Importance of the Complete Story

Ownership convergence within the journalism field has been under a lot of scrutiny lately and perhaps for good reason. When the same parent corporation owns multiple channels of communication or content, it does allow for the wider and more complete distribution of the news. As Jack Fuller, president of Tribune's publishing subsidiary, said, "Owning television, radio and newspapers in a single market is a way to lower costs, increase efficiencies and provide higher quality news in times of economic duress." Mr. Fuller raised a good point; consolidating multiple news venues allows for widespread distribution of news with fewer costs. However a few questions are raised.

When an entity such as the New York Times Company owns eighteen daily newspapers internationally, nine network television stations and two radio stations, as well as operating more than 30 web sites, it is obviously cost effective for them to share resources. However, this concentration of control could also equal a stifling effect on the diversity of stories and topics that are covered in the news. The company may, in an effort to maintain certain societal or organizational values, choose certain stories and coverage over others and cover some issues more rigorously than others. This may not distort the "picture of reality" that audiences receive from the news in the case of a single newspaper, but when the same messages are put out by a company as large as the New York Times it is easy to see how some audience members may become ignorant to topics that it and all of it's affiliates chose to ignore

News Corporation, an even larger conglomerate than the Times owns more than 20 international newspapers, 30 or more television channels including Fox and an innumerable amount of websites; all of these reaching up to 300 million subscribers according to their corporate website. Now if NewsCorp chose to ignore the other side of a story on say, the Iraq war, in an effort to preserve their status quo, all of those 300 million subscribers would be completely ignorant to that issue, unable to make their own decision on where they stand. Viewers and readers would need to go to another news outlet to receive the other side, and it is a reasonable assumption to think that many of those 300 million do not get to read or watch more than one source of news regularly.

Due to this conglomeration or convergence of news ownership, audiences may be suffering. At least a small portion of media consumers may be geting a distorted view of the truth. With this knowledge it is important for all of us to not take what we see or read as absolute truth, to diversify the news we encounter and to try to get the complete story.