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“You can’t believe a thing you read in the papers nowadays” has become a commonplace . In the early days of 1935 mass meetings and conventions attended by thousands of persons have applauded general attacks on the press and speciWc charges against certain newspaper owners as agents of Fascism and breeders of war. There has been popular resentment against certain editors in the past but never to my knowledge as general an indictment against the press of the nation as we have today. There are powerful forces which do not want the facts, from a millionaire’s divorce to a war scare, presented truthfully. There are corrupting inXuences. Many newspapermen are subject to them without even realizing it. As a reporter, I turned in the story of Andrew Mellon’s divorce, stories of strikes, interviews with politicians and statesmen and news items concerning large corporations ; eighteen months in the American army and ten years among the dictators of Europe made the newspaper game for me something like the thrilling thing it is in Wction. But from the Wrst day to the last there was censorship, there was suppression of news, there was distortion and there was coloring of news, there was always an attempt by someone to mislead the public. I do not say that the integrity of the world press has broken down completely: I do insist that attacks upon it are stronger than ever in the history of newspaper printing, and although this statement becomes self-evident when it is known that ten large nations, the dictatorships of continental Europe, no longer have a free press, I want to go further and show the attack upon its integrity in the free nations, France, Britain, and the United States especially, where, Deo volente, dictatorship may be avoided but where, unfortunately, another oligarchy, dictatorial big money and big business of the public utilities and the Teapot Dome kind, is always trying to destroy the foundations upon which free government is built. —George Seldes, journalist and media critic, was red-baited by Senator Joe McCarthy. Seldes wrote for mainstream outWts and then for In Fact, where he helped expose the health risks posed by cigarettes. He was the author of several books, including Even the Gods Can’t Change History and Witness to a Century. The Media Monopolies Ben H. Bagdikian june 1978 All media with routine access to mass markets are already controlled by too few people. If we are serious about preserving maximum practical access to the marketplace of ideas and information, we ought to be deeply concerned. Bagdikian / The Media Monopolies 187 The Wfty largest broadcast chains already have three quarters of the audience. The Wfty largest cable television companies have two-thirds of all subscribers. The Wfty largest newspaper chains have more than two-thirds of all daily newspaper sales—and this is particularly troubling because concentration of control of daily newspapers has unique e¤ects on all information media. We would all beneWt if we had a number of truly independent and comprehensive sources of daily news. But we do not. When we talk about concentration of ownership of daily newspapers, we are talking about control of the only comprehensive and self-suªcient news system we have. There are more than Wfteen hundred cities in the United States with daily papers, but only forty with competing newspaper managements. Of all cities with newspapers, 97.5 percent have newspaper monopolies. This consolidation of monopolies is not something over the horizon; it is an accomplished fact. There are 1,760 daily papers in the country—a number that has remained stable since World War II. Of these, 73 percent are owned by 170 corporations . And now these 170 corporations are consuming each other, with large chains buying small chains, so that control is gathering with disproportionate speed among the few at the top. In 1950, 20 percent of all individual daily papers were owned by chains; by 1960, it was 31 percent; by 1970, 47 percent. Today it is 62 percent. Like beachfront property, independent daily papers are a disappearing commodity. So now big chains are buying small chains, multiplying the rate of concentration. Since 1960, the twenty-Wve largest newspaper corporations have increased their control of daily national circulation from 38 percent to 53 percent. Ten corporations now publish 37 percent of all newspapers sold daily in the United States. Newspapers have followed other industries in another form of concentration—the conglomerate. But as with chains...

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