Truth and Control in the Fourth Estate

Television, movies, magazines and radio are the tools by which the public is informed of the news from the world aboard. Ben Bagdikian of the University of California, Berkeley, has written that some of the largest corporations in the world – General Electric, Disney, Time Warner, Westinghouse – now own distribution and control of what the American public sees in all forms of media (Hazen 3). Two of these companies are defense contractors involved in nuclear power production, and the others are entertainment manufacturers. Being owned by Disney, it is unlikely that ABC will do another PrimeTime Live episode that airs the practices of Disney, or that NBC will ever have negative news coverage of the nuclear power industry, as it is owned by General Electric (Edwards 19). When there is no diversity of ownership across the news media or any media, the public will receive a very biased view of world events.
In 1996 under the Bill Clinton administration, Congress passed the Tele...