Media Ownership.

I never really thought much about media ownership until recently when it was discussed in class. I always believed that each channel had their own "boss". Media ownership has different rules in each categories such as television, radio station, and magazines. A few popular media ownership such as Disney, Clear Channel, and News Corp own more then just what we see online or on television. Each company owns bits and parts of random companies. With the same company owning large parts of media,  media is bound to spew the same repetitive information from one form to another.

For example Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns just about every radio station. Have you ever noticed how each radio station seem to play the same commercials? Maybe at different times but always the same exact commercials. That is because all these channels are owned by the same company and this company uses the same resources and spread them out to various channels so they can get more listeners for their radio stations.

Media ownership is predominately owned by men. Women and minorities have a small part in media ownership. Women own about 6% of  the commercial broadcast television station in United States according to this fact sheet. Women and minorities help create diversity and have different opinions. They talk about different issues that are rarely heard. As Catherine Saufield stated in the article, Art and Activism, "For me, filmmaking is the most efficient, creative, and satisfying form of activism"(66). Saufield believes the best way for a message to be heard is to create a movie/video. What viewers see is what viewers tend to believe or "lean in to".  With women and minorities being heard, the audience can be better informed about other issues happening other then the mainstream ones that are being jumbled around from station to station. Though according to Debra Zimmerman, in the article, Women Makes Movies, she stated "when they (filmmakers) go through all the struggle to make films that represent their vision, they are not received by the general public" and "how they (filmmakers) were trying to do something different with the styles of the films, the audience just did not want to deal with that"(263).  Viewers are not used to change in perceptions and would rather be content with the usual ideas and perceptions they are used to seeing. Which makes other ideas difficult to view unless it is shown over and over again in mainstream media or a big company decides to finally embrace these ideas.



Discussing about media ownership in class made me realized that there are alternative media other then the ones we are so used to. The mainstream media are easy to access and is found everywhere while the alternative media are not easily found (by easily found, it means just turning on the television or the radio). Mainstream media reaches large audience while alternative media reaches those that put in a little bit of effort to find and keep on track. Mainstream media tends to talk about the same repetitive topics with different opinions and different views and majority of the time they exaggerate and do not tell the full truth sometimes.

The website The International Human Press is an alternative media that is updated 24/7 and have news from all over the world with different topics that are written by industry experts. This website is an easy access to all different types of articles gathered from other websites. Basically a go to website to find the top stories/news. The goal of this website is to provide real news about educational stories involving science, health, business, government, and innovative technology. This website wants to provide information instead of gossip.

After the past two weeks of class and being informed about media ownership, it made me realize that majority of what I hear are the same resources from the same companies just on different net works. It made me want to spend some time finding alternative media to educate myself in other news that I have never even thought of then listening to the same mainstream news that I hear every time I click on a channel or change the radio station.