Conglomerate Control: Media Moguls and Media Power

Abstract

For some commentators, the impact of the state on the politics of the mass media is nothing compared to that wielded by the new breed of media moguls. Men like Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, Conrad Black and Silvio Berlusconi, and companies like News Corporation and Bertelsmann, often appear to be the main players in the emerging media order. Black’s company, Hollinger International, at one stage owned 400 publications worldwide, with a total circulation of 11 million, until he sold some of his Canadian titles for $2.3 billion (The Times, 6 October 2000). And with the appearance of multimedia conglomerates, like the one that links Time Warner and America Online, which is estimated to be worth $120 billion, it seems that indeed the media world is now populated by a new breed of corporate superpowers. Their impact on political life is most dramatically represented by Berlusconi’s rise to power in Italy on the back of his television and press empire. ‘Berlusconi’s control of the media resources,’ writes Paul Statham (1996: 88), ‘has transformed the basis for political communication in Italy.’ Berlusconi may have fallen from political grace, but his spell as prime minister foreshadowed a new conjunction of the media and the political order.