“MEDIOCRACY 2.0: CORPORATE OWNERSHIP CHALLENGING FREE SPEECH”
By Hazel Henderson©2017
In the USA, founders feared concentration of power in government. They installed separation of powers in the US Constitution—-buttressed by freedom of the press. The very first Amendment reinforced this free media which became known as “the Fourth Branch” of US democracy.
Today, two new threats have emerged: 1): political interference with press freedom by intimidation, propaganda from both foreign powers and domestic interest groups, advertising, planting fake news, trolling online and mainstream media using “bots” and big data analytics.
And 2): corporate conglomerating ownership of media, local papers, TV and radio stations and newer online giants dominating the internet and social media.
Crusading media experts’ reports, such as Jacques Ellul’s classic Propaganda (1968), Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message (1964) on the power of advertising and television and Ben Bagdikian’s The Media Monopoly (1983) all warned us of the accelerating merger and consolidation of control of US and global media. Today the 50 owners of 90% of US media described by Bagdikian is down to six! The takeover of media ownership now controls most of the news and information the public sees, hears, reads and accesses online by media titans Disney, Comcast, Time-Warner, Murdoch, CBS-Viacom, as well as, Facebook, Google, Twitter and the dark arts of big data, such as Cambridge Analytica, as well as financial hedge fund “quants”.
All these giants of our “mediocracies” are steered by big finance, such as hedge fund kingmaker Robert Mercer, funder of the Trump campaign, Breitbart, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. Funders include the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and others on the right wing described by Jane Mayer in “Dark Money” (2016), and smaller players on the left, such as George Soros.
In my “Mediocracies and Their Attention Economies” (2017) I described this new form of government overlooked by most political and social scientists which I first documented in my “Building A Win Win World” (1996) now an e-book. Media control as a favorite government strategy for power is well- know and common from Putin’s Russia to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Yet the world is less aware of power grabs by the newer forms: corporate media and control by finance and technological superiority. Today, control of media content and access, intimidation of journalists exists in many countries, whether ostensible democracies, republics, federations, autocracies or kleptocracies, while commercial advertising dominates consumer “education” worldwide with its global market of $570 billion tightly-held by giant corporate conglomerates.
The days in the past century when rebels captured the main radio station to take over whole countries are long gone. Today’s political takeovers are now by corporate mergers, online giants, big data, computers, artificial intelligence and AI algorithms, which now also dominate finance, asset-management models and portfolios with robo-advisors high-frequency and programmed trading, as I documented in “Prespectives on Reforming Electronic Markets and Trading”.
All these new forces are winning over traditional politics, democracies and grassroots citizen organizing. Mediocracy is now the dominant form of governance in many countries.
In this context, we see today’s power grab by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of 170 TV stations covering 38% of the current 39% limit over US audiences and markets, as in rulings of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Sinclair is now lobbying the FCC and politicians to expand its power over US audiences by buying Chicago-based Tribune Media’s 42 stations which would extend its reach to cover 72% of US viewing households and markets. As with so many government agencies, the FCC has been under the influence of the media corporations it is supposed to oversee.
This kind of “regulatory capture” of so many government agencies is documented by many economists. The Trump administration’s new appointee Ajit Pai, as chairman of the FCC is corporate-friendly, evidenced already in the “net neutrality” battle. Pai is now expected to grant Trump- supporting Sinclair with a loophole for its expansion of control over US markets and audiences—most unaware that their trusted local TV station will be under new corporate control. “Politico’s: “How Trump’s FCC aided Sinclair’s expansion” (08/06/2017).
The battle in today’s mediocracies is about trust and truth, access to data, facts and scientific evidence. Trust in the past was based in family, community, tribe and face-to-face knowledge. Trust and confidence are the basis of all markets, banking and finance. Trust does not scale easily, the basic dilemma of all large complex societies, as they search for new forms on blockchains and in cryptocurrencies. Trust and truth are also the basis of free media and journalistic excellence. Will new grabs by corporate power succeed over freedom of the press and the public’s right-to- know, access to unbiased information and truthful advertising? Truth versus propaganda? Stay tuned!
HAZEL HENDERSON, D.Sc.Hon., FRSA, CEO, of Ethical Markets Media, also founded the EthicMark® Awards for Advertising That Uplifts The Human Spirit In Society. 2017 Awards will be announced at the SRI Conference, November 1-3, 2017, San Diego, CA