NOTES ON MEDIA CONSOLIDATION + ITS TENTACLES

When navigating the contemporary landscape of mainstream Western media, there is a tangible absence of standardized equity in rhetoric. “The media and their representatives fall all too often easy prey to outside interferences and open repression” (Dohnanyi, 2003). The most reaching platforms and publications have usurped everything from word choice to perspective, employing censorship and propaganda to impose narratives that serve less to factually inform than they do to embed a pervasively biased viewpoint in the consumer's consciousness in favor of bolstering whatever systemically segregated structures exist. Media conglomerates are “frequently criticized by groups that perceive news organizations as being biased toward special interests of the owners” (“Media Conglomerate”, 2023). It is no coincidence that corporate media exercises this dictatorial power. It is just another manifestation of strategic manipulation that stems from the oppressive enterprise of Western colonization, whose power is perpetuated by monopolizing things like information because it preserves the hierarchical social order upon which those who benefit from this rely. “Wealth and power inequalities shape what is considered newsworthy, what gets reported, and what is heard, read and watched” (Fuchs, 2018). These principles are summed up by the term media consolidation. “Concentration of media ownership, also known as media consolidation or media convergence, is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media” (“Concentration of Media”, 2023).

One facet of discrimination that is upheld by the consolidated structure of mainstream Western media is racist Islamaphobia and anti-Arab sentiment. “Dissemination of patented images of Muslims as irrational, susceptible to violence, medieval, anti-modern and incompatible to Western civilization, have been the thrust of Western media since the late 1960s” (Schwartz, 2005; Said, 1993, 1980, 1981; as cited by Bukar, 2020). It is a lens implemented to justify othering the Arab and Muslim community, as well as conflating them indiscriminately and under the umbrella of being morally and intellectually inferior and dangerous, or terrorists, consequently garnering approval for whatever kind of tactics are used against them. “This status quo or existing atmosphere can be maintained by heightening the dangers that questionable bodies could produce. In this sense, the socio-political and historical richness of the Middle East becomes reduced to an organic state – that of an intensely angry, almost child-like man that is excessively out of control and therefore dangerous” (Allouche, 2019). This tactic has been actively instituted lately regarding what has ensued in Palestine after the events of October 7th. The omnipotent corporate framework that upholds this overwhelming bias is traceable following the superficial public coverage and its word choice or stance to each consecutive executive tier of where this angle is rooted.

One merely has to follow the news paper trail from article or broadcast to company to shareholder to shareholders' vested interests and affiliations to uncover the inherent lack of autonomy anyone disseminating this information ultimately has due to who they answer to. According to Harvard University’s Index of US Mainstream Media Ownership, The Vanguard Group and BlackRock Inc. are two major shareholders of Comcast which is “The owner of NBC and MSNBC… NBC’s parent company is NBCUniversal, an umbrella company that also owns Fandango, Hulu, Universal Pictures, and Telemundo.” (2021) And, unsurprisingly “The top shareholders of Lockheed Martin are Marillyn Hewson, Daniel Akerson, Scott Greene, State Street Corp., Vanguard Group Inc., and BlackRock Inc.” (Reiff, 2022). Lockheed Martin has a legacy as one of the biggest weapons manufacturers equipping the Israeli army. “The collaboration between Lockheed Martin and Israeli industries is expected to exceed $4 billion. According to the Ministry of Defense, by the end of 2016, US$933 million worth of agreements were signed…A total of 50 aircraft are projected to be delivered by 2024.” (“Lockheed”, 2023). It is no wonder, then, that the rhetoric provided by NBC and all of the affiliated outlets would be lenient and biased with Israel regarding what is happening in Palestine. The financial interest of the corporations that dominate is in sustaining the existence of Israel.

NBC uses terms like “Hamas terror group” and refers to the events unfolding in the region as the “Israel-Hamas war” (NBC Universal Newsgroup, 2023). These terms alone impose the idea that Hamas is summed up as a terrorist organization. People who look no further than this coverage, which is made more difficult by the consolidation of Western media ownership, will likely adopt this as their understanding of the situation and assume that this is the definitive identity of Hamas and that what is happening is simply a foreign war between two parties that are isolated from the Western community. Of course, there is the complete absence of referring to Israel as a genocidal, racist, colonist, highly militarized regime, so in just this wording, there is the implication that Israel is fighting against terror, that Israel is good, and Hamas is bad.

In 1968, the Black Panther Party was also called a terrorist organization, “The director of the FBI at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, did target the Black Panthers. He called the group a terrorist organization” (Seale et. al., 2016). Suppose you dig deeper into the history behind what led to the formation of Hamas and see the abject oppression that the Palestinian people have faced for 75 years since their land was forcibly stolen from them to facilitate a violent state of Apartheid (Amnesty, 2022). In that case, it is clear that there is a context for a militarized uprising, that they had been subject to the terrorism of a military-occupied life for decades, and that what Hamas executed on October 7th was a drop in the bucket compared to what the Palestinian community has endured for ages; truly an effort to resist occupation for liberation. As it did with the Black Panther Party, The Western media reduces the resistance entity of Hamas to a group of violent individuals with no objective or logical mission by referring to it as a terrorist organization. A founder of the Black Panther Party explains, “If someone comes into your house and threatens your family and your children, you have a right to self-defense. That is basically what was, I think, misrepresented by the government and the media” (Seale et. al., 2016). This manipulation of perspective is parallel to what is happening now. Israel has practiced invading the homes of Palestinians for the entirety of its existence (Amnesty, 2022).

There exists a cyclical network of benefit between the property of the entities that already hold power. Mass media is more about money than about integrity. The shareholders of arms manufacturers benefit from media promoting a narrative that encourages decisions in favor of militarization. The money between these industries keeps funneling back into this trajectory of monopolized ownership. In a list of the top three major weapons manufacturers, including Lockheed, this article states, “As the primary suppliers of Israel's military arms, the following US arms companies may benefit in the longer term from the escalating demand for their products and technology amid concerns that the ongoing conflict may extend to other regions in the Middle East.” (Barhat, 2023). Examine the ownership and percentage of what corporations and investors have a hand in all the major industries and many patterns are laid bare. The same investors that own media companies own many other companies that all tie into this hierarchical nightmare of disparate power (“Vanguard”, 2023; “The Future”, 2021). The Vanguard Group and Blackrock Inc. have hands in all of the shared pots that converge symbiotically in the effect of fortifying Western oppression of the indigenous world.

Figure 1

Top 10 Owners of Comast Corp

See Figure 1. Vanguard Group and BlackRock are at the top of the list. Even in examining just one company, Comcast, there is the microcosmic lens of how this endless loop functions in the macrocosm. Comcast is tethered to the same elite shareholders of everything from weapons companies, mainstream news coverage, and popular food products to Uber (The Vanguard Group, 2023). “Comcast’s Xfinity is both the biggest cable internet service in the U.S. and the most-used broadband provider in the country outright, serving more than 32 million residential customers by the end of 2022.” (Papandrea et. al., 2023). Ergo, it is where the most money circulates, levitating over the masses in a small sphere of the chosen few, that is enabled by the marionette strings of power so inherent they become invisible to the very people that are the backbone of its function, obscured by the imposed necessity of mindlessly subscribing to the system in order to survive, that ultimately dictates the shape of our culture, what it is consuming both physically and psychologically and thus what the defining features of its reality will be. It is no wonder, then, that the strategy of word choice and selective access to implant opinion is seen in all of the statements released by Comcast regarding the genocide in Palestine. Israel is referred to by name, and Palestine is only referred to by the term “the Middle East”. The CEO only expresses sorrow for Israel and refers to it as a victim of terrorism. The statement does not once acknowledge the existence of Palestine. It refers to things only as a conflict, war, or act of terrorism for which this Middle Eastern entity is responsible. The site offers special access regarding the crisis:

Comcast is helping customers stay informed on the latest developments through a curated news destination on Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and Xumo devices. The destination includes quick access to live news coverage from major cable and streaming news networks, as well as links to the latest news clips on YouTube, including dedicated rows to BBC News and Sky News coverage. Just say ‘News about Israel’ into your Voice Remote to access (“Updates”, 2023)

The media is consolidated, the internet is consolidated, and the internet and media hold hands with the weapons industry. There is permeating leverage in what story gets disseminated; this is only one example of one company that is part of many, and this shows how many outlets for propaganda it has at its fingertips.

On top of this, the extent of the oppressive web goes so far that if journalists employ agency in their work, it can make them vulnerable to violent repercussions.

‘At least 1,420 journalists were beaten, harassed, abducted, received death threats or were arrested and charged by police over the past twelve months’. Not all of these reporters were killed during armed conflict. None of them had committed a criminal offense according to basic democratic standards. All of them were simply journalists carrying out their work and by doing so, becoming a disturbing nuisance for the powers-that-be! (Dohnanyi, 2003)

In the issues currently occurring in Palestine, Palestinian journalists and those reporting on the ground have been targeted and wiped out, including their families; this is a testament to the brutal depth to which this interconnected methodology of tyranny reaches. “An Al Jazeera employee has lost 22 members of his family in an Israeli air attack on the home in which they were sheltering in the Gaza Strip” (“Israeli Raid”, 2023). In context, there is no transparency or verifiable evidence to withhold under scrutiny that justifies any of the mass media narratives excusing attacks like this as being a casualty of so-called war or of targeting so-called terrorists. The only things that are proposed to vet this rhetoric are manufactured by all of the same affiliated agencies with financially traceable shared interests in upholding the Israeli state.

Social Media + Its Claws

The confines of this media consolidation extend to what pretends to be personal media in things such as Instagram. “The dominant social media platforms have concentrated ownership” (Fuchs, 2018). With Instagram, one is provided with a platform that implies a nature of autonomy and individuality. Still, in reality, everyone who shares information through it is subject to the terms upon which it operates. It is ultimately just another big corporate enterprise capable of censorship, algorithms subject to favoritism, and confined to the parameters of a rigid design in form, content, psychology, and physiology.

The centralized ownership of these companies (from which users are excluded), combined with the huge market share of users the two companies hold and the fact that both platforms are important news sources, results in the circumstance that ownership also means control over algorithms that determine news sources for a significant part of the population. Both algorithms are intransparent; they are corporate secrets. As capitalist companies, Google and Facebook want to protect themselves from competition (Fuchs, 2018)

Social media requires the population to invest in things like smartphones and laptops, which are also products that belong to the corporate monopoly. Under the guise of individuality or freedom for self-expression, these platforms still facilitate all of the practices of consumerism, materialism, and capitalism that uphold the oppression of the very people participating in the platform because they necessitate the consumption of products provided by these systems as well as promote the ideals that perpetuate their power, thereby reinforcing the hierarchy that is central to the concentrated influence of corporate enterprise. Moreover, this is carried out strategically with both covert and overt maneuvers of psychological manipulation.

The format of social media consists of engaging with visual, auditory, and tactile input. This “media’ is delivered in an LED-lit stream accessed from a touchscreen, on a pocket-sized device physically reachable with habituated compulsion, saturated with advertising, and costs in and of itself hundreds of dollars to purchase and maintain the use of with internet and data subscriptions. All of this combined has the effect of a successfully controlled populace, whether under the thumb of material desire or the addictive nature of the dopamine-inducing experience that is the formulated experience of social media (Haynes, 2018). The billions of people using social media daily comprise a culture with its head stuck in the constricted dimensions of this particular environment and its effects.

The advertising social media contains is not only direct in marketing purchasable products, which in and of themselves feed consumer capitalism, but also covertly pervasive in that the format cultivates the advertisement of entire concepts, mindsets, and behaviors that reflect the institutionalized forces of oppression in yet another manifestation.

With the accolades a selfie receives alone, this platform manages to stimulate egocentricity and superficiality by way of prioritizing an image of one’s face. The effects do not end there; this preoccupies the general consciousness with the concept of the face being important, and this importance, in turn, embeds the collective with the desire to invest in the face, which encourages the buying of products of all kinds, from plastic surgery to makeup to apps that airbrush.

The use of beauty algorithms by every social media site is intentional. Beauty algorithms were made to make us insecure about ourselves so that we will need assistance to “perfect” ourselves. As Joshi Naveen explains in “What AI is doing in the beauty and cosmetic industry,” beauty algorithms help companies to increase their sales and profits (“The Beauty”, 2022)

On top of this, the most prevalent face in the algorithms is determined by whatever popularity exists that is dictated by societal beauty norms per the criteria of this corporately run, monopolized system, so the constant reminder of a standard of beauty determined by one group becomes an unavoidable facet of the average person’s individual experience.

One of the many problems with messaging like this is its disproportionate effect on how people of color, particularly women of color, see themselves. Because of the history of colonial beauty standards being imposed on non-white, non-European women, there are racially problematic implications to algorithmically promoting a thin, short, upturned nose as an “ideal” nose, for example (Yaseen, 2021)

This magnifies the consideration of beauty through a very curated lens, which exacerbates the presence of face value, upholds the discriminatory criterion of Western beauty ideals, and distracts from a collective engagement with categories of society that contain more depth, require less materialism, and could diminish the beast attacking self-esteem by inserting value centered around appearance. Not only this, but society consequently is so involuntarily distracted by this immersive matrix of subliminal dictation that endorses materialism, consumerism, egocentrism, seperatism, etc. that it thus strengthens the grip of these isms on the individual and collective modus operandi to the extent that it disarms the potential for truly existing outside of it.

Even if the content of a post is intended to inform or surpass the superficiality of this kind of outlet, even if it is not a face deemed worthy of circulation by the mechanisms of the racially biased inventions of the corporate conglomerate, it is still competing with the advertisement of all of these other things and isms. It is still condensed to a small box in a grid of images highly reliant on appearance to garner attention or vy for the top of the algorithmic mountain in the jungle of endless multisensory input. Moreover, simply by being a user, one enables the existence of this platform and all of its unsavory implications because, without users, it would not be.

Reformation

The only real way to counteract the monstrosity of media consolidation is to design entirely new platforms and publications with equitable, ethical intent owned and curated by vetted members of the communities that inherently suffer from the blanket of distorted narratives that currently reign supreme. For this to happen, it is crucial for people fluent in the language of computer technology, information, and all relevant fields of modern dissemination who are not shortsightedly preoccupied with procuring conventionally esteemed roles or financial gain but who are invested in justice and integrity to apply their knowledge to inventing platforms that can serve as alternatives to the ones provided today to counteract the limitations of information accessibility, censorship, and western propaganda. Not only this, but it is essential for those with this kind of knowledge to raise their voices and share their know-how widely amongst those otherwise not privy to it to level the historically disproportionate playing field. Unfortunately, money is a factor here, as demonstrated by the exorbitant nature of participating in the world of media consolidation is one of the things that maintains this pyramid of inequality and serves to determine the difference between mass media, what it shares, and how it shares it, and the voices of authenticity and righteousness that are competing against its behemoth presence.

In order to create space for a new disseminative power, the power of this current system has to be fractured. This means people will have to stop consuming the products that sustain its authority. This would mean a complete severance from what have become household items, names, sources of news, etc. This would mean refusing to work for these companies. This would mean doing without, sacrificing to reinvent all of these comforts or conveniences in a way that could prevent them from existing to service an elite few at the cost of the rest of society. Resistance within the parameters of the structure that the oppression has created will still be impeded by the oppressors. Devaluing these things and engineering new things that can help to devalue this hierarchical system is the way to effect real change in the direction of egalitarianism.

Intention is integrally important to the integrity of information systems. So long as information is seen as a salable product, so long as money and the power society has equated it with continue to intercept the dissemination of ideas and tamper strategically with their form, presentation, and motives to turn profit at the willful expense of discrepancies between truth, inclusion, ethics, and more, information will continue to wield a mammoth anvil of injustice.

References

Al Jazeera. (2023, December 6). Israeli raid kills 22 members of Al Jazeera Correspondent’s family in Gaza. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/6/israeli-raid-kills-21-members-of-al-jazeera-correspondents-family-in-gaza#:~:text=The%20family%20members%20of%20Moamen,refugee%20camp%20in%20northern%20Gaza.&text=An%20Al%20Jazeera%20employee%20has,sheltering%20in%20the%20Gaza%20Strip.

Amnesty International (2022). Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: A Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity. Amnesty International Ltd.

Barhat, V. (n.d.). These Three arms stocks underpin US support for Israel. Morningstar UK. https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/240631/these-three-arms-stocks-underpin-us-support-for-israel.aspx#:~:text=Lockheed%20Martin%20Corp&text=The%20firm%20also%20manufacturers%20and,)%2C%20and%20other%20military%20hardware.

Bukar, A. A. (2020). The Political Economy of Hate Industry: Islamophobia in the Western Public Sphere. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 5(2), 152–174. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/islastudj.5.2.0152

Cable News Network. (2023, December 11). Comcast Corp (NASDAQ: CMCSA). CNN Business. https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=CMCSA&subView=institutional

Dohnanyi, J., Moller, C. (2003). The Impact of Media Concentration on Professional Journalism. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media.

Fuchs, C. (2018). Propaganda 2.0: Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model in the Age of the Internet, Big Data and Social Media. In J. Pedro-Carañana, D. Broudy, & J. Klaehn (Eds.), THE PROPAGANDA MODEL TODAY: Filtering Perception and Awareness (Vol. 8, pp. 71–92). University of Westminster Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7h0ts6.8

Haynes, T. (2018, February 4). Dopamine, smartphones & you: A battle for your time. Science in the News. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/

NBCUniversal News Group. (2023, December 8). IDF surrounds home of top Hamas leader as Palestinians flee Khan Younis. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna128475

Papandrea, D., Pegoraro, R., & Oswald, E. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/services/internet-providers/local/illinois/des-plaines

Reiff, N. (2022). Top Lockheed Martin shareholders. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/081416/top-5-shareholders-lockheed-martin-lmt.asp

Seale, B., Shames, S. (2016, October 23). Interview with Rachel Martin (Interview). NPR Radio; Weekend Edition Sunday. https://www.npr.org/2016/10/23/499042341/black-panther-party-50th-anniversary-groups-photographerreflects-on-misconceptio

The beauty algorithm: The new tool of manipulation. Wikibooks, open books for an open world. (2022). https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Perspectives_in_Digital_Literacy/The_Beauty_Algorithm

The Future of Media Project: Index of US mainstream media ownership. (2021). Harvard University. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mainstream-media-ownership

The Vanguard Group, Inc. (2023, October 21). All fund holdings. Vanguard. https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsAllHoldings?FundId=0623&FundIntExt=INT&tableName=Equity&tableIndex=0&sort=SHARES&sortOrder=web.funds.profile.view.FundsAllHoldingsSort%24SortOrder%409c2485f&APP=PE

Updates on the unfolding events in Israel and the Middle East. Comcast Corporation. (2023, November 2). https://corporate.comcast.com/stories/updates-about-the-unfolding-events-in-israel-and-the-middle-east

Vanguard Group. stockzoa. (n.d.). https://stockzoa.com/fund/the-vanguard-groupinc/

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, November 17). Concentration of media ownership. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership#:~:text=Concentration%20of%20media%20ownership%2C%20also,shares%20of%20the%20mass%20media.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2023b, December 5). Media conglomerate. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_conglomerate

Yaseen, R. (2021, March 15). Changing your face for your following: The dark implications of the TikTok “Beauty algorithm” // the observer. The Observer. https://ndsmcobserver.com/2021/03/changing-your-face-for-your-following-the-dark-implications-of-the-tiktok-beauty-algorithm/

BOUNGE

NOTES ON MEDIA CONSOLIDATION + ITS TENTACLES

Social Media + Its Claws

Reformation

References