State of Mass Media in U.S.A

Introduction

Mass media is a term used to denote a section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, although mass media (like books and manuscripts) were present centuries before the term became common. The term public media has a similar meaning: it is the sum of the public mass distributors of news and entertainment across media such as newspapers, television, radio, broadcasting, which may require union membership in some large markets such as Newspaper Guild, AFTRA, & text publishers. The concept of mass media is complicated in some internet media as now individuals have a means of potential exposure on a scale comparable to what was previously restricted to select group of mass media producers. These internet media can include:

• television,
• personal web pages,
• message boards,
• podcasts,
• blogs and
• video hosting services.

The communications audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda. The term "MSM" or "mainstream media" has been widely used in the blogosphere in discussion of the mass media and media bias.

Political System of the U.S.A

The Structure of the U.S. Federal Government

Topmost anchor point for the entire structure is the Constitution of the United States of America.
It was the 4th of July of the year 1776 when the colonies declared their independence from England. In the following years the political system was based on the "Articles of Confederation", which were a non-binding 'contract' for the member states. Seeing that this system didn't work out, the Continental Congress introduced the draft of a 'binding contract', later called the Constitution.
This draft of the Constitution was formally accepted in 1787 and needed 9 state votes to be ratified. That was in the following year and started with the State of Delaware, today nicknamed "the First State". Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina and New Hampshire followed. The official date for the American Constitution to become effective was March 4th, 1789.

The Constitution

The Constitution sets up a federal system of government by dividing powers between the national, state and local governments.
Two characteristics of this three-tier system of American government are fundamental.
First, citizens elect officials to serve in the national, state and local governments. The authority of each level rests with the people.
Second, each level of government raises money through taxation from the citizens living in the area it serves. Unless each level of government can raise its own fiscal resources, it cannot act independently.
The idea of separating powers among the various elements of government was designed to restrict governmental power and prevent its abuse. Wherever possible, the Founding Fathers built a system of "checks and balances" into the Constitution so that no one part of the government could supplant the other.

The Branches

At the national level, the federal government is further divided into three autonomous branches.
The executive branch, symbolized by the office of the president of the United States, enforces the law. The legislative branch, symbolized by the U.S. Congress, makes the laws. And the judicial branch, symbolized by the Supreme Court, interprets these laws and decides whether they are compatible with the Constitution.

American Mass Media and Politics

All of the American broadcast media and most of the print media as well, are owned primarily by wealthy individuals. Direct ties to the biggest of big businesses are almost unbelievably extensive (see our analysis below), and, we believe, these ties cannot help but seriously bias and compromise news coverage. Moreover, the media empires are, first and foremost, profit-making corporations that conduct themselves like other corporations when it comes to corrupting American politics. That is, the parent corporations of many make so-called "campaign contributions" and also act against the public interest in other ways. As big winners in the corruption game, they show no signs of serious interest in political reform. (As large corporations themselves, the mass media want the same preferential treatment, and have the same desire to grow without bounds, as all other corporations.)

Allegations of political bias in the media are common, although there is considerable controversy concerning the nature of this bias: neither liberals nor conservatives are pleased. Conservatives allege that the media exhibit a liberal bias. On the other hand, liberals allege that the media exhibit a pro-corporate, plutocratic bias. However, we believe such charges rely on a faulty and simplistic analysis of the American political and economic spectrum (for a better understanding of that spectrum, see the linked diagrams, politics and economics). The truth is that the apparent liberalism of some of the mass media is primarily cultural, and rarely economic. In effect, and like most other American institutions, the mass media advance the economic interests of the wealthy few at the cost of the interests, and values, of the majority; and the self-indulgent, empire-building interests of the wealthy few are not those of either liberals or cultural conservatives.

At the heart of media pseudo liberalism is a shallow but highly serviceable relativistic ethic. We say "serviceable" because the fundamental corporate ethical premise, "if it's profitable it's good," is fully compatible. In some ways, the personification of this "liberalism" is Howard Stern, who represents nothing in the end but cynical profiteering. The similarly corrupt music industry thinks nothing of merchandising utterly debased music to children. This form of "liberalism" nicely advances the corporate profit agenda. No matter how low the least common denominator, executives need feel no moral qualms. The media is being entirely consistent when it also manifests pro-corporate, economic "conservatism." Though the names and the products are different, the underlying ethos is not: the corporate culture that brings us.

Against this, some have objected that the media often attack corporations. It's true, certainly, that this or that individual corporation may be subjected to media criticism, sometimes even harsh criticism—but it strikes us as significant that the sort of stringent and fundamental reforms needed to bring about real change are virtually never mentioned, let alone advocated. For example, how often are severe penalties for white collar crime advocated? How often is the revocation of corporate charters mentioned? And public financing of elections, arguably the single most urgently needed reform in America today, has made less headway than it should despite overwhelming public support, in part because the mass media profit enormously from paid political advertisements.

Unfortunately, even public radio and television, which is supposed to provide programming in the public interest, is currently headed by former Voice of America executives. (Voice of America is the official American propaganda network of radio stations overseas, a relic from the Cold War.) Moreover, an ever accelerating commercialism has been evident in public radio and television for sometime. While its news coverage is generally far less misleading than that of the corporate media, when NPR is used as a conduit to bring Americans the message that "globalization is inevitable", any pretense that it truly provides journalism in the public interest stands revealed as a sham.

Unsurprisingly, and again consistent with a pro-corporate bias, all of the major broadcast and print media have been either directly involved in secret FTAA negotiations (which even Congress was kept ignorant of) or else had an interlocking directorate with a company that was, except for Viacom and Fox. As international trade and globalization are among the most important and newsworthy topics today, the failure to adequately inform the American people of their own role and interest in these matters is a severe rupture of journalistic integrity. Of course, corporations owning media corporations have no business whatsoever making "campaign contributions" (bribes) to presidential candidates.

Economy of United States

The economy of the United States is the world's largest national economy. Its gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated as $13.8 trillion in 2007. It is a mixed economy in that private firms make the majority of the microeconomic decisions while being regulated by the government. The U.S. economy maintains a high level of output per person (GDP per capita, $46,000 in 2007, ranked within the top ten highest by most sources). The U.S. economy has maintained a stable overall GDP growth rate, a low unemployment rate, and high levels of research and capital investment funded by both national and, because of decreasing saving rates, increasingly by foreign investors. Major economic concerns in the U.S. include national debt, external debt, entitlement liabilities for retiring baby boomers who have already begun withdrawing from their the Social Security accounts, corporate debt, mortgage debt, a low savings rate, falling house prices, a falling currency, and a large current account deficit. In 2008, seventy-two percent of the economic activity in the U.S. came from consumers.

As of June 2008, the gross U.S. external debt was over $13 trillion, (see List of countries by external debt).The most recent estimate of gross public debt (also known as national debt and refers to what is owed by the combined public sector to both domestic and foreign creditors; see List of countries by public and global debt) was 65% of GDP in 2007. The national debt includes the amount of the cumulative government deficits and interest.

State of Mass Media at U.S.A

The media of the United States consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. The U.S. also has a strong music industry. Many of the media are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sale of copyrighted material. American media conglomerates tend to be leading global players, generating large profits as well as large criticism in many parts of the world. Further deregulation and convergence are under way, leading to mega-mergers, further concentration of media ownership, and the emergence of multinational media conglomerates. Critics allege that localism, local news and other content at the community level, media spending and coverage of news, and diversity of ownership and views have suffered as a result of these processes of media concentration.

Some people allege that the success of such companies may be due to certain policies of the American federal government, though it may be just as likely that the media field is prone to natural monopolies.

The organization Reporters Without Borders compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. In 2007 USA was ranked 48th, which was an improvement from the preceding year.

Television

Television in the United States is regulated, along with radio, by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). There are several thousand local stations, of which many belong to the seven nationwide commercial broadcast networks. Traditionally, there were three: NBC, ABC, and CBS. The four newer networks are Fox, The CW, MyNetworkTV and ION Television, along with various smaller services. There is also a noncommercial public television network, PBS, which is partially subsidized by the federal government. Public access television are open cable channels allowing for citizen produced programming to appear on local cable networks. Hispanic terrestrial networks like Univision, Telemundo, Telefutura, and countless others have also sprung into popularity and, in Hispanic markets, occasionally beat the major English-speaking networks in the ratings.

Besides the "free" over-the-air television networks, there are also many networks which can be received on a television only after arranging for a subscription to a cable or digital satellite service. Examples include HBO and CNN.

The FCC is currently orchestrating a difficult nationwide transition from the old analog television standard, NTSC (often mocked as "Never The Same Color"), to the new digital standard, ATSC. As of today, all analog television broadcasts in the U.S. are slated to be shut off by 2009.

Restrictions on the content of broadcast media have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The usual justifications are the scarcity of usable electromagnetic spectrum and the fact that unlike with books or magazines, it is difficult to provide advance warning of the nature of program content (if someone tunes in during the middle of the program).

Radio

American radio broadcasts in two bands: FM and AM. Some stations are only talk radio — featuring interviews and discussions — while music radio stations broadcast one particular type of music: Top 40, hip-hop, country, etc. Radio broadcast companies have become increasingly consolidated in recent years. National Public Radio is the nation's primary public radio network, but most radio stations are commercial and profit-oriented.

Talk radio as a political medium has also exploded in popularity during the 1990s, due to the 1987 repeal of the FCC Fairness Doctrine, which meant that stations no longer had to "balance" their day by programming alternative points of view.

The FCC has recently approved a transition to digital radio technology which allows both FM and AM stations to "piggyback" digital data on top of their existing analog broadcasts. When the transition is complete at some point in the far future, the analog broadcasts will be replaced with true high-quality digital broadcasts.

A new form of radio that is gaining popularity is satellite radio. The two biggest subscriptions based radio services are Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, which have recently both merged together to form Sirius XM Radio. Unlike terrestrial radio music channels are commercial free and other channels feature very minimal commercials. Satellite Radio also is not regulated by the FCC.

Motion Pictures

In the 20th century, the motion picture industry rose to become one of the most successful and powerful industries in the U.S. Along with other intellectual property industries, its relative importance to the American economy has strengthened as the importance of manufacturing and agriculture have decreased (due to globalization).

Newspapers

Newspapers have declined in their influence and penetration into American households over the years. The U.S. does not have a national paper per se, although the influential dailies the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are sold in most U.S. cities. The Times has a liberal stance, while the Journal is moderate-right and is strongly pro-business.

Although the Times' primary audience has always been the people of New York City, the New York Times has gradually become the dominant national "newspaper of record." Apart from its daily nationwide distribution, the term means that back issues are archived on microfilm by every decent-sized public library in the nation, and the Times' articles are often cited by both historians and judges as evidence that a major historical event occurred on a certain date. The Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal are also newspapers of record to a lesser extent. Although USA Today has tried to establish itself as a national paper, it has been widely derided by the academic world as the "McPaper" and is not subscribed to (let alone archived) by most libraries.

Apart from the newspapers just mentioned, all major metropolitan areas have their own local newspapers. Typically, a metropolitan area will support at most one or two major newspapers, with many smaller publications targeted towards particular audiences. Although the cost of publishing has increased over the years, the price of newspapers has generally remained low, forcing newspapers to rely more on advertising revenue and on articles provided by a major wire service, such as the Associated Press or Reuters, for their national and world coverage.

With a very few exceptions, all the newspapers in the U.S. are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or in a situation that is increasingly rare, by individuals or families.

Most general-purpose newspapers are either being printed one time a week, usually on Thursday or Friday, or are printed daily. Weekly newspapers tend to have much smaller circulation and are more prevalent in rural communities or small towns. Major cities often have "alternative weeklies" to complement the mainstream daily paper(s), for example, New York City's Village Voice or Los Angeles' L.A. Weekly, to name two of the most well-known. Major cities may also support a local business journal, trade papers relating to local industries and papers for local ethnic and social groups.

Probably due to competition from other media, the number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has declined over the past half-century, according to Editor & Publisher, the trade journal of American newspapers. In particular, the number of evening newspapers has fallen by almost one-half since 1970, while the number of morning editions and Sunday editions has grown.

For comparison, in 1950, there were 1,772 daily papers (and 1,450 — or about 70 percent — of them were evening papers) while in 2000, there were 1,480 daily papers (and 766--or about half--of them were evening papers.)

Daily newspaper circulation is also slowly declining in America, partly due to the near-demise of two-newspaper towns, as the weaker newspapers in most cities have folded:

1960	58.8 million
1970	62.1 million
1980	62.2 million
1990	62.3 million
2000	55.8 million

The primary source of newspaper income is advertising — in the form of "classifieds" or inserted advertising circulars — rather than circulation income. However, since the late 1990s, this revenue source has been directly challenged by Web sites like eBay (for sales of secondhand items), Monster.com (jobs), and Craigslist (everything).

The largest newspapers (by circulation) in the United States are USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Magazines

Thanks to the huge size of the English-speaking North American media market, the United States has a large magazine industry with hundreds of magazines serving almost every interest, as can be determined by glancing at any newsstand in any large American city. Most magazines are owned by one of the large media conglomerates or by one of their smaller regional brethren.

The U.S. has three leading weekly newsmagazines: TIME, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. Time and Newsweek are center-left while U.S. News tends to be center-right, although all three (in theory, at least) strive to provide objective news reporting and limit personal bias to the opinion pages. Time is well-known for naming a "person of the year" each year, while U.S. News publishes annual ratings of American colleges and universities.

The U.S. also has over a dozen major political magazines (the exact number is debatable, of course), serving every part of the political spectrum from left to right.

Finally, besides the hundreds of specialized magazines that serve the diverse interests and hobbies of the American people, there are also dozens of magazines published by professional organizations for their members, such as Communications of the ACM (for computer science specialists) and the ABA Journal (for lawyers).

Internet

The Internet has provided a means for newspapers and other media organizations to deliver news and, significantly, the means to look up old news. Some organizations only make limited amounts of their output available for free, and charge for access to the rest. Other organizations allow their archives to be freely browsed. It is possible that the latter type obtain more influence, as they are true to the spirit of freedom of information by virtue of making it free. Anyone who has followed external links only to be confronted with a pay to view banner, might attest that the reputations of organizations that charge is not enhanced by their charging policy, particularly when the same information is available from sources that don't charge.

The Internet, by means of making available such constantly growing news archives, is, in effect, writing our history as it happens, at a level of detail never before known. While proprietary archives are slowly exposed to the public after many decades, organizations that maintain immediately-updating resources have more control over what will be remembered by the general public in the near future.

Popular Media form in U.S.A

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early twentieth century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time. American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997), and the products of Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.

Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world, and the average time spent in front of the screen continues to rise, hitting five hours a day in 2006. The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day. Aside from web portals and web search engines, the most popular websites are eBay, My Space, Amazon.com, The New York Times, and Apple. Twelve million Americans keep a blog.

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the twentieth century. Country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll emerged between the 1920s and 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's greatest songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities

The National Entertainment State,2006

Where do Americans get their news and who controls what they consume? Ten years ago, when The Nation first charted a map of the National Entertainment State, four colossal conglomerates spread across the media landscape. Today, that map has significantly changed, because of the rise of new media and a vigorous reform movement, but the old corporate giants still hold most of the cards. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are quickly rising, but are not included in this chart because they do not own--not yet, anyway--the major television networks, which remain Americans' #1 source of news.

Conclusion

Among the above mentioned forms of mass media, the people of United States seem to use television and the motion picture the most. The circulation of newspapers has also decreased due to the vast accessibility of the internet. Via internet we can get the news as soon as it happens. News are updated every now and then so that the people get the factual news rather then the made up news. Radio also happens to be the most widely used form of mass media in the United States. They listen to the various musical programs which are aired in the radio as they have always been attracted to it.

So from this above discussion we can surely make it out then in few years from now there would be no newspapers in the American market and people will be using then internet to access the news. Radio as earlier will be the people’s favorite media form and motion pictures will reach to the hike if they go on progressing in this respect.