Concentration of media ownership limit

By：He YiPeng（Bruce）2022/4/1

Concentration of Media Ownership is the idea that most Media or Media companies are owned by a small number of Media groups or companies, resulting in a toxic and dangerous mass Media Ownership structure. I think we should look at the problem of concentration of media ownership dialectically, seeing that it can play a positive role in some aspects in the short term, but also recognizing that in the long term, it does harm to social politics, economy and culture. Therefore, we can analyze how concentration of media ownership limits the number of voices in the market from both positive and negative aspects.  

Negative: 1. Discriminate. Large media groups often increase self-censorship of their content products to meet the needs of major interest groups. For example, the Media in South Africa have gradually increased their discussions on topics of interest to urban life and consumers, while paying less attention to the poor and farmers, mainly because of their poor media consumption power. Obviously, once the media pay too much attention to their own interests or those of special groups, their independence and impartiality will inevitably be affected. 2.Spread a single point of view. Concentration of media ownership can lead powerful media linked to politicians or interest groups to spread a single political point of view, or to spread unfavourable statements against their rivals, thus threatening the pluralism of western democratic politics. Berlusconi was able to be elected as Italian prime minister for three times, although it is closely related to his campaign strategy and platform, but the media empire he owns plays a significant role in promoting his platform and suppressing public opinion on his rivals. The potential threat of media ownership concentration to western democracy is an indisputable fact. 3. Impairing the public's right to know. When media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs, these oligarchs often release information according to the wishes of major advertisers or interest groups, thus undermining the public's right to know. Journalists often find their work rejected by the media or altered beyond recognition. Because, in media practice, it is easy to appear a tendency is that any potential threat to media customers or media companies are not published; On the contrary, favorable or even exaggerated information is published immediately. At great cost to the public, and ultimately to business.  

Positive: 1. Survival of the fittest, rational allocation of resources. Perfect competition is impossible in the real media market, so it is impossible to realize pareto optimal media resource allocation. However, the moderate concentration of media ownership can not only improve the concentration of the media industry, but also promote the optimal allocation of media resources and improve the use efficiency of media resources. Improve the market competitiveness of media companies. News International's dominant position in the newspaper industry is closely related to a series of successful mergers and acquisitions. Similarly, the acquisition of Longman, Penguin, Simon Schuster and other educational publishing institutions is also an important reason why Pearson is able to establish a leading position in the educational publishing industry. 2. Improve the economic benefits of the scope. On the one hand, the concentration of media ownership is beneficial to media companies to reduce operating costs and thus improve economic benefits; On the other hand, the concentration of media ownership is beneficial for media companies to form economic advantages in scope and thus improve economic benefits. Due to the particularity of media products, scope economy exists widely in the media industry. When media companies change the products produced for a certain audience into "new products" that meet the needs of different customers of the company through the concentration of ownership, scope economy effect comes into being.  

What we need to do is not to completely restrict the ownership rules of the media, because proper concentration is good for the development of the media. What we need to do more is to strengthen the censorship of media content and maintain the diversity and diversity of the media. 1. Public interest should not be harmed. There should be specific legislation to ensure the public's right to know, and a Consumer Protection Advisory Committee could be set up to ensure the public interest. 2. Promote cross-media operation and integrated media development. For example, in Today's China, everyone can share life. With mobile phones and the Internet, it is a "we media", which expresses and delivers the desired content in the form of video, so that everyone on social networks can see it, stimulating the diversified vitality of the media market and giving citizens full freedom.