by Charles Sousa

Created on: April 17, 2008   Last Updated: March 02, 2011

Exposure is the only way to curb government abuse. The problem is the media, not the abusive government. The media is big cooperate business. The manner in which the government abuses its citizens is looking the other way as big business abuses its customers, the public and its stock holders. It is the big cooperations that spend the millions of dollars at every election to put the most cooperative candidates in public office. After serving a couple of session and are defeated, the cooperations reward them with positions stock option and the like.

In the ancient days of investigative reporting there was such an thing as a monopoly. That was when a cooperation controls over 50% of the market. It was made illegal by congress. What comes to mind is Ma Bell/Standard oil. The government broke them up in the interest of the public good so that they could not control the market price of the good or services marketed to the public. We were not to be held hostage by corporate take overs.

To continue, radio stations were way back then limited to the number of minutes they could devote to advertising because the Radio was to be operated in the best interest of the public. Further radio stations could only operate in one market area, nor could the same owners operate more than one station in the same market area. When television came along, the TV station could operate only in one market and their marketing minutes were limited further and they could only operate one Radio station. When FM came, the operators were granted the operation of one FM station, one AM station and one TV station in the same market. No market area was limited to only one station. In order to keep the news media open and competitive, radio stations and TV stations could not own newspapers in the same market area.

I am sure you get the picture of what the last part of the 20th century looked like media wise. We look at this today. We are down to 3 major oil companies controlling 90% of the world's market. Did government protect us from the oil cartels. Of course they did not. That's why we are paying $4.00 a gallon for gas. In 1950 when Standard oil was divided up, gasoline was about .30 cents a gallon. Ma Bell is back to where it was 60 years ago holding 75% of local and long distant calling. Radio stations in many markets are owned and controlled by a TV station in the same market. Many are also owned and operated by the local newspaper which also owns multiple radio TV station in contiguous markets,

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