Instructor: Jack Lule  
Phone: (610)758-4177  
Email: jack.lule@lehigh.edu  

On this page are the assignments for Monday, June 21 and Thursday, June 24.  

DEADLINES:  You should have Monday's assignments completed by Thursday, June 24, at 7 p.m. You should have Thursday's assignment -- your second research paper -- completed by Monday, June 28, at 7 p.m. 

WEEK FIVE, MONDAY: Censorship and oppression were the first contexts in which we considered international communication. 

We now look at international communication from another perspective: conglomerations and mergers. 

If you're like me, global economics is not the most . . . exciting topic. But global communications can actually be very intriguing.  

A handful of media moguls -- "Lords of the Global Village" -- own and control a huge percentage of the world's media. The percentage rises regularly. 

We are heading toward a future where, quite possibly, a dozen people will own most of the media of the world. 

It's one of the most important and disturbing aspects of international communication. Yet very few people know much about it. Where would they get the information? From the media owned and controlled by these very moguls? Not likely. 

This week we'll think about the implications of the growing global media monopoly.  

ASSIGNMENTS  

1) Our first reading is a small excerpt from a classic. The author is Ben Bagdikian, a journalist with a wonderfully varied career. As a Washington Post reporter, he worked with the Pentagon Papers, a hugely important story from the Nixon era.  

Bagdikian eventually left journalism for the university life. He has done important research in media economics. His book, The Media Monopoly, is regularly revised and reprinted. 

In June 1989, Bagdikian published a long cover story for the progressive weekly, The Nation. The story, "The Lords of the Global Village," was a detailed report of media conglomeration on a global scale. Though its details are dated, the issues and themes are timeless and will give us a great introduction to the issues. I have put a small excerpt at my site for you to read.  

[A note: Though The Nation has an interesting Web site, its archives do not go back to 1989. You may want to visit The Nation site but the article link is to my files.] 

As I noted, the Bagdikian article was written in 1989. It predicts the trends well but we will need to update the information. 

2) To update the Bagdikian piece, I will send you to work by the scholar Robert McChesney, formerly at the University of Wisconsin, now at the University of Illinois. In 1997, he published an article in the magazine, Extra! -- which is published by a group called FAIR. 

The article, "The Global Media Giants," updates and details the nine firms that dominate the world's media. If the link to the article does not work, I have placed a copy at my site. 

McChesney's lists can be deceptive. Read carefully and you will find large developments from the past of international communication.  

• General Electric, the huge defense contractor, buys NBC;
• Westinghouse, another defense contractor, buys CBS; 
• Disney, the omnipresent entertainment company, buys ABC;
• Time-Warner merges with Turner Broadcasting to become the largest media corporation in the world.

3) After reading about this major issue, I would like to hear your thoughts on the Bagdikian excerpt and the McChesney article. Send me an email message, jack.lule@lehigh.edu, discussing important points and trends.  

4) For our conference, however, I want to take a step back. Not everyone thinks the trend in mergers and monopolies is a bad thing.  

I would also like you to read a short Point/Counterpoint discussion on media mergers, taken from the Media Studies Journal, published by the Freedom Forum. These are not long readings. And they should add much to our discussion. 

The first reading,"Not So Fast," by Todd Gitlin sees great harm from the media mergers. 

The Counterpoint, "A Golden Age of Competition," by Steven Rattner, offers a more rosy capitalist view of the trends. 

A procedural note: The links above will bring you to the entire issue of the Media Studies Journal. You should use them and feel free to read further in the site. In the event those links do not work, you can also find copies of the Gitlin and Rattner readings at my site.  

After you finish the readings, think about what you have read and then let's talk about it: What do you think of Gitlin's and Rattner's argument? Who makes sense?  

How do you feel about global media conglomeration? Is it good? Bad? Inevitable? Take up points by the authors. Listen to the thoughts of your classmates. What do you think? 

WEEK FIVE, THURSDAY: To complete our section on global conglomeration, it's time for us to become more acquainted with some of "The Lords of the Global Village." 

Some of the names, such as Rupert Murdoch of Fox and Michael Eisner of Disney, might be quite familiar to you. Others, such as Jack Welch of General Electric and Gerald Levin of Time-Warner, might not be as familiar. 

Known or unknown, the names on the following list share one thing: They own or control a large and ever-growing percentage of the world's media. We are rapidly seeing Bagdikian's forecast come true. A handful of men -- and they all are men -- are in control of much of the world's media. 

We don't have the time, energy or resources for each of you to study all of the world's media moguls. But we can do it as a group. 

SECOND RESEARCH ESSAY  

For your second research essay, I would like each of you to do a profile of a media mogul -- one of the lords of the global village -- whom I will assign to you in the table below. 

You should try to give a bit of personal biography of your subject or perhaps some company history. You should provide a fairly comprehensive rundown (it can be a list) of media and non-media holdings of the company. You should find articles and quote criticism or praise of your subject. You should give a sense of future plans. 

The length should be about 1,000 words -- four double-spaced pages. You should include a bibliography and cite your references. 

You should find plenty of information. Nexis and the old reliable Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature should be useful. I also ran each of the names through Infotrac at Lehigh's Information Resources page under Article Indexes and came away with many articles.  

The Web will have much to offer. But as always, be careful about taking information directly from unknown web sites. You may not know how reliable the information is. Learning how to do good, focused, reliable searches is a valuable skill you can take from the course. 

You may also try to find and search the archives of various publications such as Mother Jones, Business Week, The Nation, Forbes and others. 

There are six moguls on the list. By the way, if you're wondering why Robert Maxwell, whose name comes up often, is not on the list: Maxwell died in a somewhat mysterious yachting accident a few years ago.  

Two students are assigned to each name. Each student should send in his or her own research essay. But you are free to share resources and Web sites with the person who also has your subject. For your convenience, I'll provide email numbers. 

The essays will be due by 7 p.m. Monday. We won't have any email or conference assignments for this day so you can devote all your energies to your media mogul. Let me know if you have questions. I think you'll have an interesting time learning about these "lords of the global village." 

If you have questions: jack.lule@lehigh.edu.