Who Owns the Media?
I have been saying for years that the news is the enemy of the West, and is set upon the destruction or deconstruction of all we hold dear, in the name of imposing a utopia in its stead.
For those who doubt such a project, please think back through modern history on how the rich have always acted. Were they upholders of the sanctity of virgins, mothers, priest and pastors and patriots, or scornful of such things?
Look back hundreds of years, and you will no doubt see much the same answer. Rich men do not like capitalism. Capitalism is the democracy of the dollar, the rule by the whim of the consumer. Rich men like socialism, and the welfare state. Socialism is the rule of the economy by the elite.
Rich men do not want to be ruled. They want to rule. The way to rule a democracy, is to control the media that the voters see, the songs they hear, and the ideas they have.
For those who dismiss the idea as a conspiracy theory, on the grounds that so many people could not cooperate toward one purpose, keep in mind we are only talking about six families or so.
And we are not even talking about a conspiracy. We are only talking about a shared attitude, a sense of rebellion against the Victorian Age, a self satisfaction, a feeling of enlightenment, a conviction that history has a direction and a goal.
If the rich man hires only folks who share this attitude, no matter any difference in political theory, religious faith, ethnic background, their instincts will always bias them in favor of utopianism, elitism, antinomianism, vulgarity, prurience, shock-value, sentimentality, hysteria, and contempt for the common man.
The rich have always been addicted to the sugar rush of believing themselves more enlightened than the common ruck. “After all,” the rich man may well asked the common man, “if you are so smart, why do I sleep on a bed of gold and sleep with high-priced call girls, and not you?”
The modern fads of relativism and multiculturalism are merely expressions of underlying contempt for the various things the common man commonly holds to be sacred.
These fads will fade and change, but the contempt of the elite is ever-living, and will bring forth new ideas, new social movements, equally destructive, for the elite to uphold.
The common man has no money to waste on impractical schemes, so he tends to mistrust investing time and effort into utopia. He mistrusts expert opinion when it jars against common sense. He upholds law and order, common courtesy, modesty. The common man is practical and pragmatic because he cannot afford the luxury of sentiment. He cannot afford hysteria, lest other common men slap him in the face to snap him out of it. But no one slaps the rich man.
One need not be a member of a particular political party or religious denomination to be addicted to the opium of enlightenment.
For those who might imagine the news and the media were always controlled by a small group of millionaires, keep in mind that the group was larger in times not long past, and the news was a little more honest in those days. Here is a quote:
In 1983, fifty corporations dominated most of every mass medium and the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. … [I]n 1987, the fifty companies had shrunk to twenty-nine. … [I]n 1990, the twenty-nine had shrunk to twenty three. … [I]n 1997, the biggest firms numbered ten and involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever. … [In 2000] AOL Time Warner’s $350 billion merged corporation [was] more than 1,000 times larger [than the biggest deal of 1983].
–Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), pp. xx—xxi
In any case, here is who owns the media:
For those of you, like me, having trouble reading the fine print, here is a summary:
Time Warner
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine
Walt Disney
ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books
Viacom
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
News Corporation
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan
CBS Corporation
CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network
NBC Universal
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Trio
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
