The US has the heaviest television viewership in the world at 5 hours per day. It also has high radio listenership. The media system is mostly privately owned by wealthy individuals and large corporations. There is no direct government control of newspapers but the broadcast media is regulated by the FCC. Studies have shown political bias in mainstream media with Republican sources favored over Democrats and a lack of diversity among sources. Journalism education began at the University of Missouri in 1908.

1. US media system
Ngima Gelu Lama
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2. • Heaviest television viewers in the world-
hitting five hours a day.
• Radio listeners- on average just over
two-and-a-half hours a day.
• Twelve million Americans have their
personal blog.
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4. US Politics
• The Constitution sets up a federal system of government
by dividing powers between the national, state and local
governments.
– citizens elect officials to serve in the national, state
and local governments.
– each level of government raises money through
taxation from the citizens living in the area it serves.
– The idea of separating powers among the various
elements of government was designed to restrict
governmental power and prevent its abuse.
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5. Media Ownership
• Mostly owned primarily by wealthy
individuals.
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6. Media Regulation and control
• Even registration is not required for the
publication of any newspapers.
• Many of the media are controlled by large for-
profit corporations who reap revenue from
advertising, subscriptions, and sale of
copyrighted material.
• 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.
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7. • Broadcast media, of course, operate under an
entirely different set of regulations, given their
relationship with the FCC.
• No federal censorship agency.
• “Market Censorship”
• No laws specifically prohibiting foreign
investment in the U.S. media, except in
broadcasting.
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8. Federal Communications Commission
• NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, The CW, MyNetworkTV and ION
Television
• Noncommercial public television network – PBS
• Hispanic terrestrial networks like
Univision, Telemundo, Telefutura etc
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9. State of Mass Media in the USA
• Number of Television Stations: 1,500
• Number of Television Sets: 219,000,000
• Number of Cable Subscribers: 70,991,360
• Cable Subscribers per 1,000: 252.1
• Satellite Subscribers per 1,000: 57.5
• Number of Radio Stations: 10,322
• Number of Radio Receivers: 575,000,000
• 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
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10. Education and Training
• 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.
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11. Political bias
• Media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy
In Reporting (FAIR) did a study of ABC
World News Tonight, CBS Evening News
and NBC Nightly News in 2001 in which
they found that “92 percent of all U.S.
sources interviewed were white, 85
percent were male and, where party
affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were
Republican.
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12. Regarding PBS
• 76% of sources were official or “elite”
sources; women and people of different
ethnicities were far under-represented;
Republican sources outnumbered
Democract sources by 66% to 33%;
issues such as Iraq, Katrina, and
immigration all followed conservative
leanings.
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15. • Julian Assange, interviewed here by Russia Today; he
talks about the Spring Revolution in the Middle-East and
then moves on to slam Facebook - saying it's "the most
appalling spying machine that has ever been invented".
He goes on to say that "Facebook, Google, Yahoo...have
built in interfaces for U.S intelligence", that "they have
automated the process" of passing on information and
that when people add their friends "they are doing free
work for United States intelligence agencies.
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16. Thank you
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