I’ve learned things this semester in classes like Mass Communication in modern Society and Principles of Journalism that have shed light on media and made me see things in a different way than before I learned them.  

One thing I’ve learned that changed my world and put a fear into my bones is that fifteen billionaires and six corporations own the majority of the United States Media.  

AT&T, Disney, Comcast, Viacom, CBS, and News Corp are the six companies that own 90% of the media, with AT&T owning the most.  

CNN, Fox News, NBC news, ABC news, and CBS are a few examples of news publications owned by one of these six companies or a billionaire.  

Newspapers are not as profitable as they once were and in the last twenty years or so we have experienced a decline in print media. 

Today I got the opportunity to visit the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and listen to them talk a bit about the money side of journalism and how they were keeping their news outlet afloat.  

Due to Covid-19 and technology becoming more part of daily life, the newspaper moved to mostly online publication only delivering a physical copy of the paper on Sundays.  

While other publications saved money by laying people off and working with a smaller group of reporters, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette cut their cost by saving money on paper and ink since people were becoming less likely to get their news from the paper anyways. 

The newspaper keeps a full editing team as well as fifty multimedia journalists on the ground.  

 Although that is not the case for many publications. These corporate owners have the resources to fund these media outlets. The limited ownership of the media outlets could potentially play a significant role for journalists and the content they produce.  

One of the main concerns is the possibility that the owners of these news outlets may eventually, if they are not already, take the liberty of editing or filtering the content of these outlets. Billionaires and corporations might obviously have personal or business interests that conflict with the impartial reporting that journalism requires.  

It is important for journalists to maintain impartiality even in uncertain times because journalism has been considered a check in on democracy for a long time and sometimes the country is a little reminiscent of a business.