globalisation

So, as we have seen in previous weeks, the most important development over the past twenty years in international communication has been the increase in concentration of media ownership both nationally and internationally. This concentration of news ownership has pretty much come with a commercialisaiton of news and the ‘softening’ up of news stories. It is my understanding that all of these processes are part of globalisation. Mix new media technologies (namely the internet) into all of this and we have quite a complicated little situation on our hands – so complicated in fact, that both the media and the legal system have been forced to re-evaluate their roles.

So global media giants enter into partnerships with national media firms and produce, provide and disseminate news and entertainment to domestic markets. Satellite broadcasting has more or less projected these products into the cultural and information marketplace of every section of the globe.

So where does this leave the rest of us? If these trends continue does that mean that we will come into an age where the majority of the worlds information and entertainment is provided by or somehow connected to one of these global media conglomerates. Herman and McChesney seem to think that these corporations will even dominate the internet in years to come.

I think that global regulations need to be put in place in order to ensure that media conglomerates and trans national corporations maintain high standards of news – it’s a slippery slope that we are on at the moment and I would really like to see journalisms integrity restored.

I found a really food article on the whole issue, you can check it out here:

http://www.idsnet.org/Papers/Communications/HEMANT_SHAH.HTM