ABSTRACT
Recent studies of the global concentration of media ownership note its negative consequences for democratic freedoms.1 In the US context McChesney has argued this concentration – now in the hands of fi ve major global enterprises – has been the result of ‘radical improvements in communications technology that make global media empires feasible and lucrative in a manner unthinkable in the past’, together with a strengthening neo-liberal endorsement of the commercial exploitation of the media and the concentration of ownership.2 Similarly, in May 2004 the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), while describing merger and acquisition processes as having ‘reached an alarming level’, warned that deregulation ‘has boosted both the commercial power of global [media] corporations, but it also gives them political power. They are currently demanding even greater relaxation of rules on media ownership, spending enormous sums on political donations while lobbying key politicians’.3 The IFJ was further concerned that big media companies produced poor journalism, allocating less funding for training and for investigative journalism.
