Media Conglomerates- To Fear or Not To Fear?

In today's world what we read in a book or newspaper is becoming more and more controlled as media conglomerates continue to gobble up local publishing companies.

Of the top 12 book publishers in the UK only a few are actually owned by UK companies. They are Pearson PLC the parent of Penguin and Pearson Education, Oxford Press, Bloomsbury, and the Faber Alliance of Independent Publishers. The top 2 publishing houses in the UK Hachette Livre and Random House are owned by French and German parent companies respectively. Even Macmillan, which was started in the UK, is now owned by the foreign media conglomerate Verlagsgruppe out of Germany. Rupert Murdoch's U.S. based powerhouse News Corp owns Harper Collins, and the American big wig CBS owns Simon and Schuster.

Of the top 12 book publishing companies in the UK only 4 are UK owned. So overall the amount of UK publishers owned by foreign companies far out weighs the one that are UK owned. Many fear this kind of foreign influence or dominance as it can easily overlook or stamp out local flavor. Despite the fact that most big publishers have a solely UK branch of the company does little to quash peoples dislike of media conglomerates. This is because we cannot help to feel that we are being spoon-fed the same information and products as everyone else. The reason this is so disturbing is because it is the idea that culture is being changed from a unique entity that is dependent on an area and the people who live in the area and their beliefs, traditions and history to a one size fits all model that media conglomerates are injecting into our societies.

On the other hand the more media conglomerates tighten their grip on society the more people fight back. Thanks to the availability of information through the Internet we are able to share the truth behind who owns what and thus become aware of “the man” influencing society. The Internet has also allowed a major increase in the amount of people who can share their ideas without going through a publishing house or media conglomerate. So in a sense the more conglomerates try to control what we see, read, buy and think, the more new technologies are invented to counteract such influence. These new innovations on the Internet have given us the ability to circumvent the control of media conglomerates.