Captivating Media and Captive Audiences
Be free, my friends. Be independent.
In August of 1973, escaped convicts took several hostages in a bank in Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden. The events that unfolded famously resulted in the hostages making a deep connection with and loyalty to their abductors, a phenomenon studied by psychiatrists from which spawned the term “Stockholm Syndrome.” History.com provides an interesting article titled Stockholm Syndrome: The True Story of Hostages Loyal to Their Captor describing the events. It leaves one wondering what factors contributed to the hostages' view of their armed abductors. The article points to compassion and kindness, but that surely is not enough, is it? If a bank robber held you hostage in a vault for over five days, would you be inclined to shield him from bullets with your own body as he exited the building to surrender? Baffling.
In a similarly baffling manner, millions of people choose to become and remain committed to corporate media. One glaring similarity to the events in Stockholm is that many people get roped in by the compassion and kindness portrayed by their favorite media personalities. People seem willing to shield their favorites media personalities from figurative bullets. People seem all too willing to buy into the story and narrative generated by these corporations. Baffling.
When was the last time you really examined what sources of news and analysis you trust most and asked yourself what they have done to earn that trust?
We must tip our caps to the corporate media. They can generate a truly impressive product. Among their armies of employees there are undoubtedly many who are masters of their craft. And the volume of content they generate is consistently more than enough to satiate the appetite of any consumer. With that kind of volume available from every corner of the corporate media landscape, the consumer is forced to whittle down their sources for news and analysis. Of course, most people gravitate toward media that is more politically or culturally aligned with their own ideals and perspectives while others are charmed into adopting the ideals and perspectives of the media conglomerates who issue paychecks to their favorite media personalities.
And before these consumers even realize, they are a captive audience. And their captors are the corporate media.
Meet The Captors
If you are consumer of corporate media (and almost everyone is, to some degree), allow us to introduce you to the corporations that deliver the information, analysis and opinions that you permit yourself to digest. “Media” refers to any medium by which information is distributed. It is well documented that six corporations have long controlled 90% of the media in America. WebFX.com provides a nice graphic of these corporations’ media assets, the details of executives’ salaries (Disney’s CEO makes over $21K per hour!!) and a breakdown of the assets in various categories.
A “captive audience,” per thefreedictionary.com, is defined as 1) “an audience that is prevented from leaving and is therefore obligated to listen,” and 2) “an audience that is enraptured by and gives the entirety of its attention to a speaker or performance.” It is that second definition that is most applicable when it comes to the choices that we make about what media we consume. As the world succumbs more and more to divisive influences, we can see people increasingly enraptured by their preferred media. While the corporate media continues to facilitate that division, who do you think benefits most? Perhaps the salary details at the previously mentioned WebFX link should give us some idea.
Media Consolidation
Ben Bagdikian wrote in his 1983 book The Media Monopoly that about 50 media conglomerates controlled more than half of all broadcast media, newspapers, magazines, video, radio, music, publishing, and film in the U.S. In his paper titled “Growing Media Consolidation Must Be Examined to Preserve Our Democracy,” published in Federal Communications Law Journal (Vol. 52, Issue 3, Article 7) in 2000, Senator Paul Wellstone highlighted the dominance of only nine conglomerates across American media. Further consolidation reduced that number to only six conglomerates by 2012. Are we done yet? Not according to some projections from NPR.org, who cites rumors about either Warner Bros. Discovery or Comcast merging with Paramount Global, and ibc.org, who explores the possibility of consolidating to only three media powerhouses in a November 2023 article titled “The Era of Media Consolidation in Not Over.”
Who benefits from consolidating nearly all of media into the hands of a very few corporations and what are the negative consequences? Ablison.com explores the pros and cons of media consolidation. Spoiler alert: the benefits are realized only by the corporations, not the consumers. Meanwhile, the cons of media consolidation primarily affect the consumer. At the top of the list of cons, they have “Reduced Diversity of Voices” and “Potential for Bias.” The article also lists “Potential for Misinformation” and “Loss of Media Accountability” among the cons associated with media consolidation. It seems that the potential for these negative impacts of consolidation have been realized, as trust in media has continued its downward trend.
But does that mean that corporate media is all bad? Absolutely not. One advantage of these large conglomerates is they have more resources and can absorb the expenses of sending representatives to the places where news is breaking. They have scores of eager journalists whom they can send around the globe, if they wish. Big companies have budgets that independent journalists simply will not attain without becoming a big company. So corporate media can access more news and put it in front of more eyeballs. So, if you want access to that news, then you must tap into corporate media. If only they were more trustworthy!
The Case for Independent Media
So important was the freedom of the press to the founders of the United States of America that they enshrined it as the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Not the Tenth. Not the Second. The FIRST! In modern times, however, there is concern about how free the press actually is given that a significant portion of the news is being influenced by the motives of the media conglomerates highlighted in this article. But is there an alternative?
The answer is yes. For starters, there are tons of brilliant and independent minds posting about their own investigations right here on Substack. We cannot endorse the writing of everyone who posts on Substack, but there are some genuine and excellent journalists who continue to demonstrate courage and a commitment to their professional ethics. It is a lot easier to remain ethical when your bills are being paid by subscribers rather than the companies whose activities you might be investigating!
Further, there is a video-sharing platform called Rumble.com that provides video-on-demand. It is very clearly an alternative to YouTube. It is still budding and has not yet built the base of users to overtake YouTube, but it is built to battle the censorship of free speech for which YouTube is becoming increasingly infamous. Rumble’s mission to provide a free speech video sharing platform is vitally important. Perform an online search for “YouTube censorship” and you will find a wealth of examples of their censorious history, most justifying the “content moderation.” What your search is not likely to reveal is the discussion of cases in which content was removed simply for not calling out something that the company (YouTube is owned by Google) determined was false (whether or not it actually was false). Your search will probably fail to return many examples of YouTube’s censorship of authentic information. And your search will probably not return too many examples of cases in which YouTube failed to moderate content that is patently untrue. The company simply does not apply its own rules in a fair and balanced manner, and that misbalance tends to affect the right-leaning content creators to a much greater degree. And if you searched using Google (did we mention that YouTube is owned by Google?), your search will definitely fail to deliver these critical examples. (Read in between the lines: Stop using Google!)
Independent media is regularly presented as being far-right “friendly.” As an advocate of independent media, this is alarming. This branding casts doubt on authentic information and leads the left/center crowd away from the truth. There are certainly plenty of examples of far-right rhetoric available around these independent media platforms. Why is that? It is clear that these “free speech” platforms likely would not emerge if the messages carried by the corporate media were not so glaringly biased and eager to overlook the transgressions of other stifling and censorious corporations. These free speech platforms responded to the market, which demanded online spaces that permit their voices to be heard.
Independent media has gained a lot of traction in recent years. This is not a movement that should be disregarded. This is a “checks and balances” response to a media landscape that is out of balance and has gone unchecked for too long. This is reflected by a stark contrast in priorities revealed by a Pew Research Center Study that shows that, despite 76% of U.S. adults feeling differently, most journalists (55%) feel that every side of a story does not always deserve equal coverage. Journalists who serve a right-leaning audience are much more likely (57%) to strive to give every side equal coverage than those serving left-leaning audiences (30%). Journalists on TV (55%) are also more willing to cover only one side of a story than radio (49%), print (43%), and online (37%) media. If you cannot trust the journalists to give you the whole story, can you trust them at all?
Independent journalism obviously has the potential to carry its own biases. But it is foolhardy to reject all independent journalism because some untrustworthy corporate media stooge told you Substack or Rumble are a haven for right-wing/conservative extremists (just as it is foolhardy to reject all of corporate media for being left-wing extremists). Having explored these platforms for several years, we here at Meet Me in the Middle can say with confidence that there are content creators who are doing crucial work on behalf of liberal ideals (such as protecting open debate and the environment), bringing messages of unity, and encouraging a brighter future for all. If you have not yet done so, please open your mind and embrace independence!
Bringing It on Home
In this article, we make the case that corporate media has, over time, established a captive audience and that they have massive financial incentives to keep them captive. We detailed the great extent to which the control of nearly all of U.S. media is in the hands of a very few powerful and influential entities. And we made the case for independent media and the promise of a better-informed public that is willing to break away from the corporatized messages.
These big media conglomerates have grown their power and influence via consolidation over several decades, and we see that this is a practice predicted to continue. Support of these entities equates to more consolidation, more power, more influence, more profits with the promise of less diversity, less accountability, and more potential for bias and misinformation. An example of how the promise of less diversity has been fulfilled is available on YouTube (this is an older video, popular among anti-establishment content creators, that shows how messages are crafted and repeated in a corporate media environment).
We need media that permit journalists to adhere to their own code of ethics. What we have now is media that enables journalists who do not feel that all sides of a story deserve equal coverage. This is a manifestation of bias and does not reflect the wishes of the consumer. Corporate media promotes intolerance and galvanizes its consumers against the idea of open discourse.
From A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, signed by about 150 writers, activists, and academics and published July 7, 2020: “The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other.”
MMitM wishes for an open-minded society that listens rather than tries to silence. Calling back to the MMitM mission, we hope this examination promotes thoughtfulness about how our community’s choices contribute to unity. We have concern for those who have been so captivated by big media conglomerates that they miss out on the truth of independent voices. It is up to the individual to free his or her mind. It might seem easy to cancel a newspaper subscription or turn off your television, but one has to first acknowledge that their thoughts and perspectives are held captive and the captors do not necessarily wish for them to understand the entire story. Be free, my friends. Be independent.