Bactra Review   Commodify Your Dissent

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The progress of this concentration can be traced in successive editions of Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1992 and most recently 1997). The state of play as of early 1996 was conveniently summarized in a poster in the 3 June 1996 issue of The Nation. (The poster is not, alas, included in the on-line archive.) And, lest anyone think this a recent development, mysteriously caused by recent technology, ponder two old Atlantic Monthly articles: ``The Media Barons and the Public Interest: An FCC Commissioner's Warning'', by Nicholas Johnson (June 1968) and ``The American Media Baronies, A Modest Atlantic Atlas'' (July 1969).