[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilNLeXefmNw[/youtube]

As a graphics person, an information architect and erstwhile designer, graphical depictions of data always fascinates me. The impending FCC vote on media ownership rules has been big news for media types and has led to a flourish of linking to those same media-ownership graphic representations at Media Channel, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, etc. that stories linked to when this was going on in 2003. But as I look at these maps, and see Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media holding’s in one sphere and AT&T in another one, I wonder if I would really care whether one really bought out the other. I mean, if both offer crap that I now readily dismiss, should I really give a fig if it’s this company or that company running E! or Fox News? Either way, it will still suck. It’s funny to talk about media consolidation and use sources because all those sources are, essentially, media. Non-profit organizations, Entities self-described as “grassroots” or “watch dogs” all create there own media, and thus are media. So when we talk about the lack of information getting out to people we’re mostly sourcing information that is available in the media. To quote the film Being John Malkovich, “Malkovich, Malkovich.”

So how do these stack up? There are more than these few out there, but I’m basically pulling many of them from the list at Take Back the Media.

Media Channel’s Media Ownership Chart
Colorful, clear, nice retro brand appropriation with the logo, but out of date and woefully static. It is, in the end, just a big image. Am I supposed to print this out and put it on my wall to throw darts at? Is it for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to hang in his office to masturbate with? Most of the media ownership graphics out there are out of date and yet remain the top finds on search engine queries. Let’s either update these or retire them all ready. Media Channel could do well to update it in flash or create a real interactive map out of it.

Columbia Journalism Review’s ‘Who Owns What’
This one is not hardly graphic at all, but the most readable and the most up to date. What I like about CJR is it’s resistance to hyperbole. A lot of self appointed media “watch dogs” out there want to make the situation seem as dire as possible at least from a graphical standpoint, so they stick to the Big 5, or Big 6, or what-have-you. CJR is tracking 50, or so, thus giving a far more accurate picture of who really owns most the media. Besides, how low are our standards that 50 isn’t a scary small number when it comes to sources? Where it could benefit is from adding more graphs or ownership percentage indicators in each profile.

The Nation’s ‘Big Ten’
Easy to read, slightly more interactive than Media Channel, still incredibly out of date. I like how the images re-scale to match you’re browser window’s width. I’m checking it out on my wife’s huge Mac screen and just inflating News Corporation bigger and bigger by dragging the window open. Still, 2001? The Nation needs to either retire this one or update it. Overall, the use of graphic maps, at least when it comes to Big Issue subjects like media ownership, is still somewhat of a mystery to news organizations that primarily write for print and then think about their website. Unlike magazine graphics, your website graphic lives on, gets linked to, shared and used as a resource until your domain expires. Choose them wisely and keep them fresh.

The Incredible Shrinking Ownership Group
Outdated, but still interesting data. Focus is on the Big 5. The graph, though static, is sufficiently alarmist. Also, it does introduce something that people with some more online graphics skill could take advantage of, and that’s a graphic representation of ownership over time. I would like to hover my mouse over different parts of that graph and see what took place each year.

FAIR’s List of For-Profit Media
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting doesn’t keep a list of for-profit media owners, people, so stop linking to it. That link now jumps to a brief manifesto on corporate media which, while not that sexy to look at, does get to the meat of the problem:

Almost all media that reach a large audience in the United States are owned by for-profit corporations–institutions that by law are obligated to put the profits of their investors ahead of all other considerations. The goal of maximizing profits is often in conflict with the practice of responsible journalism.

Not only are most major media owned by corporations, these companies are becoming larger and fewer in number as the biggest ones absorb their rivals. This concentration of ownership tends to reduce the diversity of media voices and puts great power in the hands of a few companies. As news outlets fall into the hands of large conglomerates with holdings in many industries, conflicts of interest inevitably interfere with news-gathering.

FAIR believes that independent media are essential to a democratic society, and that aggressive antitrust action must be taken to break up monopolistic media conglomerates. At the same time, non-corporate, alternative media outlets need to be promoted by both the government and the non-profit sector.

I like this approach. It admits that media sales are:

• To freaking commonplace to keep up with.
• Pointless. Whether you’re getting some turn-of-the-screws bulletin on the whereabouts of Madeleine McCann from Fox or CNN, most likely you’re wasting your time.

NOW’s ‘Who Controls The Media?’
Old, out of date view of the Big 5 that is not all that easy to read. It’s sort of depressing that it’s at the National Organization for Women foundation website. This is a fairly big group with some pull. They don’t even link to their own chart in their online posts on this topic, and they shouldn’t.

Stop Big Media’s Who Owns the Media
Another, more recently updated take on the Big 6 notion. Mildly interactive. Very readable but could use a little more flare.

Instead of focusing on whether five ten or fifty shareholder-driven corporations own the media, what if these groups instead focused on the fact that they still generally churn out the same garbage and repeat one another. Shareholders are a fairly predictable lot with the same incentives to make decisions, and that’s profit share. This breathes into any organization a tendency toward conservative, or safe decision making.

In the case of, say, a tool manufacturing company, it’s not so bad: Let’s make screwdrivers that fit the most common screws available. In the case of media, it tends to trend in a similar manner but toward the opposite of public good: spinning narratives that conform to predominate views, stereotypes, prejudices, urban legends and so forth. The shareholders of Gannett stocks aren’t going to vary much in their motivations from the shareholders of General Electric, and likely, a number of Gannett shareholders are also GE shareholders as well. CEOs and the entire chain of command at all these companies ultimately answer to shareholders and their incentive is primarily to please these people.

Shareholders, are by and by, also members of the media consuming public. While one can assume that this means they also might like to not be subjected to a ubiquitous stream of crap all the time, we can also determine that the profit margin earned from said crap still outweighs voting to fire everyone at Fox News.

So, in graphical terms, how can we make this point? It would be great if some cause-head media-reform group was doing something innovative, entertaining and informative to show just how the echo chamber works.

They aren’t, though, but fortunately newspaper designers are (though possibly not with that goal in mind). Newseum’s gallery of front pages offers a daily showing of what newspapers are putting on their front pages and how they’re going about it. A-section designers are invited by the website to upload them themselves, so this is a voluntary opt-in project. To get an idea about how cookie-cutter the news business has become, take a look. To see how many of the same news decisions are made (by different editors working for publications owned by different companies and not in contact with one another) read the Daily Recap.

Until the battle leaves the number of corporations running the media and looks at the mechanism itself, media concentration fighters won’t actually achieve much. As long as corporate-run media has only itself to compete against, it wins.

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