Mass Media: Opportunities and Threats

As communications technologies increase human-kind's ability to send more messages across greater distance at even faster speeds, the opportunities multiply for broader and deeper transnational information-sharing—but threats to the fair and free use of the mass media increase as well. The more massive the communications systems become, the smaller the number of communicators who can control what larger numbers of receivers can see or hear. The trend toward concentration of ownership of the mass media continues in the United States and other free countries but it does not seriously inhibit the choice of American citizens. Some Third World countries which have one-party systems and government-owned news media are slowly relaxing restrictions on domestic journalists. Harsh information controls in the Soviet Union and elsewhere have not provided successful models for the development of Third World countries. Developing nations have valid reasons to criticize Western coverage of their societies. Such objections need not be met by hampering the free flow of information—as press-control states contend—but by broadening and diversifying the flow of ideas.