Common Media for an Uncommon Nation by Ben Bagdikian
The third chapter of Duffy and Turow’s Key Readings in Media Today is an excerpt from Ben Bagdikian’s book, The New Media Monopoly. The article, Common Media for an Uncommon Nation, begins with a brief history of the American media landscape, pointing out that America has not inherited the baggage of monarchy and government media control the rest of the world was developed under. Bagdikian asserts that this history of press freedom should result in a community-controlled media, which works to promote positive community development. However, the author contests, this is not the case, as the American media landscape is controlled by a handful of greedy corporations, who choose to run their monopoly as if it were a powerful cartel — technically, the author says, these corporations form a media oligopoly.
The author argues that this media oligopoly is the result of America’s free-market, capitalist economy. As a result of being market driven, the Big Five — Time Warner, News Corp., Disney, Viacom and Bartelsmann — carry highly duplicative content, leaving American consumers little choice in a field of artificially narrowed media options.
Worse still, the Big Five don’t operate in strict competition with each other, sharing 45 interlocking board members, 141 joint ventures and a friendly attitude toward each other when it comes to congressional lobbying. This cooperation and market dominance result in a single, powerfully dangerous reality — the Big Five manufacture the social and political aspects of American culture.
This control results in the uniform success of the Big Five’s political and economic allies. Bagdikian goes on to argue that the success of conservative politics, namely the second Bush administration, was the result of the Big Five’s control over media. No matter how liberal the press is pegged to be, media tend to quote the powerful, follow the ideas of the dominate and use a large pool of capitol to force a majority viewpoint.
Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars by Henry Jenkins
Chapter 24 of Duffy and Turow’s Key Readings in Media Today is an interesting survey of Internet fan films written by MIT’s Henry Jenkins. In Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars, Jenkins looks at how creative reworking of science fiction movies and television universes for fan films has created an Internet phenomena and cultural media revolution that will have long lasting effects on the digital cinema movement.
Focusing mainly on Star Wars fan fiction and films such as Troops and George Lucas in Love, Jenkins pinpoints the effects of these unofficial media on the greater media landscape. This fan fiction was first seen as a misappropriation of trademarked property, and in some cases it still is. However, as transnational media corporations focus their marketing on “synergy” — that is, the marketing of a single property across multiple mediums — fan fiction and the creation of fan collectives on the Internet has aided the official marketing of larger properties such as Star Wars and Star Trek. By allowing fan fiction to exist, media conglomerates are allowing fans to enter into prolonged relationships with media properties.
Jenkins points out that properties that have failed to allow for the creation and development of online fan communities have failed to gain long-term viability in the marketplace. And while many companies complain that fan fiction is a form of theft, the author points out throughout the history of media, each new technology — the VCR, the photocopier, etc. — has introduced a new level of fan participation, and the Internet is, in fact, the most successful venue for fan fiction, and free marketing, yet. The result is a fan-powered force that breaks down barriers for media and allows them a successful entrance into the marketplace.
Jenkins also speaks of proprietary culture, and its battle with the corporate world. The author points out that as digital filmmaking gets less expensive and more accessible to the common man, a significant increase in proprietary films will appear. And, as we move into the digital age of film and Internet distribution, a new chapter in “fair-use” and copyright law will have to be written.