Current Problems in the Media

- Thomas Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and director of the Shorenstein Center surveys

Media consolidation

In 1945, four out of five American newspapers were independently owned and published by people with close ties to their communities. Those days are gone however. Today less than 20 percent of the country's 1483 papers are independently owned; the rest belong to multi-newspaper chains.

• “Of the nation's 1,500 daily papers, nearly 1,200 — about 80 percent — are owned by the big chains, which concentrate on reaping large profits and are not much given to public self-examination on ethics and quality issues.

…. The gut decision that journalists have to make is whether they want to be regarded as professionals with honor or merely as pickup teams of scribblers and windbags.”

- Sydney Schanberg

• “It is not apparent to many news consumers, but 22 companies now control 70 percent of the country's newspaper circulation and 10 companies own the broadcast stations that reach 85 percent of the United States.

Since 1975, two-thirds of independent newspaper owners and one-third of independent television owners have disappeared. Only 281 of the nation's 1,500 daily newspapers remain independently owned. The three largest newspaper publishers control 25 percent of daily newspaper circulation worldwide.”

- Freepress.net

• “Five companies now own the broadcast networks, 90 percent of the top 50 cablenetworks produce three-quarters of all prime time programming, and control 70 percent of the prime time television market share. The same companies that own the nation's most popular newspapers and networks also own over 85 percent of the top 20 Internet news sites.

While the Internet has become a valuable new source of information, the vast majority of Americans continue to rely on television, newspaper, and radio as their primary sources of news information. Two-thirds of America's independent newspapers have been lost since 1975 and according to the Department of Justice's Merger Guidelines every local newspaper market in the U.S. is highly concentrated.

One-third of America's independent TV stations have vanished since 1975 and there has been a 34 percent decline in the number of radio station owners since the Telecommunications Act of 1996.”

- According to bill H.R. 4069 introduced to the House of Representatives March 30, 2004

• “Sure enough, as merger has followed merger, journalism has been driven further down the hierarchy of values in the huge conglomerates that dominate what we see, read and hear. And to feed the profit margins - journalism has been directed to other priorities than “the news we need to know to keep our freedoms.” 

-  Bill Moyers

Journalists agree that major problems exist.

The study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors found these startling facts:

• Only 47 percent of journalists surveyed felt their publications were improving.
• Only 39 percent felt their newspapers were usually very interesting to read.
• A remarkably low 21 percent felt their newspapers were connecting very well with readers.                                                      

“For all sorts of reasons, timidity, self-satisfaction, greed, inappropriate desire to belong…for all these reasons and more, there is an awful lot that the press keeps from you....  we'll begin with squeamishness... and an overdeveloped fear of offending someone... orthodoxy, conventional thinking, a misplaced pleasure at being on the inside, incompetence and laziness.... greed.... the fact, for example, that too many papers by far do not wish to offend major advertisers....

Reporters who are incompetent, lazy, lack fire in the belly.... You put all these sins together, and there are more, and you come up with a public-press know-nothing pact that makes some sizeable contributions, I would argue, to our national problems currently.

Break this know nothing pact now and you will have taken as mighty a step as you can as an individual to help see to it that we as a nation move together toward a lively, hopeful, confident, and all-embracing future.”

- Speech to Stanford graduates by Geneva Overholser, chosen 1990 Editor of the Year by the Gannett Company, former board member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Pulitzer Prize Board, former reporter for NY Times, and former Editor of the Des Moines Register.