| This study attempts to clarify the links between three media practices: news, discourse, and ideology; more specifically, whether discursive support existed for critical scholars who oppose the media concentration because of its anti-democratic nature. As the media outlets are dominated by profit-driven corporations, the public sphere which is supposed to provide a realm of democratic consensus-making process, is tarnished by the specific interest of the corporations. Consequently, the journalistic autonomy of the news gathering, editing, and distributing has been severely curtailed.; In reporting media mergers in the 1990s, three major U.S. newspapers, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, trivialized and dramatized the nature of the merger issues; failed to present core issues but mere events; standardized news format into a template. |
