Why does it matter who controls the media?

The media is essentially a part of our daily lives, well in my case it is. I find that after only just a couple of hours without media access I am itching to check my Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with what is happening in the technological world. It may seem like the media has a hold over most of our lives a lot of the time. A question we must consider however is, why does it matter who controls the media? I’m sure many of you haven’t even stopped to consider who has ownership over the media platforms that we are constantly using or where the information that we are presented with actually comes from. So who exactly owns the media?

Rupert Murdoch owns News Limited, which is Australia’s largest media company and has The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian as its main newspaper mastheads. It has been determined that News Corp Australia titles account for 59% of the sales of all daily newspapers, with sales of 17.3 million papers a week, making it Australia’s most influential newspaper publisher by a considerable margin.

There is also Bruce Gordon, who controls regional television network WIN TV, which reaches more than 5 million people across Australia. In fact WIN’s Bruce Gordon is the biggest shareholder followed by Gina Rinehart and Lauchlan Murdoch not to forget James Packer who also has a significant stake. John Singleton controls Macquarie Radio Network, which owns Sydney’s highest-rating radio station. This is only a brief insight however, into media ownership. There is quite a large tangled web of ‘who owns what’ and ‘who controls who’ but we won’t go that deeply into it, otherwise we’d be here for hours.

Regardless these people not only have control over the media but also seem to have some control over our lives. The Murdoch’s especially seem to have quite the upper hand in terms of influencing the media. Recently Rupert Murdoch was accused of bias when the front page of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph had a strong opinion on the coverage of the September 2o12 election. Murdoch also took to social media to express his opinion. This is an example of how easily the media can influence our opinions and present how certain media moguls will use bias and one-sided stories to do so.

So after comprehending all of this it is clear that the media is simply what influences us the most, hence it does matter who controls the media. The media generally helps to shape our understanding and opinions of current events and also influences how we live our day-to-day lives. Our opinions on current events are also influenced by the many media platforms we tend to use frequently.

So next time you’re reading the morning paper or scrolling through your Twitter feed, take the time to think about where the information that you’re reading is coming from and how it impacts your point of view regarding current events.