 2004.

In 2004 the company made a turnover of £20 million, making profits of £1.4 million.

Dominant media ownerships have reaches throughout the world, but even smaller single title companies can have their titles bought in many countries around the world. This is thanks to political, economic and technological factors that have resulted in new globalised cultures.

Globalisation is not a new occurrence. European imperialism resulted in successful world markets by the end of the 19th Century.

Since then this process has become much faster, due to the factors mentioned above.

In the book ‘Media in Global Context’ (1997) Annabelle Sneberry-Mohammedi felt that globalisation is helping aid developing countries and in doing so has created a hyperglobalist market, suggesting that these nations are seeing a disappearance of their state.

In my view this could eventually seep through to the rest of the world, leading potentially to a world governed by stereotypical media values.

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