Mark Hyman, of "The Point" recently posted an article about Peter Jennings personally changing scripts before going on air to provide his own political slant to the stories—even making stories completely unrecognizable.
This is my major concern about the FCC allowing one company to control all the media outlets in an area. I think this could be a really big problem in small markets—where you're much more likely to run into the situation of one company controlling all the news. I don't like the fact that it's possible for an area to receive news that's all slanted one way.
We need diversity in reporting to get the full picture. I believe you need to read multiple views on an event in order to properly evaluate your own stance on it. I don't really mind one company owning all of one type of media outlet (i.e. radio, newspapers, or tv,) but I just see a real potential to misled the public if one company decides to abuse their power by presenting only a single point-of-view of events to the public.
Will this happen, I would hope not, but there's the possibility. Living in Columbus, the Dispatch Group already owns several TV stations, radio stations and the City's largest paper. While I don't read the newspaper everyday, it does seem that the views presented amongst their different outlets seems to be fairly consistant. This isn't to say that they don't have the right to produce the news the way they see fit (provided their not inaccurately reporting events,) I just don't like the idea that their views are the only ones I could get from my local media.
Granted, I can still go to the web for my news—which is my primary source now, but not everyone has access to the 'net—especially in small markets where they're less likely to have good Internet access.
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