Bagdikian

 Based on Bagdikian, the concentration of all media within the hands of a few powerful firms limits diversity of opinion and also the democratic distribution of ideas and information, of the result of crippling real free speech. Only distinct ownership on the media can guarantee diversity of opinion.

Another key concept on the book is that media now exists solely for the functionality of selling goods, consequently the advertising and marketing dollar, not the dissemination of news, may be the principal motive. Bagdikian elements out that newspapers and magazines, for example, "do not want merely readers; they want affluent readers" who can purchase the advertised goods (113). The same holds actual in television in which executives "desire to preserve as large an audience as possible for as lengthy as feasible for the functionality of selling products and services" (183).

In discussing the large Gannett news chain, Bagdikian claims that "profit squeezes the indifference to local news stands out as the norm" (83). This leads on the claim that print media (and other media) are not interested in printing the simple fact or important issues. Consequently "fluff," not genuine or hard news is what readers and audiences of TV news shows receive (136, 177). Bagdikian finds a real danger in "the increasing insertion of the news company's own firm goals as a option factor in what news the readers are going to be permitted to determine or not see" (xxv). The overriding trouble cited within the book.

The book's major strength is its depiction of how and why the media functions since it does, and its impact and significance on consumers and society. Overall, it is a gloomy, ominous picture. The weakness is some repetition and Bagdikian's lack of possible solutions, as expressed from the final chapter, "To Undo Excess" even though he does hint that the media monopoly may be the inevitable result from the free company system. Although the book is somewhat outdated in its information, the author's ideas and warnings are even now timely. Bagdikian has good qualifications. A highly respected media critic, he has won almost each top prize in American journalism, for example the Pulitzer Prize, and was professor and former Dean in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

 

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