[1] A recent study shows that many media industries in many areas and countries are highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner, Michael J. Copps criticize concentrating and highly commercializing media ownership by mentioning that “when TV and radio stations are not longer required by law to serve their local communities and are owned by huge national corporations, viewers and listeners have become the products that broadcasters sell to advertisers.” [6] In 2003, then FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell pushed to relax the FCC's long-standing rules on media concentration, which regulate the market share of cable networks in a market, the number of television stations owned by national networks, and newspaper-TV cross ownership.
[6] He insisted that although FCC had a historic role to protect the diversity of news and information, the recent circumstances surrounding newspaper publishing and television industries forced them to form centralized institutions, for their own survival.
This “equal voice” goal should be understood as individual's guaranteed media experience, where they freely express themselves and see themselves and their views are included in public discourse.
Still, other policy measures will be needed because people who have the similar values, experiences, and perspectives tend to control media entities.
More people and organizations work as a watchdog, broader range of perspectives and more different insights, which can detect possible problems, will be brought to the society.
[8][9][10] FCC also explained this aspect of diversified ownership in 1970 as follows: A dispersed media structure increases the number of people who influence over potential corrupters.
These journalistic distortions tend to occur with other media companies or multi-industry conglomerates for the promotion of other (commercial, financial, or political) interests.
It is understandable because these executives in those media giants are most likely to be required to maximize the profit rather than to serve their community by high standard reporting.
These bottom-line concerns are encouraged by day-to-day interactions, such as business trades, not with the people of a community that they are supposed to serve, but with other stakeholders and other executives who also value higher profits than journalism.
[8][9][10] Two structural reasons can be suggested to explain why these executives and media owners are not only less inclined, but also less free to make the choice of sacrificing profits for journalism.
Daniel Ho, an Assistant Professor of Law & Robert E. Paradise Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and Research at Stanford Law School and Kevin Quinn, an Associate Professor in Department of Government and Institute for Quantitative Science at Harvard University, criticize the claim that media consolidation reduces viewpoint diversity.