Media ...

... and the Risk of a Monoculture - a very interesting article on the dangers of global media. This part really stuck out to me:

The expansion of international media conglomerates across the globe prompts a question: What is the relationship between public opinion and published opinion in a setting of globalization? In other words, is there any guarantee that public opinion will be accurately represented in published opinion -- print, radio, television, and Internet media -- so that we do not become slaves to the media?

It's an important idea. Sometimes I think things are only controversial or popular because the media says they are. We really need to take in entertainment, news and opinion with the view that a lot of it is about making money.

Fr. Hull continues:

We must be mindful that multinational media corporations are just that -- corporations. They are responsible to their shareholders, who are in turn indebted to their advertising sponsors, from whom these corporations turn their profit.

While there certainly is a moral responsibility for the media to present public opinion honestly, there is a strong temptation to influence public opinion vis-à-vis the material profit of their sponsors.

And while the public may demand the truth on one level or another, the economic supremacy of other interests may make it impossible for the people's demand to be realized or even heard.

Thus, globalization runs the risk not only of eliminating traditions and ways of life and replacing them with a monoculture formed in the interests of global corporate revenue, but also of stifling their voices should their voices be deemed incompatible with those interests.