Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
Only 5 companies own 90% of all the media outlets, so, yes, what you see on TV is carefully designed to bring the most people under the Big Top. Nothing to do with "news" at all.
This meme gets repeated a lot, presumably to alarm us that we are all puppets of a few corporate overlords. They never tell us whether "control" is market capitalization, some form of viewership/readership/eyeballs/listenership, etc. Just an ominous "control" The Meme Policeman website has an interesting story of it's genesis.

http://memepoliceman.com/corporate-media-control/

Whether true or not, this factoid is irrelevant. There is no Big Top. It's more like a sideshow with lots and lots of barkers. You can chose between right-wing or left-wing outrage, the course of true love, the lives of alligator hunters or house flippers, old movies, new movies and ever more obscure sports. You can find more diversity of opinion and variety now than in the era of the big three broadcasters and the "fairness doctrine". Imbuing Fox News or any other source with eldritch powers over the minds of the masses is simply ridiculous. Do you care more about what Disney or Comcast thinks, or do they care more about what you think?