While journalism, television, movies, music and informational mass media are all treated extensively in multiple articles, they also share several important characteristics as American mass media that set them apart from the structure and experience of other world media. These include the near absence of government ownership and regulations, their structures of corporate consolidation and their global presence combined with national insularity.

Newspapers and publishing established independence in 1791 before the American century on the basis of Bill of Rights’ provisos for Freedom of the Press. The 1st Amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, has allowed American media to be free generally from the handicap of official government censorship and control (except in certain emergencies), and has patterned the landscape of later media. However, the 1st Amendment also guarantees freedom of money. In the early twenty-first century while everybody can express views freely, only those with deep pockets can easily reach the masses. Newspapers, television and other media pay attention to advertisers, political war chests and markets.

Even though airwaves are generally seen as public goods, the government has not owned and rarely censored them. Instead, government regulation has ensured an unquestioned culture of commercial broadcasting based loosely on the concept of the free markets in which radio and television networks are primarily funded through advertising. Another strongly held American belief in this realm is that competition benefits the consumer because it leads to “higher-quality” works, at least in a technical sense. This, however, prevents people with limited resources from producing and distributing works or reaching a wide audience trained to expect certain standards of “production values.” While electronic media have taken shape as a free-for-all field, they have increasingly been viewed as commodities in the marketplace. Many Internet browsers rely increasingly on their advertising revenues.

Though relatively free, American broadcasting companies are under the supervision of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). All media companies have to apply for a license from the FCC: to broadcast is a privilege, not a right. During the 1960s, for example, the FCC imposed rules for mandatory hours for educational and children’s television, and the fairness doctrine that guaranteed the airing of opposing views.

However, with bills culminating in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress clearly favored deregulation. These changes range from the national percentage of television stations a company can own (from 25 percent to 35 percent), to longer intervals between license renewal, to the complete deregulation of cable rates. The FCC has effectively allowed broadcasters unlimited power to own the media.

Still, media are not unchecked. Concerns over violence and sexuality generate grassroots responses that government has capitalized on so that media industries adopt self-censorship, from the Hollywood Production Code (1930s to 1960s) to film and television rating systems, to the proposed V-Chip. The mass-media industries polish their public image as responsible broadcasters even as they respond to less civic-minded markets.

While the government created public broadcasting channels in both radio (NPR) and television (CPB) in the 1960s, both have operated as independent corporations. There was initial debate on whether they should be funded by taxes or by allocation from Congress. It was decided that taxing broadcasting involved too much government intervention. Therefore, federal and other public funding (including corporate sponsorship) has become a hotbed for politics. In 1999, for example, Governor Jesse Ventura eliminated public funding for Minnesota Public Broadcasting, leaving them to rely on corporate underwritings and members’ support. Reliance on public funding and corporate sponsorship has restricted the public broadcasting corporations’ ability to be independent, once again, making it harder for minority viewpoints to air. Direct government-owned media have been limited to propaganda channels (Voice of America) and military media.

Freedom, hence, has not produced democratic media. Instead, corporations have centralized mass media—whether newspaper publishers, radio chains, television networks, music producers, cable suppliers or toll booths on the information highway.

Since the 1980s, in fact, critics have noted the dramatic vertical integration of multiple media, coupled with the idea of synergy, in huge conglomerates like AOL/Time Warner or ABC/Disney. With mass media in the hands of a few unregulated big companies, which have ties with other non-mass-media companies, like GE, an over-riding commercialism can shape culture and politics. There is a further fear that the news departments in many of these companies will adopt self-censorship measures for selfpreservation.

While alternatives exist—public access on cable, independent film, grassroots video, micro-radio—they are peripheral to the audience and revenues of these mega-corporations.

Nor is the impact of these mass media limited to the US. Many major media conglomerates are global, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Incorporated. They are, however, American based. American productions like Hollywood films and television are distributed all over the world. Hollywood blockbusters and television series outdraw even the most popular local works, except in a few markets (India, Hong Kong and Iran, for example). Meanwhile, Hollywood’s huge national market is rarely disturbed by foreign films that make it beyond art-house distribution. Popular music, infused by an African American beat, has reshaped global traditions while absorbing new sounds and artists from Great Britain and, more recently from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. While television faces cultural differences and tight government controls abroad, American productions of night-time soaps, dramas and even highly American sitcoms alarm foreign purists with their popularity (and become bargaining chips for regional and private networks). MTV, as both producer and distributor, reaches sixty-four countries with relatively transnational, yet homogenous products. In cable news, CNN is transmitted to 210 countries and territories worldwide. With the Internet as well, American corporate and technological domination seems to be evolving from this pattern within a new mass medium.