Media Hegemonies - Mapping Who Owns What

Hegemony is an interesting concept. Hegemony is essentially the power of the predominant or ruling class. It is power through leadership, or domination. Though anyone can technically have hegemony, and many have it without realizing it. The ability to rally others to a cause, the ability to lead others with a specific purpose, this is hegemony.

Hegemony is most often recognized when it is used by corporations. One corporation is able to control smaller corporations or businesses, and to a less direct extent, the public at large. Though even this kind of hegemony, though suspected, is not always something people realize the full magnitude of.

Take for example Rogers Communications they own CHFI, City TV and MacLean’s Magazine, to name a few. This means that they could be controlling a variety of things in these companies; from policies, to political stance. Often this hegemonic control allows the parent company to directly affect what its lesser companies do. When Ted Rogers died, every Rogers TV local news station broadcast essentially a video news release, about his life as their top story. Should the story be ignored? No, but should it get top billing on a local news station, nay on every Rogers owned station nationwide?
The Rogers owned MacLean’s put out a biography story on Ted Rogers, and the story of his life in pictures.

This is not necessarily a terrible thing in and of itself. However, as Chuck Klosterman put it, "Nothing is ever, in and of itself." (Klosterman, 2*) This kind of journalistic swaying is dangerous. If a company is allowed to change its subsidiary news station's content, allowing them to dictate what constitutes news, rather than a journalist, the implications are rather significant. If a CEO of a company is telling journalists what is fit to print or air, then where does that leave journalistic integrity?

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Work Cited

Klosterman, Chuck. Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.

*(Note: the quote is actually from his introduction which was not numbered, however it was the second page of the introduction.)