How the News Empires Are Now Global Corporate Entities

Like it or not technology is changing at a rapid rate, thanks to new media such as Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube we get information from around the world in a matter of seconds with just a click of a finger. 

But how much have we changed in the recent years? Media empires have changed drastically in response to the time and space compression of globalized technologies.

Stories are now compressed to conform into a 24 hour news cycle with a narrative arc developed by the news networks. This is in contrast to the episodic nature of news presentations in the 60s and 70s, where the narrative arc often ran from several days or even weeks.

Media empires were traditionally family run local empires ran in dictatorial fashions, but during the 70s and 80s some of these evolved into global corporate entities.  During these “old” media era, the News Channels were the primary source of news and were seen as an independent check on government, and an indispensable part of democratic societies.

(How far technology has come)

During this time News Anchors were the well respected faces of these news empires, where information meted out on a daily basis, more trusted by a less cynical public, and had a much clear division between News and Entertainment. 

In the current 21^st century “New” media era our primary source of information is a combination of social media and political satirical shows, now news anchors are less respected and less watched, and people do not have to watch the 6:30 news report as the main source of news as information is much more accessible and constantly updated.

(The above picture indicates which online newspaper was by far the most engaged news source on Facebook.)

However even though the access to information has been greatly enhanced by technological enhances the news empires themselves are less trusted and no longer seen as crusaders for truth and justice.

Now the news is much more Market orientated as news networks and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are utilized as a marketing tool to advertise.

As Nederveen famously said, 'Technological changes and their ramifications contribute to the impression that globalization is inevitable'(Nederveen 2004, p.10). Perhaps it is not inevitable but has already taken place.

References:
Nederveen Pieterse, J 2004, ‘Globalization: consensus and controversies’, Globalization and culture: global mélange2004, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, p.10.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ
Links:
Link 1: http://gigaom.com/2012/06/29/news-has-been-changed-forever-by-the-iphone/

Link 2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/09/ibc_in_amsterdam.html
Link 3: http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/special-reports-landing-page/the-changing-tv-news-landscape/
Images: 

Image 1: http://ravereader.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/anchorman-poster.jpg
Image 2: http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5151797469bedd603700000b/facebook-has-changed-the-way-we-read-the-news.jpg

Image 3: http://tvisnotdead.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/hello-my-name-is.jpg