Today, just a handful of firms are responsible for most of the information that people sees, hears or reads. Most disturbing of the concentration of ownership is the unregulated and near-complete control over information in the hands of a small number of very powerful corporations. These big corporations of mass communication and media are becoming more and more influential our lives. The media institutions operate under advance capitalism. The information that we get is selected and framed to serve particular political and economic interests, such as commercial needs and corporate needs, but not individuals’ interests. The effect of TV, dairy newspaper, magazines and internet so far has largely been to increase the political crises and profit motive. If communication and media are abused, they can be used against society, and changing our world in a very negative way.
Western democracies have free-market economies, in which individuals are at liberty to produce and consume according to their own interests. In our society, our democracy is based on the free exchange of information, on an open market place of ideas. Many communication activities have been returned to private hands from the public ownership due to the privatization and deregulation. There are several reasons for the concentration of ownership and the cut down of government regulation. Firstly, revenue-strapped governments have become eager to assign more and more areas of the economy to market forces. Some government action can lead to a less efficient allocation of resources and slow down the development of the economy. For example, regulatory agencies fixed the prices can only allow the corporate to earn a normal rate of return. In addition, due to the changing of economy, many small firms expand their power by selling to local market, merge up by a bigger corporation. The powerful corporation can fix the prices and control output to maximize the profits, which can benefit the economy growth. They can even cut prices to drive the other competitors out of the business. Implementing the intercept requirements could harm the competitiveness of our country products in the global market. Secondly, the growth of the technology allowed the market to expand without bound. For example, the Internet is a new method of communication and a source of information that is becoming more popular, which everyone can access it from anywhere and anytime. The government cannot interfere with what we see and hear makes it more and more difficult for national governments to assume control of cultural production. Thirdly, people’s sense of belonging to the national community has changed. People do not want to put more power in the hands of the government. They think government involvement creates even more problem than they can solve. Sometime can lead to a less efficiently, wasting time and money.