TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA OWNERSHIP AND ISSUES OF SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY

Mukesh Devrari 

Transnational media ownership means ownership of media assets by global corporate houses around the world. The word 'transnational' can easily be easily replaced with the term multinational. In other words, when a multinational company owns media companies around the globe that company can be described as a transnational media organization. There are plenty of such organizations, but most vilified among all is owned by Rupert Murdoch. 

The nature of media is very different. As you all know media is a plural form of the medium. Production of films, TV serials, drama, theatre and other wings of the cultural industry are also owned by western media companies. Here, the meaning of the word transnational can be extended. Not necessarily western media companies own assets in the third world countries. They create their work in the west and sell it around the world.  

It has long been a complaint against western media companies that wherever they go, they devour the local cultural industry and overwhelm the other countries with their cultural products. Here the cultural products mean films, TV, music, theatre, drama, literature, art, craft and so on. Similar is the case with online companies they are based in the west, they have minimal or no physical presence in third world countries but they control their market completely. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter are few examples.  

The news industry is directly controlled by these multinational or transnational media companies. Just to get an idea about the hold transnational media companies have over the media industry around the world, we can look at the world’s five largest media companies which were consistently featured among the list of top five in last few years in terms of revenue.

World’s five largest media companies are Walt Disney, News Corporation, AOL Time Warner, CBS Corp and Viacom.  All these companies have one thing in common, they are based in the US. A brief scan of these five large companies will give us an idea to what extent they control what we see on TV channels, hear on the radio and watch in our movies. Even the newer companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime are originating in the USA, so the world is unlikely to see any structural changes, although the name of dominant companies might change over the years. 

In terms of revenue, the world’s largest media company is Walt Disney. It has it’s headquartered in California. It is best known for Walt Disney Studio in Hollywood (one of the best and largest in the world), cable T.V network such as ESPN and Disney Channel and the production house ABC studios formerly known as Touchstone.  It also owns Pixar Animation, UTV Software Communication, Marvel Entertainment and Radio Disney among many other companies.

News Corp is perhaps the most influential media company in the world and the second-largest in terms of revenue. It is based in New York. It owns media assets around the globe. In Australia, it owns dozens of newspaper including ‘The Australian’. In the US it owns fox news and most influential business newspaper ‘Wall Street Journal’. In Britain, it owns newspapers like ‘The Sun’, ‘The Times’ and now-defunct ‘News of the World’. Star TV is also owned by News Corp. It has a presence in 53 countries including India. Apart from that it also owns a considerable stake in ‘National Geographic Channel’ and many other TV channels in Europe, for example, bTV in Bulgaria, BITV in Romania, Cielo in Italy etc.

Time Warner is the third-largest media company. It also has a headquarter in New York. Its assets include HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, Turner Sports, DC Comics and numerous magazines including Time, People etc. It is a first company which released the world’s first feature-length talking picture ‘The Jazz Singer’ in 1927.

CBS Corp is the fourth-largest media company. It is based in the USA and the fifth-largest company is Viacom. It owns MTV, VH1, Nick channel and Paramount pictures. In India it has 50-50 joint venture with network18 which own CNN-IBN, CNBC Awaz, CNBC18, Homeshop18 Channel, Colors etc.

Discussion on the world’s largest companies was done with the purpose to draw your attention towards the hold these media companies have around the world. One can easily notice all top five are US-based companies. Even nothing changes if you stretch this list up to top 10. Most of the global media companies are based in the west.  

West-based media companies have a presence in all countries which have opened their market for foreign investment. Countries like China are an exception. Now all this is related to sovereignty and security. But before we establish a link between the two concepts, one must understand what sovereignty is? 

It has been discussed threadbare by social scientists. The term sovereignty is derived from the Latin word superanus meaning supreme. It denotes supremacy or supreme power of the state. Sovereign is able to declare law, issue commands and takes a political decision which is binding on all individuals and associations within his jurisdiction.

In its legal and juristic dimensions, sovereignty is absolute and remains unchallenged, there are no restrictions on it, the several restrictions have been imposed on it when the concept of sovereignty enters a moral, political and sociological domain. But that is another area. So, sovereignty means the right of the state to take her own decision, not to be coerced by other powers to submit her independence to the choices of others.

Thirdly it is security. It is a wide term. It includes safeguarding the nation as well as safeguarding the ability of a sovereign state to take decisions in its long term interest. Issue of sovereignty is implicitly related to the functioning of transnational media companies. Because of the nature of media business media companies hold tremendous sway over the opinion of people and in modern states, it is ultimately about ruling minds, rest will automatically fall in the line, such is the designs of global capitalism.

The simple answer is transnational media companies put restrictions and influence the ability of sovereign nations by influencing people and government. They promote and extend the free market ideology and consumerism which is not in the long term interest of nations. Similarly, all the online companies like Gmail, Yahoo and Facebook have already captured the market in all the countries without having any physical presence in most of the countries.

And the recent snooping of personal information by western countries is a perfect example of this danger. US intelligence agencies looked into the data which is routed through US-based internet companies. Apart from it, Facebook also monitors the habits of users and sells the data to multinational companies which shape their marketing strategies to reach maximum consumers in the best possible manner. Google also helps companies in customizing their marketing strategies and targeting individual customers. It records the search patterns of individuals and then sends advertisement links to Google users.

In short security and sovereignty can be influenced by transnational media companies who aid and abet the neo-liberalism. Human beings cannot think in a vacuum, mass media products give them a clue and shape their opinion in a very subtle manner.

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