Results and evaluation of news monopoly

1. The generalization of one newspaper (station) in one city

Monopoly is the inevitable result of the development of free competition, and once monopoly emerges, it eliminates competition to a certain extent.The process of monopolization of the western newspaper industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries proved this important law. In the United States, for example, in the nineteenth century in large and medium-sized cities, there were generally more than two kinds as well as a dozen kinds of daily newspapers. As a result of intense competition and mergers, among other things, the number of daily newspaper varieties became fewer and fewer, and there were more and more large cities which gradually eliminated competition among the dailies. The following table shows how the number of daily newspapers in American cities has changed over the years from 1880 to 1930: It is easy to see from the table that, in terms of the number of newspapers alone, the American newspaper industry reached its peak in 1900. Since then, the number of newspapers has been decreasing, and the same trend has been observed in cities with multiple daily newspapers. In contrast, the phenomenon of one newspaper per city has become more common. From 1880 to 1930, the number of cities with exclusive dailies increased from 149 to 1,002, the percentage of cities with exclusive dailies in the cities that published dailies increased from 38.3% to 71.5%, and the total number of dailies in the cities with exclusive dailies as a percentage of all dailies in the country increased from 17.5% to 51.6%. In contrast, the percentage of cities with two or more competing dailies as a percentage of the total number of cities publishing dailies declined steadily from 1900, from 61.5 percent to 9.7 percent in 1943. This suggests that free competition among multiple newspapers is gradually disappearing in more and more cities in the United States. Monopoly replaced competition on a wider and wider scale. This situation is manifested to varying degrees in Britain, France, Germany, etc.

2, social opinion more and more for a small number of monopoly news group control

Newspaper monopoly not only in a wider and wider range of elimination of competition, so that the phenomenon of a city of a newspaper is becoming more common; and due to the emergence of monopoly newspaper control of a large number of media, so that the period of free capitalism, "free and fair market for opinion Moreover, the emergence of the monopoly press, which controlled a large number of media outlets, undermined the "free and fair marketplace of opinion" of liberal capitalism, replacing one voice with many, and the principle of diversity of expression with a high degree of uniformity. The monopolized press not only controlled the newspapers and the dissemination of information, but also the public opinion of the society.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the degree of control of the monopoly press over public opinion was constantly strengthened. This control was achieved primarily by grasping the dissemination of the material on which public opinion was formed. During this period, the greatest change in world journalism was the yearly increase in the number of monopolized press corps, and the number of daily newspapers controlled by the corps and their percentage of the total sales of daily newspapers also increased year by year. Take the United States as an example, in 1900, the United States of America's monopoly newspaper group has 8, control of daily newspapers 27, its sales accounted for 10% of the total sales of daily newspapers in the U.S. In 1930, the number of U.S. newspaper group rose to 55, control of daily newspapers 311, its sales accounted for 43.4% of the total sales of daily newspapers in the same year. To 1970, the number of U.S. newspaper groups increased to 157, controlling 879 daily newspapers, their sales accounted for 63% of the total sales of daily newspapers that year. It can be seen that more and more readers in the United States, is through the monopoly newspaper to obtain news and comments. And another feature of the monopoly press is the ownership of multiple newspapers in many different cities. One newspaper controls one city, and a newspaper group controls several or many cities. The larger the press corps and the more pervasive the monopoly, the stronger and more powerful its control over public opinion.

3. Monopoly Oligarchy Control of News Media Groups

While monopoly newspaper groups control a considerable part of the circulation of newspapers in capitalist countries, they control the sources of information that people rely on for their thinking and judgment, and they control public opinion. But the monopoly press is not the ultimate manipulator of public opinion. Behind the press corps there is a much more powerful economic force. This economic power, which often takes direct political form, is the monopoly oligarchs (big money), and it is they who control public opinion through the press. There are three main means by which the monopoly oligarchs control the newspapers.

One of them is the chain director system. The so-called chain directorship means that the directors of big banks and consortia are also directors of news media companies, while the directors of mass media companies are also directors of banks and plutocrats. This system of mutual directorship makes the monopolized press corps connect with the monopolized oligarchs in a wider scope, make use of each other, and take each other's interests as their interests, so as to tighten their control over the politics, economy and culture of the whole society. Ben Bagdikan, deputy editorial director of the Washington Post in the United States, pointed out in his book The Monopoly of the Communications Media that the United States "* * * There are 50 of the largest companies that control most of the tools of printing and broadcasting in the United States."

The second is the acquisition of stock in news media companies and taking ownership of them, thus expanding the scope of the monopoly oligopoly's operations and making it possible for the monopoly oligopoly to own not only banks, factories, and mines, but also newspaper syndicates. In this case, "the newspaper syndicate is again part of a larger conglomerate." Newspaper group owners must face up to not only the laws of journalism and economics, but more importantly, the will of the monopoly oligarchy.

The third is the use of advertising to influence the editorial policies and speech tendencies of newspaper groups as well as newspapers. Before the industrial revolution, the reason why modern newspapers had difficulty in gaining independence, in addition to political factors, mainly because of the fragile operating base, the circulation income alone is not enough to maintain the survival of the newspaper, and increase the offer is not conducive to the expansion of newspaper sales. Thereafter, the fundamental reason for the boom of mass-market newspapers was the surge in advertising revenue brought about by the development of industry and commerce, which gradually became the main source of income for newspapers. By the first half of the 20th century, in some developed countries, advertising revenue even exceeded circulation and became the lifeblood of newspaper business. However, advertising is not unconditional. Advertisers, in the face of the diversity of media and their unlimited advertising needs, can be sold at a price and choose the best. The obedient and willingly dominated newspaper group can get a large number of advertisements; on the contrary, it will not get advertisements. In front of the advertisers, the press cannot stand up. The emergence and development of newspaper monopoly changed the basic structure of the world newspaper industry. For this important historical phenomenon, there are those who affirm it, those who support it, those who criticize it, and those who both affirm and deny it. It can be said that the benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom.

1, in favor of

Those with a positive attitude generally believe that monopoly eliminates competition, not a bad thing. Because there is no competition, there is less need for sensationalism and sensationalism among newspapers to peddle news, which not only ensures the standard of content, but also facilitates a balanced coverage of news and opinions. It is also argued that the centralization of newspaper ownership makes the news media enterprise more economically powerful. On the one hand, this economic strength makes it easier for newspapers to upgrade technical equipment, train and educate personnel, and expand their news-gathering network; on the other hand, it also leads to higher efficiency "through rationalization of organization, management and production, and by means of smaller units at the disposal of the central funds," all of which results in more news available to the subscribers. could get more news. They believed that the modernization of the press and publishing business could lead to increased sales, while the centralization of the press and publishing business could lead to a wider range of news for the newspapers." Other owners of monopoly newspaper groups believe that the only free press that can be economically independent and politically resistant to interference by the government and various power groups is a monopoly press. John Purcell, the main head of the Gannett Newspaper Group in the United States, has shown that this is what he means: a decentralized press and publishing organization is easy for the government to break each one of them, and easy for the government to lead them to do things that are advantageous to the government. As long as a strong government exists, there must be strong, economically independent monopoly newspapers. These monopoly newspaper owners also seek to show that they are not as keen to interfere with the editorial policy and speech policy of the newspapers as some people may think. In their view, "the editor-in-chief or publisher of each local newspaper has full authority to determine their editorial policy." And the role of the press corps "is only to ensure that the personnel at all levels are highly competent, businesslike, dedicated to the work of the newspaper, and that the interests of the newspaper are integrated with the interests of the nation and the region.

2, Disapproval

The opposite is true of those who take a negative attitude, in whose view the development of newspaper monopoly will bring about endless evils. It first manifests itself in the harm to the freedom of the press. Freedom of the press requires a diversity of sources of news, whereas monopoly keeps the news from coming from one source. The owner of a monopolized press can control the news in a region, leaving the public with no choice, thus "limiting the range of opinion and the field of debate, promoting uniformity and forcing acceptance of the norms of the dominant minority, and thus potentially posing a serious threat to the kind of pluralism of thought that is so important to democracy." Benjamin Bagdikian, a professor at the University of California, points out the tendency for one man to now direct the newspaper corps, "At least in theory, fewer than 1,700 people determine the written news that American newspaper readers receive each day. Of these, 1,545 live in one town and control the only newspaper there. Newspaper chains have increased centralized control of the news, with the result that 63 percent of daily newspaper readers, or members of 39.5 million households, receive textual news controlled by 35 newspaper conglomerates, or perhaps 35 individuals." Former U.S. Vice President Agnew also exclaimed, "The growing centralization of the newspaper industry is developing in such a way that more and more newspapers are controlled by fewer and fewer people. The result is that the days of the naive idea that newspapers and television networks are neutral are over. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the U.S. Senate's "Antitrust and Antitrust Committee," also warned that the growing power of the big monopoly newspaper groups, as they merge with independent papers and swallow up entire conglomerates, is "seriously harmful to our democracy."

Those who are negative about monopolies have even more reasons to oppose this tendency toward concentrated newspaper ownership. In their minds, the main purpose of newspaper monopolies is to make money; they see newspapers as money-making machines, and as long as a newspaper makes a profit, regardless of its content, the result will naturally be that the quality of the newspaper will be compromised. In order to win readers and maintain the huge amount of advertising revenue, newspaper monopoly owners are often reluctant to involve their newspapers in the discussion of some controversial issues or take a tough stance, for this will inevitably offend certain people and incur financial losses. Newspaper group owners, most of whom live outside the country, do not know or care about the local situation of their newspapers, and they are only satisfied with the newspapers filling their pages with cheap content obtained from news agencies, rather than spending more money to cover the local news themselves. More importantly, since monopolization eliminates competition, the absence of competition will cause news practitioners to relapse into inertia, lose the motivation to work hard, and lack creativity and initiative, which will inevitably lower the taste of newspapers and weaken their social service function.

While the critics of the above negative views have spoken bitterly about the drawbacks of monopoly, none of them has called for the dismantling of the press corps. In their view, "dismantling a huge communications network is not the same as dismantling an oil monopoly or a tobacco monopoly. If people dismantle communications organizations because they are too powerful, they destroy the services they themselves need." The fundamental solution, therefore, is not a change of ownership of the press, but a joint effort by the newspapers themselves, the public, and the government * * * to improve the business of the press and to strengthen the sense of social responsibility of the newspapers. This view is far removed from, and even opposed to, that of the Marxist theorists. According to the latter's theory, the fundamental way to solve the ills caused by monopoly is to overthrow the capitalist system and radically change the form of ownership of the press and media, so that the newspapers will be in the hands of the government, the ruling party, which represents the people.

3, compromise

There is also a kind of eclecticism. Those who hold this view believe that the fact that the newspaper monopoly has grown so large that there is only one newspaper left in a city is not in itself a bad thing. The goodness of a newspaper monopoly, of a newspaper, depends to a large extent on the nature of the monopoly, on the kind of people who own them, the president, and on what kind of aims they have and how they run the newspaper business. Some of the newspapers controlled by the monopoly are among the best newspapers in the world, with a high standard of quality, seriousness of content, objectivity and impartiality, while others are mediocre, low in quality and full of excitement, and therefore no generalization should ever be made. Raymond Nixon, a famous American professor of journalism, advocated that "the press should not be generalized. Raymond Nixon, a famous professor of journalism in the United States, advocated that "the greatest enemy of the freedom of the press and democracy is not the 'monopoly' but the old tradition of newspaper operation." Can be considered the most representative one.

All three of these opinions have their favorites in the community. No one can convince anyone. We believe that from the point of view of the history of journalism, the monopolization of the newspaper industry and the concentration of ownership is an inevitable trend. Despite the fact that a considerable number of people take a negative attitude towards it, it cannot be denied. As a historical phenomenon, it has shown both favorable and unfavorable aspects for social development. Just as the invention of gunpowder, although it has pushed history forward, its use as a weapon of mass murder has in turn been widely blamed by society. The monopolization of the newspaper industry itself has created economic conditions for the improvement of the quality of newspapers, and it has also provided some profit-oriented businessmen and political ambitious people with loopholes to exploit. This is something no one can deny. In this sense, the evaluation of newspaper monopoly, I am afraid that we can not simply from the extreme metaphysics of either good or bad, but should be based on the dialectical point of view, a realistic analysis.