Chapter 3: You don’t own me!

Own

verb

verb: own; 3rd person present: owns; past tense: owned; past participle: owned; gerund or present participle: owning; adjective: -owned

1. have (something) as one’s own; possess.

“his father owns a restaurant”

According to google, things we own are the things we personally possess.

But who owns the media?

Media is not necessarily something that can be owned though. Like, sure, various high net-worth individuals either owned or currently own TV news channels, or newspapers, or social media sites. But when you think of media in today’s society, so much of it is online where there is very little ownership of information.

Think of any meme for example, the original image would have belonged to an individual or business, but once online, others will take that image and make it their ‘own’.

Therefore can anyone actually “own” the media?

In my opinion, physically the media company and brand can. But otherwise, no. No, they can’t.

But they can control it.

Now you might be thinking, but Alana it’s practically the same thing.

But is it?

Ownership of media simply refers to the information you have created yourself across different mediums. But control is different. Control doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s you control what you own.

For example, you may own a car. But give that car to someone else to drive, then they control it.

Therefore control – from my perspective – over media refers to the ability of people using the media at hand.

Now, a lot of this issue of media ownership and control centres around the news and information we consume.

More in the sense of should we believe the information presented to us?

No. No we should not trust one source of information. It’s like using Wikipedia as your only source when writing a report.

Not everything is correct or is what it seems.

We should never take one source of information at face value. Especially the news.

Because surprise, surprise, a lot of it is:

It’s no shock that the news we receive is filtered, only reporting on certain topics that won’t affect the “higher-ups” or people with influence with a certain bias. And again, this isn’t done because they own the news or media corporation. No, it’s done because they have an ability to control what is said.

Therefore, ownership of the media is the things we possess, but control of the media is having complete influence over what is consumed by your hand, which often consists of things we own.

That’s the difference.