scholarly journals Welcome to Havana, Mr Corleone: Issues of media ownership and control

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Mc Chesney

In the United States the media system is set up to maximise profit for a relative handful of large companies. The system works well for them, but it is a disaster for the communication needs of a healthy and self-governing society. The problem is not with the poorly trained or unethical journalists; in fact, I suspect they may well be as talented and ethical as any generation of journalists in memory. It is the context journalists work in that is the problem. 

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 38-52
Author(s):  
Isabelle Freda

Harry Truman’s succession to the United States presidency upon Franklin Roosevelt’s death in 1945 thrust an obscure and inexperienced politician into the center of one of the 20th century’s most critical historical moment: the final months of World War II, as the United States was preparing to deploy nuclear weapons for the first time. Truman’s clear unequalness (in both image and substance) to the tasks at hand, in juxtaposition with the epic scale of the tasks themselves, provides a unique exposure of the illusory nature of presidential authority in the Nuclear Age. Using Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan as a means of delineating the theory and image of political sovereignty, this essay examines three distinct moments from the early days of Truman’s administration that serve to elucidate the absence of presidential power and control that continues to this day to underlie the media apparatus that defines the American presidency.


2003 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Wilding

Over the past year media ownership and control have been at the forefront of media policy debates in the United States and the United Kingdom. In Australia, the Media Ownership Bill was debated — and defeated in the Senate — in the last week of June. The Bill seeks to remove many of the regulations on ownership and control in the Australian media. It is expected to return to the Senate later this year and has been lipped as one of the handful of triggers for a double dissolution. In this article Derek Wilding provides an outline of the Bill following a number of recent amendments, as well as the key policy issues and points of contention in this long-running debate on diversity, convergence and media influence.


2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-78
Author(s):  
Herbert H. Howard

Multiple-station, or group, ownership is a long established characteristic of broadcasting in the United States. It exists whenever a single organization owns more than one station or one medium. Through the efficiencies of operation of multiple outlets, or economies of scale, group media companies usually enjoy financial benefits that are not available to single medium operators. Thus, a long-term trend toward consolidation has prevailed throughout the history of the radio broadcasting industry. Television owners quickly adopted the practice, which has expanded steadily, as regulations have permitted ever since. The three forms of multiple ownership — Group ownership, Duopoly ownership, and Cross-media ownership are analyzed in this study. Particularly, this study provides (1) a statistical-historical account of the development of multiple-station ownership in the TV industry from 1940 to 2005; and (2) a historical account and analysis of the government's regulatory actions on media ownership during the same period. This study explores thus, the ownership consolidation and industry regulation that continue to be significant issues for the media industries with on-going implications.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Modu Alh. Bukar Bukar ◽  
Mohammed Kaka ◽  
Mai Dunoma Zannah

The paper is to examine the influence of press freedom and media ownership in the performance of the media institutions in the United States of America and Federal Republic of Nigeria. However, in order to set for such discourse there is indispensable need to review some of the normative theories of the media, which will enable us to locate the appropriate principles guiding the operation of the media in each countries under study. The subdivided into: Abstract, Introduction, Normative Theories of the press, press freedom in United States, press freedom in Nigeria (democracy and press freedom, freedom of information act and conclusion). The analysis concludes that, The United States even has provision in their law and constitution forbidding state interference in the area of information content and dissemination. In Nigeria however, the state control society including the mass media. In this regard, whether media are owned by public or private individuals, they are only meant to service the government in power and were forbidden to criticize the government or its functionaries. The paper recommends that, For Nigerian press to be free the country should militate the all laws or factors that against the press freedom and Members of the Nigerian press must adhere to the ethics of the profession, in order to compete with others freers press of the other countries.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Rosenberg

This paper explores trans temporalities through the experiences of incarcerated trans feminine persons in the United States. The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has received increased attention for its disproportionate containment of trans feminine persons, notably trans women of colour. As a system of domination and control, the PIC uses disciplinary and heteronormative time to dominate the bodies and identities of transgender prisoners by limiting the ways in which they can express and experience their identified and embodied genders. By analyzing three case studies from my research with incarcerated trans feminine persons, this paper illustrates how temporality is complexly woven through trans feminine prisoners' experiences of transitioning in the PIC. For incarcerated trans feminine persons, the interruption, refusal, or permission of transitioning in the PIC invites several gendered pasts into a body's present and places these temporalities in conversation with varying futures as the body's potential. Analyzing trans temporalities reveals time as layered through gender, inviting multiple pasts and futures to circulate around and through the body's present in ways that can be both harmful to, and necessary for, the assertion and survival of trans feminine identities in the PIC.


2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Gallagher

Public opinion in the United States and elsewhere celebrated the liberation of Afghan women following the defeat of the Taliban government. The United States promised to stay in Afghanistan and foster security, economic development, and human rights for all, especially women. After years of funding various anti- Soviet Mujahidin warlords, the United States had agreed to help reconstruct the country once before in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government fell, but had lost interest when the warlords began to fight among themselves. This time, however, it was going to be different. To date, however, conditions have not improved for most Afghan women and reconstruction has barely begun. How did this happen? This article explores media presentations of Afghan women and then compares them with recent reports from human rights organizations and other eyewitness accounts. It argues that the media depictions were built on earlier conceptions of Muslim societies and allowed us to adopt a romantic view that disguised or covered up the more complex historical context of Afghan history and American involvement in it. We allowed ourselves to believe that Afghans were exotic characters who were modernizing or progressing toward a western way of life, despite the temporary setback imposed by the Taliban government. In Afghanistan, however, there was a new trope: the feminist Afghan woman activist. Images of prominent Afghan women sans burqa were much favored by the mass media and American policymakers. The result, however, was not a new focus on funding feminist political organizations or making women’s rights a foreign policy priority; rather, it was an unwillingness to fulfill obligations incurred during decades of American-funded mujahidin warfare, to face the existence of deteriorating conditions for women, resumed opium cultivation, and a resurgent Taliban, or to commit to a multilateral approach that would bring in the funds and expertise needed to sustain a long-term process of reconstruction.


1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-213
Author(s):  
Michael P. Schoderbek

This paper examines the early accounting practices that were used to administer the United States' national land system. These practices are of significance because they provide insights on early governmental accounting and they facilitated an orderly settlement of the western territories. The analysis focuses on the record-keeping and control practices that were developed to meet the provisions of the Land Act of 1800 and to account for land office transactions. These accounting procedures were extracted from the correspondence between the Department of the Treasury and the various land officers.


Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini ◽  
Bruce A. Williams

The media landscape of countries across the globe is changing in profound ways that are of relevance to the study and practice of political campaigns and elections. This chapter uses the concept of media regimes to put these changes in historical context and describe the major drivers that lead to a regime’s formation, institutionalization, and dissolution. It then turns to a more detailed examination of the causes and qualities of what is arguably a new media regime that has formed in the United States; the extent to which this phenomenon has or is occurring (albeit in different ways) elsewhere; and how the conduct of campaigns and elections are changing as a result. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of the changing media landscape for the study and practice of campaigns and elections specifically, and democratic politics more generally.


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