the power structure. There may be, as the above quote indicates, some 25,000 separate media outlets but there are nothing like 25,000 truly independent voices. As the same author reports,
Today, despite more than 25,000 outlets in the
United States, twenty three corporations control most
of the business in daily newspapers, magazines,
television, books, and motion pictures.
Bagdikian, 1990: 4
This concentrated corporate ownership seldom engages in old fashioned, heavy handed manipulation of the news ordering reporters to say something, or to refrain from saying something else. There is no need for them to do so. They have more subtle and indirect means of making sure that messages they want to go out, go out, and that messages they don't want put out are quashed.
Sometimes the old direct approach is still used. Every year, reporters are fired for stories that embarrassed major advertisers. Television shows, such as Ed Asner's, w
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