Since the inception of mass media, the possibility of mass mind control has loomed in front of the general public. At the beginning of the 20th Century, powerful media men such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer controlled much of what the country thought, how they voted and which products they purchased. It was relatively easy for newspaper moguls to control these factors, as they monitored the flow of information available to the lay person.
Fortunately the field widened, and many new voices were heard, especially as television became a popular medium. For more than 50 years, the mass media culture was owned and controlled by many different faces, thus the public had access to multifaceted media coverage.
As major corporations have begun merging, however, such as the proposed merger of AOL and Time Warner, very few people control the information that is presented to the public. Consequently public opinion is nothing more than a collection of opinions presented by a handful of powerful media tycoons.
The 1st Amendment has not been outwardly violated, as freedom of speech is still alive in theory. The information we receive, however, is controlled and manipulated so much that our opinions are biased and unoriginal.
Mergers such as this have tainted the possibility of personal opinion, instead becoming mind-controlling mass belief.
