A
9% of US households had a tv in 1950.
80% by 1960.
you obviously weren't around back then.
and Btown used to be the tv manufacturing capital of the world.
"journalists" have zero say in today's media, and never had that much.
literally all corporate media is totally controlled by the far right, which is reflected in what and how everything is covered..
ownership controls 100 % of what you see, hear, and read.
idiocracy.
No, my argument is not that competition is bad. Competition provided choices which led to differentiation. The subset of people that care about the news is small. In 1960, the 80% of the television owning public had 3 choices if they were watching TV at the 6 news hour. All of those choices had journalists delivering a similar POV. The "elite" had more control over messaging at that time, but they were not necessarily delivering "truth". We just were all forced to consume that "truth" so there was more uniformity in opinion.
30 years later, in 1990, quite a few houses had moved to cable. CNN had come on line. It tended to have a similar POV to ABC, CBS, and NBC but it was available 24/7. They had to come up with more to get eyeballs and all 4 of them were now competing with Nickelodeon, TNT, A&E, TBS, etc. for eyeballs. Variety meant people did not need to watch the news at all. They could have kept on providing the same news and I would argue that they actually did. It was the same old product for the most part, but now people had options and did not have to watch. Then along came Fox News and people who were kind of tired of the bent of TV journalism to that point had a channel that delivered the news to them from their ideological POV.
We all get to pick the sweet half truths we want to hear and the news has increasingly catered to those few who were tuning in by throwing out more and more red meat. At the end of the day though, the vast majority of people in this country are not paying attention. They are watching other entertainment.
DirecTV Officially Dumps Right-Wing Network OAN
Sebastian MurdockTue, April 5, 2022, 12:06 PM·2 min read
A conspiracy-promoting TV network that pushed 2020 election lies has lost its largest platform.
“This channel is no longer available,” read a message Tuesday for those trying to access the One America News network on DirecTV.
The satellite TV provider notified OAN owner Herring Networks Inc. in January that it would not renew their contract.
“We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” DirecTV said in a statement at the time.
OAN was instrumental in promoting the lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump. In February 2021, OAN gave MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell 12 hours of airtime to play ― and replay ― a two-hour video of Lindell’s rambling, incoherent defense of Trump.
“This is an attack not only on those other countries with communism, but they had domestic traitors right here in our country,” Lindell falsely said in the video. “Whatever is going on right now we’re seeing it, they’re suppressing ― cancel culture, they’re trying to cancel us all out. I’ve just seen churches, Christian churches, they’re being attacked.”
OAN is being sued by Dominion Voting Machines for more than $1 billion. The voting machine company said in its lawsuit that OAN created “an alternate reality where up is down, pigs have wings, and Dominion engaged in a colossal fraud to steal the presidency from Donald Trump by rigging the vote.”
DirecTV’s split with OAN came after a Reuters report revealed in October that AT&T, the world’s largest communications company and owner of DirecTV, was bankrolling the right-wing conspiracy network. Court filings obtained by Reuters revealed Herring Networks reaped approximately $57 million in monthly fees from AT&T under their five-year deal.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
U.S. News
By
Sebastian Murdock
Oct. 6, 2021, 01:01 PM EDT
https://twitter.com/share?text=The ...d=engmodushpmg00000004&hashtags=&via=HuffPost
The world’s largest communications company has been bankrolling a right-wing conspiracy network, an investigation by Reuters revealed.
The damning Reuters report, published Wednesday, shows that AT&T helped fund and create One America News ― a right-wing network famous for its fawning coverage of former President Donald Trump, and for spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost.
Without AT&T’s $250 million offering, OAN’s value “would be zero,” according to an accountant’s court testimony obtained by Reuters. More from the publication:
AT&T Is Funding Right-Wing Conspiracy Network OAN, Reuters Reports
Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T, an investigation from Reuters shows.By
Sebastian Murdock
Oct. 6, 2021, 01:01 PM EDT
https://twitter.com/share?text=The ...d=engmodushpmg00000004&hashtags=&via=HuffPost
The world’s largest communications company has been bankrolling a right-wing conspiracy network, an investigation by Reuters revealed.
The damning Reuters report, published Wednesday, shows that AT&T helped fund and create One America News ― a right-wing network famous for its fawning coverage of former President Donald Trump, and for spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost.
Without AT&T’s $250 million offering, OAN’s value “would be zero,” according to an accountant’s court testimony obtained by Reuters. More from the publication:
U.S. News
AT&T Is Funding Right-Wing Conspiracy Network OAN, Reuters Reports
Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T, an investigation from Reuters shows.
By
Sebastian Murdock
Oct. 6, 2021, 01:01 PM EDT
https://twitter.com/share?text=The world’s largest communications company has been bankrolling a right-wing conspiracy network, an investigation by Reuters revealed.&url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/att-right-wing-network-oan-reuters_n_615dbb18e4b069a0b3b83d5c?utm_campaign=share_twitter&ncid=engmodushpmg00000004&hashtags=&via=HuffPost
The world’s largest communications company has been bankrolling a right-wing conspiracy network, an investigation by Reuters revealed.
The damning Reuters report, published Wednesday, shows that AT&T helped fund and create One America News ― a right-wing network famous for its fawning coverage of former President Donald Trump, and for spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost.
Without AT&T’s $250 million offering, OAN’s value “would be zero,” according to an accountant’s court testimony obtained by Reuters. More from the publication:
AT&T, the company that spawned and funded OAN, also owned CNN.
as i pointed out before in this thread, CNN and NBC/MSNBC, are false flag operations.
as is the national DNC.
CORPORATIONS are what they are, and literally can never be anything else.
the news you see on CNN, NBC/MSNBC, Fox, is all by and for the benefit of CORPORATIONS.
it's just business.
Sounds like a freaking monopoly on the news.U.S. News
AT&T Is Funding Right-Wing Conspiracy Network OAN, Reuters Reports
Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T, an investigation from Reuters shows.
By
Sebastian Murdock
Oct. 6, 2021, 01:01 PM EDT
https://twitter.com/share?text=The world’s largest communications company has been bankrolling a right-wing conspiracy network, an investigation by Reuters revealed.&url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/att-right-wing-network-oan-reuters_n_615dbb18e4b069a0b3b83d5c?utm_campaign=share_twitter&ncid=engmodushpmg00000004&hashtags=&via=HuffPost
The world’s largest communications company has been bankrolling a right-wing conspiracy network, an investigation by Reuters revealed.
The damning Reuters report, published Wednesday, shows that AT&T helped fund and create One America News ― a right-wing network famous for its fawning coverage of former President Donald Trump, and for spreading lies about the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost.
Without AT&T’s $250 million offering, OAN’s value “would be zero,” according to an accountant’s court testimony obtained by Reuters. More from the publication:
wake up people.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who controls the corporations who control our news? A helpful index was just compiled—not by mainstream media, but by Harvard researchers exploring media’s future. Skimming the list, I see two names again and again: BlackRock Fund Advisors and Vanguard Group.
BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the Big Three (every industry is clumping) passive fund asset management firms. The third, State Street, is owned by BlackRock. Whose largest shareholder is Vanguard.
Together, BlackRock and Vanguard own:
• Eighteen percent of Fox.
• Sixteen percent of CBS, and therefore also of Sixty Minutes.
• Thirteen percent of Comcast, which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group.
• Twelve percent of CNN.
• Twelve percent of Disney, which owns ABC and FiveThirtyEight.
• Between ten and fourteen percent of Gannett, which owns more than 250 Gannett daily newspapers plus USA Today.
• Ten percent of the Sinclair local television news, which controls seventy-two percent of U.S. households’ local TV.
• A large unspecified chunk of Graham Media Group, which owns Slate and Foreign Policy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeannette Cooperman
September 15, 2021
Lou Grant’s death (okay, Ed Asner’s) left me nostalgic for those Chuckles the Clown days when newsrooms buzzed with idiosyncratic idealism. Five giant corporations now control most of what we see and read. The smallest number of media companies are now reaching the largest number of people in U.S. history, and the strongest critical analysis I can find is not in mainstream media, but in the student newspaper at Vassar. Which gives you some idea of the pickle we are in.
Who controls the corporations who control our news? A helpful index was just compiled—not by mainstream media, but by Harvard researchers exploring media’s future. Skimming the list, I see two names again and again: BlackRock Fund Advisors and Vanguard Group.
BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the Big Three (every industry is clumping) passive fund asset management firms. The third, State Street, is owned by BlackRock. Whose largest shareholder is Vanguard.
Together, BlackRock and Vanguard own:
• Eighteen percent of Fox.
• Sixteen percent of CBS, and therefore also of Sixty Minutes.
• Thirteen percent of Comcast, which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group.
• Twelve percent of CNN.
• Twelve percent of Disney, which owns ABC and FiveThirtyEight.
• Between ten and fourteen percent of Gannett, which owns more than 250 Gannett daily newspapers plus USA Today.
• Ten percent of the Sinclair local television news, which controls seventy-two percent of U.S. households’ local TV.
• A large unspecified chunk of Graham Media Group, which owns Slate and Foreign Policy.
Maybe media is a better investment than I thought, once it . . . clumps. But passive funds (index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, not the actively managed ones) are an awfully nerdy setting for a Netflix Originals media conspiracy. International banks would be sexier.
Unless, that is, you find power and wealth sexy. BlackRock, it turns out, is the world’s largest money manager, with $9.5 trillion currently under management. I whistle under my breath—$9.5 trillion is a lot of cash in play, and it makes BlackRock considerably larger than the world’s largest bank (the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China).
How did this happen? The best explanations do not show up on Fox or CNN or CBS or ABC or NBC or USA Today or Sixty Minutes, but in academic journals. Since 2008’s shakeup, more and more investors have focused on passive funds rather than picking and choosing particular stocks. This is an unprecedented shift, one that might even threaten capitalism.
“Some $11 trillion is now invested in index funds, up from $2 trillion a decade ago,” Annie Lowrey reports in The Atlantic. This has “moved the country toward a peculiar kind of financial oligarchy,” decreasing competition because “mega-asset managers control large stakes in multiple competitors in the same industry.” (Like media.)
An investigative reporter I worked with used to mutter “oligarchy” when suspicious. The word is now appropriate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants BlackRock put under federal oversight as one of the financial entities designated “too big to fail,” because they would take us all down with them.
“If a $9 trillion investment company failed, would that likely have a significant impact on our economy?” she asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at a hearing this past March.
Yellen danced a bit, then said, “It’s not obvious to me that designation is the correct tool.”
“Wait just a minute,” Warren said. “Designation is what gives the Fed its increased oversight power, is that correct?”
Yellen conceded the point but said the Financial Stability Oversight Council had already looked into the matter.
During the Trump Administration, writes David Dayen, “the Treasury Department official leading efforts to relax that designation and keep asset managers outside its grip [was] Craig Phillips, a former BlackRock executive.”
By then, BlackRock was already working hand in glove with the U.S. government. BlackRock was the firm chosen by the Obama Administration to clean up after the 2008 financial meltdown, buying up toxic assets the Fed was not legally allowed to purchase. BlackRock executives were the ones who proposed the economic reset that went into effect in March 2020, when the central bank forsook its historic independence and agreed to join monetary policy with fiscal policy. BlackRock had proposed this in 2019, but COVID created the perfect opportunity: an emergency for which an “independent expert” could be appointed by the central bank to avoid fiscal crisis. BlackRock was appointed the independent expert. It also won a no-bid contract to manage a $454 billion slush fund, leveraging it for more than $4 trillion in Federal Reserve credit. So BlackRock is playing both sides, buying mainly its own funds on behalf of the central bank.
BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, angled for the position of Treasury Secretary when it looked like Hillary Clinton might be president. He served briefly on an advisory committee for Donald Trump and was heavily promoted to be Treasury Secretary in the Biden Administration. Fink’s former chief of staff at BlackRock, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, is now deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Former BlackRock executive Brian Deese is Biden’s top economic advisor; former BlackRock executive Michael Pyle serves as chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Vassar article says it flat out: “Interlocking directorates, revolving doors of personnel and financial stakes and holdings connect the corporate media to the state, the Pentagon, defense and arms manufacturers and the oil industry.” One of the world’s largest investors in weapons manufacturers, BlackRock is also heavily invested in tech platforms and, through its investors, has a stake in all the major corporations in the S&P 500.
Big investors do more than vote their shares, concludes a survey published in the Journal of Finance; they also talk directly to management (sixty-three percent of those polled) and to board members (forty-five percent). With $9.5 trillion in assets hanging in the balance, BlackRock feels a responsibility to “monitor and provide feedback to companies.” It promises transparency—but also notes the power of quiet, one-on-one conversations.
Does BlackRock’s opinion matter to a reporter in the field? I doubt it. But BlackRock might matter to a publisher or owner, who might then influence an editor or newsroom director. By the time certain facts are being headlined and others excised, it is hard to tell where the influence originated.
We are living in the realm of oligarchy, and it is naïve to think media can exist unaffected. Until now, I barely knew BlackRock existed—let alone that, with Vanguard, they have enough of an interest in most big media corporations to be considered “insiders” under U.S. law. Critics call BlackRock a “great vampire squid,” a “shadow bank,” and “almost a shadow government”—one that neatly avoids the spotlight.
But any entity this big contains contradictions. BlackRock has just received China’s permission to establish its first foreign-owned mutual fund. Meanwhile, activists are protesting BlackRock’s investment in two blacklisted Chinese companies, both barred from trade with the United States because of their involvement in surveillance and their participation in repressing the Uighurs. George Soros calls BlackRock’s push into China “a tragic mistake” that could risk national security.
Fink comes across as a reasonable man concerned—except for the issues in China and the reluctance to be regulated—with social and environmental responsibility. That is BlackRock’s rhetoric, at least. And we will not hear much beyond the rhetoric, because . . . who would tell us?
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
https://commonreader.wustl.edu/how-...ent,NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who controls the corporations who control our news? A helpful index was just compiled—not by mainstream media, but by Harvard researchers exploring media’s future. Skimming the list, I see two names again and again: BlackRock Fund Advisors and Vanguard Group.
BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the Big Three (every industry is clumping) passive fund asset management firms. The third, State Street, is owned by BlackRock. Whose largest shareholder is Vanguard.
Together, BlackRock and Vanguard own:
• Eighteen percent of Fox.
• Sixteen percent of CBS, and therefore also of Sixty Minutes.
• Thirteen percent of Comcast, which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group.
• Twelve percent of CNN.
• Twelve percent of Disney, which owns ABC and FiveThirtyEight.
• Between ten and fourteen percent of Gannett, which owns more than 250 Gannett daily newspapers plus USA Today.
• Ten percent of the Sinclair local television news, which controls seventy-two percent of U.S. households’ local TV.
• A large unspecified chunk of Graham Media Group, which owns Slate and Foreign Policy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How a Company Called BlackRock Shapes Your News, Your Life, Our Future
Jeannette Cooperman
September 15, 2021
Lou Grant’s death (okay, Ed Asner’s) left me nostalgic for those Chuckles the Clown days when newsrooms buzzed with idiosyncratic idealism. Five giant corporations now control most of what we see and read. The smallest number of media companies are now reaching the largest number of people in U.S. history, and the strongest critical analysis I can find is not in mainstream media, but in the student newspaper at Vassar. Which gives you some idea of the pickle we are in.
Who controls the corporations who control our news? A helpful index was just compiled—not by mainstream media, but by Harvard researchers exploring media’s future. Skimming the list, I see two names again and again: BlackRock Fund Advisors and Vanguard Group.
BlackRock and Vanguard are two of the Big Three (every industry is clumping) passive fund asset management firms. The third, State Street, is owned by BlackRock. Whose largest shareholder is Vanguard.
Together, BlackRock and Vanguard own:
• Eighteen percent of Fox.
• Sixteen percent of CBS, and therefore also of Sixty Minutes.
• Thirteen percent of Comcast, which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group.
• Twelve percent of CNN.
• Twelve percent of Disney, which owns ABC and FiveThirtyEight.
• Between ten and fourteen percent of Gannett, which owns more than 250 Gannett daily newspapers plus USA Today.
• Ten percent of the Sinclair local television news, which controls seventy-two percent of U.S. households’ local TV.
• A large unspecified chunk of Graham Media Group, which owns Slate and Foreign Policy.
Maybe media is a better investment than I thought, once it . . . clumps. But passive funds (index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, not the actively managed ones) are an awfully nerdy setting for a Netflix Originals media conspiracy. International banks would be sexier.
Unless, that is, you find power and wealth sexy. BlackRock, it turns out, is the world’s largest money manager, with $9.5 trillion currently under management. I whistle under my breath—$9.5 trillion is a lot of cash in play, and it makes BlackRock considerably larger than the world’s largest bank (the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China).
How did this happen? The best explanations do not show up on Fox or CNN or CBS or ABC or NBC or USA Today or Sixty Minutes, but in academic journals. Since 2008’s shakeup, more and more investors have focused on passive funds rather than picking and choosing particular stocks. This is an unprecedented shift, one that might even threaten capitalism.
“Some $11 trillion is now invested in index funds, up from $2 trillion a decade ago,” Annie Lowrey reports in The Atlantic. This has “moved the country toward a peculiar kind of financial oligarchy,” decreasing competition because “mega-asset managers control large stakes in multiple competitors in the same industry.” (Like media.)
An investigative reporter I worked with used to mutter “oligarchy” when suspicious. The word is now appropriate. Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants BlackRock put under federal oversight as one of the financial entities designated “too big to fail,” because they would take us all down with them.
“If a $9 trillion investment company failed, would that likely have a significant impact on our economy?” she asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at a hearing this past March.
Yellen danced a bit, then said, “It’s not obvious to me that designation is the correct tool.”
“Wait just a minute,” Warren said. “Designation is what gives the Fed its increased oversight power, is that correct?”
Yellen conceded the point but said the Financial Stability Oversight Council had already looked into the matter.
During the Trump Administration, writes David Dayen, “the Treasury Department official leading efforts to relax that designation and keep asset managers outside its grip [was] Craig Phillips, a former BlackRock executive.”
By then, BlackRock was already working hand in glove with the U.S. government. BlackRock was the firm chosen by the Obama Administration to clean up after the 2008 financial meltdown, buying up toxic assets the Fed was not legally allowed to purchase. BlackRock executives were the ones who proposed the economic reset that went into effect in March 2020, when the central bank forsook its historic independence and agreed to join monetary policy with fiscal policy. BlackRock had proposed this in 2019, but COVID created the perfect opportunity: an emergency for which an “independent expert” could be appointed by the central bank to avoid fiscal crisis. BlackRock was appointed the independent expert. It also won a no-bid contract to manage a $454 billion slush fund, leveraging it for more than $4 trillion in Federal Reserve credit. So BlackRock is playing both sides, buying mainly its own funds on behalf of the central bank.
BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, angled for the position of Treasury Secretary when it looked like Hillary Clinton might be president. He served briefly on an advisory committee for Donald Trump and was heavily promoted to be Treasury Secretary in the Biden Administration. Fink’s former chief of staff at BlackRock, Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, is now deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Former BlackRock executive Brian Deese is Biden’s top economic advisor; former BlackRock executive Michael Pyle serves as chief economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Vassar article says it flat out: “Interlocking directorates, revolving doors of personnel and financial stakes and holdings connect the corporate media to the state, the Pentagon, defense and arms manufacturers and the oil industry.” One of the world’s largest investors in weapons manufacturers, BlackRock is also heavily invested in tech platforms and, through its investors, has a stake in all the major corporations in the S&P 500.
Big investors do more than vote their shares, concludes a survey published in the Journal of Finance; they also talk directly to management (sixty-three percent of those polled) and to board members (forty-five percent). With $9.5 trillion in assets hanging in the balance, BlackRock feels a responsibility to “monitor and provide feedback to companies.” It promises transparency—but also notes the power of quiet, one-on-one conversations.
Does BlackRock’s opinion matter to a reporter in the field? I doubt it. But BlackRock might matter to a publisher or owner, who might then influence an editor or newsroom director. By the time certain facts are being headlined and others excised, it is hard to tell where the influence originated.
We are living in the realm of oligarchy, and it is naïve to think media can exist unaffected. Until now, I barely knew BlackRock existed—let alone that, with Vanguard, they have enough of an interest in most big media corporations to be considered “insiders” under U.S. law. Critics call BlackRock a “great vampire squid,” a “shadow bank,” and “almost a shadow government”—one that neatly avoids the spotlight.
But any entity this big contains contradictions. BlackRock has just received China’s permission to establish its first foreign-owned mutual fund. Meanwhile, activists are protesting BlackRock’s investment in two blacklisted Chinese companies, both barred from trade with the United States because of their involvement in surveillance and their participation in repressing the Uighurs. George Soros calls BlackRock’s push into China “a tragic mistake” that could risk national security.
Fink comes across as a reasonable man concerned—except for the issues in China and the reluctance to be regulated—with social and environmental responsibility. That is BlackRock’s rhetoric, at least. And we will not hear much beyond the rhetoric, because . . . who would tell us?
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
Share this:
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https://commonreader.wustl.edu/how-...ent,NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group.
Thanks for the stats. Appreciate you helping make the point that television was an emerging market at the time and one that was being built by the media interests we are discussing.
Okay...I'm not sure your analysis is spot on, but it's kind of beside the point I was making. You gloss over the big 4th choice folks in 1960 had, which was not watching TV news at all. As previously noted, it was a market that was being built over those decades, so profits were far from guaranteed.
The larger point - many people don't like when the news media functions as a free market enterprise and many of those same people are aghast at the prospect of government-sponsored news media, so I'm just trying to figure out what sort of solutions those folks are suggesting. Or is the ultimate solution just to complain about news media?
Sounds like there's a rift brewing, to what extend who knows, between perspective news and hard news. Maybe it'll all work itself out of its own volition
NBC News staffers reportedly miffed about MSNBC's planned Psaki hire
NBC News staffers reportedly miffed about MSNBC's planned Psaki hire
Newsrooms are like dance teams...they look like they are one big happy family, but they eat their own.Sounds like there's a rift brewing, to what extend who knows, between perspective news and hard news. Maybe it'll all work itself out of its own volition
NBC News staffers reportedly miffed about MSNBC's planned Psaki hire
NBC News staffers reportedly miffed about MSNBC's planned Psaki hirewww.yahoo.com
I always assumed most of the people here are old hippies. Think Tommy Chong.
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