FBIandAcademia. DinePolicyInstitute_presentation. Military Maps. Media Monopoly Revisited. The introduction of the original 1983 edition of The Media Monopoly, Ben Bagdikian’s classic investigation of media consolidation, concluded: “When 50 men and women, chiefs of their corporations, control more than half the information and ideas that reach 220 million Americans, it is time for Americans to examine the institutions from which they receive their daily picture of the world.” When the second edition was released in 1987, the number of people controlling half the media was down to 26. By 1993, as the last edition went to print, the number had fallen to 20. To arrive at these alarming numbers, Bagdikian—who has been a Washington Post editor and the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley—charted revenue numbers for each media category.
The biggest companies whose combined market share exceeded 50 percent of their sector were counted by Bagdikian as the dominant media corporations. Since these figures have not been updated since 1993, Extra! Movies Newspapers Radio. Who Owns the Media?