Ownership and Regulation

How many organisations own major newspapers in the UK. 7 Major companies make up 80% of the news outlets in the UK They are: Johnston press, Gannet UK, Tindle Newspapers, Local world, Trinity Mirror Regional, Archant and KM group. These groups account for 85% of all revenue generated by media outlets in the UK and control almost all of the newspapers.

A local newspaper, the Leicester Mercury, is owned solely by Trinity Mirror who owns multiple other papers in England and Scotland such as: Sunday Mirror, Daily Mirror and Sunday Mail. This is not really a good thing as one single parent company which can influence what appears in the news. This means that if they have a political agenda or view that they wish to be portrayed they easily have enough coverage of the papers to get many people to read and persuade them to believe in their way of doing things or voting for a specific person. The is bad for the public as they reply on the papers being independent and having different views to each other. This create a market where people can read around to gather all the facts as they can read it from the view of multiple different people and organisations with different views and agendas on the topic in which they are talking about.

Trinity Mirror also have an online marketing company. This for them is a good move as it allows to have advertising easily for there websites and get ads on other pages easily without increasing their over head costs. This could be bad for the consumer as if they are seeing ads controlled by the media this means the media could change the ads to help alter peoples opinion of certain articles and topics. Trinity own an online classified ads business this means not only can they control and use ads they also help to sell items, advertise jobs and anything else people wish to let other people know about. In doing this they can control what kind of people can advertise they can also choose what can be advertised on their site.

Ownership is something to be concerned about in the UK as the bigger and more influential people who own the media can control our exposure to the news. This is bad as our, as far as we know, open access to information. As we would never know what we aren't being told as we don't know it. This would be detrimental to our nation as a whole, and violate some of the basic principles the country has stood for. We all operate as though we know what is happening around us and refuse to acknowledge that something might be happening that we are unaware of. If the media was controlled by people who were rich and powerful, and also a majority was by a single company or entity this would severely limit our exposure to the news and what we actually new about what was happening.