Taking advantage of their independence, Salon just kicked off a series of articles on corporate consolidation of the media with their first article, “Assimilating the Web.” It’s quite true what the editors point out in the series introduction: “Fox News is not likely to alert the public to the dangers of Rupert Murdoch’s taking control of satellite television. Don’t wait for CNN to crusade against the dumbing-down effects of media synergy.”
The trend and threat of media consolidation is not something new, nor has it gone unnoticed. Ben Bagdikian first brought the issue to the national spotlight in 1983 with the first publication of his seminal book The Media Monopoly, when there were far more players in the field than now. The path of consolidation has been consistently charted by updated editions of Bagdikian’s book, media critics like Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and Robert McChesney, along with media watchdog groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Media.
It stands to argue that Salon is capable of reaching a mainstream audience of a size and type that may not already be exposed to this type of media criticism. And therefore it is refreshing to see an outlet use this reach to challenge the status quo, rather than simply settle into it. The fact that Salon has yet to be sucked up into a corporate media behemoth, which on the one hand has been the source of financial troubles, gives it the ability and impetus to report on and chart the abuses by these corporate media powers. While many mainstream outlets will report on isolated incidences of corporate malfeasance, they have no incentive to connect incidences together and see them in a larger context, quite simply because they benefit far too much from this system of abuse. I’m glad to see Salon continue to publish challenging commentary and journalism that is otherwise filtered out of mainstream sources, though I wonder how much longer they can hold out as a rogue (though perhaps peripheral) member of the mainstream as the price of doing business rises.
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