This chapter begins with illustration of the concentration among corporate media firms. It ends with a discussion of media reform in a number of countries. In your post, I would like for you to do one of two things.

(1) Test McChesney’s and Nichols’s claim about media concentration by looking at who owns your favorite newspaper, tv station, or radio station. You can do this at the Columbia Journalism Review “Who Owns What” site: http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/ [1]. Do you find that they are right? Are your local stations, papers, etc. part of a huge conglomerate? Do you think this explains why these media outlets fail to present complex economic and political issues as democratic issues, as McChesney and Nichols claim (pp. 112-3)?

(2) Learn about the investigation into Committee for Public Broadcasting investigation in to possible leftist bias Bill Moyers’s PBS program _Now_. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/16/1329245 [2] If, as McChesney and Nichols argue, public broadcasting must be a lynchpin in any media system dedicated to promoting democratic citizenship, then is the CPB’s investigation into _Now_ justified? What do you think McChesney and Nichols would think about these actions?