I have influenced critiques of the news media primarily by highlighting the negative impact of corporate ownership on journalistic integrity and public service. I argue that prioritizing revenue, appeasing advertisers, and enriching stockholders has superseded the media’s traditional role as “guardians of our … right to know,” as the Fourth Estate, a role that would be particularly useful in this age of imbalance (2026).
My work is frequently cited in academic contexts to illustrate the real-world implications of media ownership and control.
Here on some the critiques of the corporate news media that I highlight on Criticism.com:
Critique of Corporate Monopolization: Near-monopoly ownership of daily newspapers by a few corporations fundamentally changes their relationship with democracy. Consolidation leads to a lack of diverse perspectives and places an undue focus on entertainment and superficiality over substantive news, which I typically refer to as image over substance.
Focus on Profit Over Public Interest: Under corporate control, decisions about which stories to report on and how to present them are often driven more by marketing and advertising considerations than by the public’s right to know. Not to mention the omnipresent click bait.
Impact on Journalism Quality: My analysis, informed by the work of other media critics like Ben Bagdikian and Noam Chomsky, suggests that corporate greed and cost-cutting measures compromise the quality and quantity of news available to the public. And since about 2001 or so, the remaining integrity of most major news outlets has been radically undermined by the influence and forces of digitization and big tech.
Emphasis on Objectivity vs. Control: I discuss how, despite the public’s expectation of objective reporting, journalists and editors exert significant control (among other things) over information, raising questions about objectivity in the corporate news landscape.
I typically use accessible language to expose how the commercial structure of the news industry has corrupted its own legacy — its original core mission of public service — undermined democracy in favor of a totality, a sort of misinformational techno-totalitarianism, a wall of totalizing and reductionist disinformation, diversions, and distractions from real life.
— Steve Hoenisch
Book Review of Read All About It: The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers: Read All About It: The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers is an institutional acknowledgement of what many wary readers have known for years: Corporate control is ruining our daily newspapers. Download PDF
An Analysis of Kellner’s Theory of Media Culture In an era when the media have grown to be one of the most dominant forms of culture in North American — so dominant, in fact, that the they can now be seen as the pinnacle of commercial culture — an explanatory theory of the media becomes paramount. Yet considering the intimate relationship between culture and media and that, for many, the media have become their culture, a theory that views the media outside the context of culture will be afflicted with myopia. Thus, for completeness, a theory of the media requires a firm connection to culture in its every step. Douglas Kellner, in his book Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern, sets out to make these connections. Download PDF
Using French Social Thought for Media Criticism With a focus on Althusser, Barthes, and Foucault, this essay broadly delineates the theoretical approaches of the three schools in explaining the role of the mass media in society and peers into several of their key books. As I proceed, I enumerate several strengths and weaknesses of each theory and make some comparisons among them. Download PDF.
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