MediapolisA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWpress ... is that it has been controlled so long by
an oligopoly’. Leading on from this is the fourth
concern, a ‘one-sided protection of our free-
doms’; on the one hand ‘a state of constant alert
against the abuse of state power over media,
reflected in the development of numerous
safeguards’, yet on the other hand ‘not matched
by an equivalent vigilance and set of safeguards
directed against the abuse of shareholder power
over the media’.
In other words, in the confl ict between media
power and public interest the latter is likely to
lose out. One consequence of what Curran
describes as ‘the current quiescence’ (in the face
of the media’s assertion of its own freedoms)
‘is that media conglomerates have been able to
persuade governments around the world to ease
monopoly controls’. See berlusconi phenom-
enon; cross-media ownership; global-
ization (and the media); global media
system: the main players; journalism:
phone-hacking; murdoch effect; news
corp; ofcom: office of communications
(uk); regulatory favours. See also topic
guide under media: ownership & control.
▶James Curran, Media and Democracy (Routledge,
2011).
Media-Most Media empire in Russia after the
fall of Communism and the shift in that country
towards a capitalist and democratic system. Th e
‘Rupert Murdoch’ of Media-Most was Vladimir
Gosinsky, whose independence, and indeed
criticism of the state government under Vladi-
mir Putin, led to the group’s destruction and
dismemberment. ‘Th rough the selective applica-
tion of tax and criminal law,’ writes Jonathan
Becker in ‘Lessons from Russia: A neo-author-
itarian media system’ in the European Journal
of Communication (June 2004), ‘including the
invasion of Media-Most premises by hooded
and heavily armed tax police, the direct pressure
of the Ministry of Press, Radio and Television
and boardroom intrigue, Medi-Most collapsed.’
In Becker’s view, ‘Th e timing, form and tenacity
of governments actions sent a chill through non-
state media, contributing to uncertainty and, no
doubt, self-censorship.’ See censorship.
Media: new media See new media.
Mediapolis ‘Polis’ is Greek for city, thus the term
envisages a city of media, but one that is global
in reach and infl uence. It links with McLuhan’s
notion in the 1960s of the media turning the
world into a global village. Th e mediapolis is the
agora, that open space in which community
and communication come together, where the
people and their leaders deliberate on ‘the aff airsGlobal Media: Th e New Missionaries of Corporate
Capitalization (Cassell, 1997); James Lull, Media,
Communication, Culture: A Global Approach (Polity
Press, 2000); George Monbiot, Th e Capitalist State:
the Corporate Takeover of Britain (Macmillan, 2001);
Tehri Rantanen, Th e Media and Globalization (Sage,
2005); Kai Hafez, Th e Myth of Media Globalization
(Polity Press, 2007); Colin Sparks, Development,
Globalization and the Mass Media (Sage, 2007);
Zizi Papacharissi, ed., Journalism and Citizenship:
New Agendas in Communication (Routledge, 2009);
Jonathan Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media
(Sean Kingston Publishing, 2010).
Media moguls: four sources of concern Th e
issue of global media ambitions on the part of
transnational corporations (TNCs) prompts
debate between those alarmed by the conver-
gence of ownership across the world, and
others who accept its inevitability while at the
same time arguing that ‘media moguls’ are not
as all-powerful, or their progress as inevitable, as
some commentators believe.
Such a debate was conducted on the Open
Democracy website (www.opendemocracy.net)
by analysts on both sides of the Atlantic. One
contributor to this debate is James Curran who,
in an online article, ‘Global media concentration:
shifting the argument’ (23 May 2002), as relevant
today as it was when written, discusses what he
perceives as four sources of concern in relation
to what he sees as a ‘pattern of domination’.
First, Curran believes that ‘the private concen-
tration of symbolic power potentially distorts
the democratic process’. He cites the example
of Italian media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, whose
media empire helped catapult him ‘into the
premiership of Italy without having any experi-
ence of democratic offi ce ... Berlusconi would
not be ruling Italy now if he did not dominate
a massive media empire that enabled him to
manufacture a political party’.
Th e second concern ‘is that the power poten-
tially at the disposal of media moguls tends to be
exerted in a one-sided way’, usually rightist and
consumerist-orientated. Curran refers to Rupert
Murdoch, who ‘may have presided over the
subversive Simpsons but he is also the man who
bullied his British journalists to follow a right-
wing agenda ... part of a more general pattern
in which shareholder interventions sometimes
advance conservative or market-friendly posi-
tions, but more rarely their antithesis’.
Curran’s third concern is that ‘the concentra-
tion of market power can stifle competition’.
He believes that a ‘fundamental reason for the
long-standing defi ciencies of the British national