Mainstream Media on Wikipedia

In the United States of America, all mainstream media is owned by the following corporations as of 2002 (possible further mergers have since taken place, reducing the number of media houses in control of all news and television programming even further): AOL/Time Warner, AT&T, General Electric, Viacom, Walt Disney, Liberty Media Corp., Sony, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, and (Murdoch) News Corporation.

What does this mean? It means that American citizens are receiving a daily dose of news and entertainment from companies, not investigative journalists, not independent journalists or media houses. Why is this important? It is important because by definition corporations are created and run to make a profit. If American citizens and foreign citizens tuning in to American news programs and newspapers are getting daily news reports from profit-motivated media houses, many stories are being left out, and spins are being incorporated into the stories that are printed and reported on television; namely to the effect of supporting and promoting the profit motive of the corporations that operate the media houses in question.

It is relatively easy to step out of this box of manufactured news by looking for investigative journalism, magazines like Yes! and Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly are good starting points for finding alternatives to the mega corporate news.

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