FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
(From “The Global Media Giants,” by Robert W. McChesney, Extra!, November/December 1997) $25 billion – 1997 sales Time Warner, the largest media corporation in the world, was formed in 1989 through the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. In 1992, Time Warner split off its entertainment group, and sold 25 percent of it to […]
A specter now haunts the world: a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of superpowerful, mostly U.S.-based transnational media corporations. It is a system that works to advance the cause of the global market and promote commercial values, while denigrating journalism and culture not conducive to the immediate bottom line or […]
The debate is over,” declared President Clinton on August 11. “We know now that welfare reform works.” One year after passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRA), Clinton chose an event hosted by Rep. Dick Gephardt (D.-Mo.), an opponent of the law that had eliminated most federal guarantees to aid, to […]
When the Central Intelligence Agency celebrated its 50th anniversary in September, press coverage spoke of the uncertainty of the spy agency’s mission in the post Cold War world. Apparently the press finds itself equally confused; how else to explain the litany of stories venerating the highly controversial CIA as if it were no more than […]
Reporters who covered the funeral of Britain’s Princess Diana were mystified by the mourners (e.g., New York Times, 9/7/97). “Why are you here?” one journalist after another asked the people adding bouquets to the mountainous flower pile outside the palace gates. Sikhs and Rastafarians, Londoners and tourists, women and men, gay and straight, responded in […]
The nation’s newspapers are incensed at the idea that President Bill Clinton might not get “fast track” authority to negotiate trade pacts that Congress can only approve or disapprove, but not amend. Pointing to negative effects of NAFTA, a wide range of critics want future pacts to integrate protections for workers and the environment, and […]
(From “The Global Media Giants,” by Robert W. McChesney, Extra!, November/December 1997) $24 billion – 1997 sales Disney is the closest challenger to Time Warner for the status of world’s largest media firm. In the early 1990s, Disney successfully shifted its emphasis from its theme parks and resorts to its film and television divisions. In […]
(From “The Global Media Giants,” by Robert W. McChesney, Extra!, November/December 1997) $5 billion – 1996 sales General Electric is one of the leading electronics and manufacturing firms in the world with nearly $80 billion in sales in 1996. Its operations have become increasingly global, with non-U.S. revenues increasing from 20 percent of the total […]
(From “The Global Media Giants,” by Robert W. McChesney, Extra!, November/December 1997) $10 billion – 1996 sales The News Corporation is often identified with its head, Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls some 30 percent of its stock. Murdoch’s goal is for News Corporation to own multiple forms of programming–news, sports, films and children’s shows–and beam […]
