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Media Capture
Book

Media Capture

How Money, Digital Platforms, and Governments Control the News

Anya Schiffrin
Columbia UP, 2021

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Controversial
  • Comprehensive
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

Columbia University media expert Anya Schiffrin identifies tax-based solutions and philanthropic donations as two ways to revive independent journalism, which has waned worldwide as widespread “media capture” – government and corporate influence over the media – skews the news. The new media’s vulnerability to capture-and-control ownership has increased because journalism’s commercial business model in many ways no longer functions. Financial support from Google, Facebook and other tech titans is an unlikely fix; these giants do not produce content, they capture companies that do.

Take-Aways

  • Advertising flows to big technology companies – away from news media – draining the resources available for journalism.
  • Companies that dominate algorithm-based distribution of articles produce no content, but can capture and kill companies that do.
  • Advertisers, legacy media and social media altered and then obliterated blogging.

About the Author

Anya Schiffrin, director of the technology, media and communications specialization in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, is the editor of African Muckraking: 75 Years of African Investigative Journalism and Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World.

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