Media System in the United States and North America

Introduction

The media system of the United States consists of different types of communications media, i.e. television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, books, Internet and several different new media (mobile phones, Ipod, etc). The U.S. also has a strong music industry. American media conglomerates tend to be leading global players, generating large profits as well as large criticism in many parts of the world. Media system of the United States is taken as a free-market system. aThe 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 US Politics

The American lifestyle, with its abundance and opportunities, with its high level of material well-being and varied amusement, is made possible by the political system. The constitutional guarantees of liberty give Americans freedom from government interference in their personal lives and, ironically, make it possible for Americans to ignore politics. 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. 

Constitutional Guarantees 

Freedom of the press in the United States rests on a firm constitutional bulwark. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances." When the First Amendment was written, the federal government was relatively weak but greatly feared by many members of the new United States. The First Amendment, and the other nine amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights, is now generally construed as being intended to provide citizens with specific protections against an enhancement of power by the federal government. Most state governments had their own Bills of Rights at the time the Constitution was written, and many had stronger protections than the new federal constitution provided. 

The Cultural Politics of News: The contemporary crisis in journalism can be traced to an earlier period when commercial interests first overshadowed the democratic aspirations enshrined in the free press clause of the US constitution. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the newspaper industry came under withering attack from a broad cross-section of American society. Not unlike today, charges of fear and favor in the newsroom, crass commercialism, and scandalous content were common. To deflect this criticism, newspaper publishers launched a massive public relations campaign designed to assure the public – and, significantly, would-be regulators – that journalism reform was at hand. 

Free-Market System

The US mass media market system is cyclical, with people at the centre. People have wants, which they take to the three types of markets in the system: Consumer, advertising space and time, and ideas to help society function properly. The media companies observe the demand and supply content to the three markets to satisfy the wants and needs. At the same time people are exercising their demand, they also act as sources of information for the media organizations. This mass media system is not isolated from the rest of the world. It serves the demand from other countries by sending content to them. At the same time, other countries supply content to the US system based on demand from that system.

Media Ownership: 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 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. At the heart of media pseudo liberalism is a shallow but highly serviceable relativistic ethic. It is said "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.

Media Regulation and control: The mass media of the US enjoy greater freedom than those of any other countries. It's constitution has provided it huge freedom that even registration is not required for the publication of any newspapers. However, The American mainstream media system continues to be the perfect tool for those who control the empire. Many of the media are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sale of copyrighted material. 

Government Control of the Press: There is no direct or indirect government control over the newspaper press through subsidies, licensing, labor policies, licenses for printing, or any other official means. The broadcast media, of course, operate under an entirely different set of regulations, given their relationship with the FCC. The controls that government places on the press tend to be in the form of tax laws, workers-rights laws, and occupational safety laws administered by federal and state agencies and to which all businesses operating in a given area are subject.

Censorship: There is no official means for the government to censor newspapers, magazines, broadcast stations or other media in the United States. There is no federal censorship agency, and no way for the government to effectively enjoin a newspaper or magazine from publishing anything it wants to publish. 

Registration and Licensing of Journalists—Print Media: Journalists in the United States are generally free from requirements that they be either registered or licensed to do their jobs, and newspapers, magazines, and Internet sites can publish freely at any time without any sort of license or official recognition. The closest that newspaper journalists come to registration is in special situations, such as when covering campaigns, the White House, or legislatures, sporting events, or in other situations where security or space restrict access to the subject of coverage. In those situations, press members are issued "credentials" from any one of a variety of bodies, which they must present to gain access. Specific issues with licensing of broadcast stations and broadcast journalists are dealt within the section State Regulation of Broadcast Media.

Broadcasting Licenses and Regulations 

Broadcast stations, both TV and radio, operate under somewhat different rules than print organizations. Although broadcast journalists generally operate under the same rules as print journalists when reporting on stories, the stations they work for operate under licenses from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC, established by the Communications Act of 1934, has jurisdiction over approximately one-half of the broadcast spectrum, which is considered public, collective property. (The other half is reserved for federal government uses; military and civilian agencies take up this portion.) The FCC has specific and limited powers to regulate its portion of the spectrum. The FCC is prohibited from considering questions of competition, market share, mergers, antitrust issues, truth or falsity of advertising materials, and civil cases between broadcasters.

Education and Training 

Most aspiring journalists enter some sort of collegiate journalism education program. While the most distinguished journalism schools, like Missouri, Columbia, Northwestern University, and the University of Texas, operate separate journalism schools, many future journalists major in schools of communications or in media studies. 

The University of Missouri founded the world's first permanent school of journalism in 1908, after nearly thirty years of agitation from the Missouri Press Association. Students in the journalism sequence produced the weekly University Missourian , which survives today as the daily Columbia Missourian , in between taking classes on reporting, editing, and design, as well as the regular university sequence. The Missourian , which is owned by the Missouri Press Foundation, is operated wholly by the school's students, with faculty members serving as editors and managers. Over time, the university and Missouri Press Foundation added a radio station and later a television station to their holdings. Today, KBIAFM and KOMU are NPR and NBC affiliates and operate on the same basis as the Missourian , with students producing and editing content and faculty managing operations. The "Missouri method," which combines hands-on education with a rigorous schedule of classes, has been widely copied.

Attitude towards Foreign Media

Foreign media representatives in the United States are generally treated in the same way as domestic media representatives. Foreign journalists are not subject to any special visa restrictions or restricted in sending news back to their home countries in the form of wires, cables, e-mail, satellite communications and the like. There are no laws specifically prohibiting foreign investment in the U.S. media, except in broadcasting, where the FCC has placed specific ownership rules on broadcast licenses. Foreign companies are still not significant players in the domestic media market, except in certain sectors of the book publishing industry. The United States remains opposed to the UNESCO Declaration of 1978, which was seen at the time by the United States as a Communist-led effort on the part of third-world countries to overthrow Western dominance of the media marketplace by imposing state-run and transnational news organizations. 

State of Mass Media in the USA

Number of Television Stations: 1,500 

Number of Television Sets: 219,000,000 

Television Sets per 1,000: 787.6 

Number of Cable Subscribers: 70,991,360 

Cable Subscribers per 1,000: 252.1 

Number of Satellite Subscribers: 16,000,000 

Satellite Subscribers per 1,000: 57.5 

Number of Radio Stations: 10,322 

Number of Radio Receivers: 575,000,000 

Radio Receivers per 1,000: 2,067.9 

Number of Individuals with Computers: 161,000,000 

Computers per 1,000: 579.0 

Number of Individuals with Internet Access: 95,354,000 

Internet Access per 1,000: 342.9

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. Besides, there is 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 of such television networks are HBO and CNN.

The FCC is currently orchestrating a difficult nationwide transition from the old analog television standard, NTSC, to the new digital standard, ATSC. As of today, all analog television broadcasts in the U.S. were slated to be shut off by 2009.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld restrictions on the content of broadcast media. 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.

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.)

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

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. 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

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 have their personal 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 (Died this year), and Madonna have become global celebrities.

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 is 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. 

North American Economy

North America comprises 24 nations prime among them being United States of America. This region experienced considerable economic growth from 1920s. However this prosperity was short lived as it entered phase of Great Depression in October 1929. It took World War II to bring to an end of this depression phase via a rise in demand for war goods. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) post 1989 augmented volume of trade in this region. North American economy totaled a GDP of US $15.560 trillion in 2006. In 2004, this region possessed an estimated population of 440,600,000.

Media in Canada

North & Central America

Number of Daily Newspapers : 104 

Total Circulation : 5,167,000 

Circulation per 1,000 : 206 

Total Newspaper Ad Receipts : 2,995 (Canadian millions)$ 

Number of Television Stations : 80 

Number of Television Sets : 21,500,000 

Television Sets per 1,000 : 680.5 

Number of Cable Subscribers : 7,989,520 

Cable Subscribers per 1,000 : 259.4   

Number of Satellite Subscribers : 968,000 

Satellite Subscribers per 1,000 : 30.6 

Number of Radio Stations : 594 

Number of Radio Receivers : 32,300,000 

Radio Receivers per 1,000 : 1,022.4 

Computers per 1,000 : 379.8 

Internet Access per 1,000 : 402

Canada has a well-developed media sector, but its cultural output — particularly in English films, television shows, and magazines — is often overshadowed by imports from the United States. Television, magazines, and newspapers are primarily for-profit corporations based on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. Nevertheless, both the television broadcasting and publications sectors require a number of government interventions to remain profitable, ranging from regulation that bars foreign companies in the broadcasting industry to tax laws that limit foreign competition in magazine advertising.

In the broadcasting sector, Canada has a government-funded broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada, which operates radio and TV networks in English and French. As well, some provincial governments offer their own public educational TV broadcast services as well, such as Ontario's TV Ontario and Quebec's Télé-Québec. Given Canada's small market and its position next to the dominant producer of feature films, the Canadian film industry requires substantial assistance from the government. In the 2000s, about half of the budget of a typical Canadian film came from various federal and provincial government sources.

Media in Mexico

Number of Television Stations : 236 

Number of Television Sets : 25,600,000 

Television Sets per 1,000 : 251.3 

Number of Cable Subscribers : 2,263,800 

Cable Subscribers per 1,000 : 23.1 

Number of Satellite Subscribers : 668,000 

Satellite Subscribers per 1,000 : 6.6 

Number of Radio Stations : 1378 

Number of Radio Receivers : 31,000,000 

Radio Receivers per 1,000 : 304.3 

Number of Individuals with Computers : 5,000,000 

Computers per 1,000 : 49.1 

Number of Individuals with Internet Access : 2,712,000 

Internet Access per 1,000 : 26.6

Historically, the Mexican press has been compromised by violence and criminal activity. Yet press laws in the twentieth century and governmental changes in the early 2000s suggested reasons to hope for the continued evolution of an increasingly professional press. With the additional help of NAFTA, these changes bode well for the future of the Mexican media. The passage in 2002 of a freedom of information act indicated that journalists and others would in the early twenty-first century be able to obtain government documents denied to them for generations. Then, too, increasing numbers of well-educated, professional journalists entering the profession would improve it. As traditional print sources in Mexico migrate to electronic services along with new entrants such as MexConnect, media in Mexico are bound to find their place in the global market. 

Mexico's free market economy with its mixture of modern and outmoded industry and agriculture was throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century increasingly dominated by the private sector. The number of state-owned enterprises in Mexico fell from more than 1,000 in 1982 to fewer than 200 in 2000. The Zedillo administration (1994-2000) privatized and expanded competition in seaports, railroads, telecommunications, electricity, natural gas distribution, and airports. 

A strong export sector helped to cushion the economy's decline in 1995 and led the recovery in 1996-2000. Private consumption became the leading driver of growth in 2000, accompanied by increased employment and higher real wages. Entering the twenty-first century, Mexico still needed to modernize its economy and raise living standards. Trade with the United States and Canada had tripled since NAFTA was implemented in 1994. Moreover, in 2000, Mexico completed free trade agreements with the European Union (EU), Israel, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and it sought additional trade agreements with other countries in Latin America and Asia to lessen its dependence on the United States. 

Conclusion: 

The Media systems in most of the countries of North America enjoy freedom. Democracy has provided them to the license to expand to large business corporations and thus these media strongly stimulate the process of globalization. However, the United States being the most dominating and powerful country affects not only its neighboring countries but also impose its culture and trade to the third world countries. The American mainstream media system is a very powerful and dangerous appendage of a system that does not give a damn about the advancement of the rest of humanity. Its true function is to project the worldview and culture of the imperial system, of which it is an integral component. The criminal minded mainstream media have no interest in putting domestic and world events in their proper context. Keeping the public as dumbed down as possible keeps their corporate clients happy and their political partners in power. After all, if most Americans truly knew that their country’s government was at the root of most of the nation’s international disputes, they actually might try to rise up and do something about it.