Cross Media Ownership

Hearst Communications is one of the biggest communications companies in the world, having over 49 weekly newspapers, 28 television stations and close to 200 magazines. Hearst Communications owns well-known magazines such as The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Popular Mechanics. The media company owns a variety of different magazine genres; The Oprah Magazine focuses on middle aged women, Cosmopolitan is specifically teenagers to young women and Popular Mechanics interests a variety of people both male and female. Hearst Communications also attracts people to participate in its product by owning different companies that deal with different mediums in the media. While magazines focus on advertising pictures and reading articles, Hearst owns television channels such as A&E, ESPN and Lifetime. They also own music organizations such as LiveWorld, Exodus, Netscape and Sirius/XM.

The problem with cross media ownership is too much varied information is coming from an exclusive source. If the information we read is the opinion of only a select few of individuals then people’s right to know the truth is taken away. As an example, Heart Communications owns a wide variety of media companies. Because Hearst owns so many different companies, they are able to be in control of a great range of demographics. This comes in handy when Hearst wants to alter the opinion of a large group of people.

John Malone owns 23% of the world’s cable stations. He owns the Discovery Channel which runs shows that deal with more serious issues rather than gossip and entertainment. Rupert Murdoch owns 34% of the daily newspapers and owns 37% of Sunday newspapers. Murdoch is able to lower his prices on newspapers because he owns over a quarter of the newspaper industry, causing his competitors to do the same and even potentially putting them out of business. Cross media ownership allows certain individuals to have a monopoly over the media industry, which in effect limits people’s knowledge.


http://www.cjr.org/resources/?c=hearst

Mitra, Asim. "Cross Media Ownership." Organizer July 2006 27. 15 Nov 2008 .