4 The Media Business: Conglomerates and Control

By Dave Bostwick

Opening Example: The Business of ESPN

Most U.S. sports fans spend a lot of time watching ESPN. Beyond the on-air broadcasters, commentators, analysts and reporters, many other media workers contribute to what ESPN’s audiences see and hear. Writers, editors and graphic artists prepare special video packages for live games and various other shows, including SportsCenter. Camera operators and producers are crucial contributors, especially for live game coverage.

Walt Disney Company owns ESPN, and executives from Disney and ESPN have made strategic decisions about when to air certain games on which outlets, such as ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Select and the SEC Network. Disney also owns ABC, so occasionally audiences can choose between competing broadcasts of the same big-time game offered live on ESPN and ABC, with different commentary and analysis on each network.

Furthering its dominance in sports broadcasting, ESPN acquired the NFL Network in 2025 to form a strategic partnership between the NFL and ESPN.

At some point during ESPN game broadcasts, a promotional item may suggest that viewers seek more live game info from the ESPN website or through a social media platform.

Viewers may also see in-game promotions for DraftKings, which is ESPN’s official sportsbook and odds provider. (As a side note, one research study showed that sports fans spend up to 20% of every game watching various gambling advertisements).

For the most part, companies and their employees, not the U.S. government, make business decisions about the media content we consume. These decisions are often tied to revenue. No governmental officials have told ESPN executives that they have to air certain games at certain times or promote specific items or actions while broadcasting a game.

Media Control

Let’s shift from ESPN to the broader landscape of U.S. media as a whole.

In the United States, direct governmental media control is limited compared to most other countries. A 2026 survey of internet censorship showed the United States as one of the less-censored countries in the world, but still ranked behind Canada and several European and South American countries.

Since Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2024, however, Americans’ opinions about free press have increasingly depended on political affiliation. A Pew survey showed that among Republicans, the share who described the press as “completely free” increased from 29% to 42% between April 2024 and March 2025. Among Democrats, the number decreased from 38% to 25%.

The following presentation explains some governmental influences on American media content.

Study the presentation slides by using the forward button or clicking on sections of the control bar. To enlarge any interactive presentation in this book, click on the lower-right full-screen option (arrows). 

From a global perspective, the most restrictive countries include North Korea, China, Iran, Iraq, and Russia, where content may be subject to government approval or created entirely by the governments themselves. This typically is not the case in the United States.

For example, Russian law prohibited the use of “war” or “invasion” in coverage of Russia’s military conflict with Ukraine. The government-approved term: “special military operation.”

Many governments with internet infrastructure suppress criticism and protect power by banning foreign websites and platforms. For example, the government in India forced social networks to limit content that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

And in 2024, Brazilian authorities banned X (formerly Twitter) and ordered Apple and Google to remove the X app from iOS and Android devices in Brazil, although the ban was later lifted.

The organization Reporters Without Borders observed the concerning trend that “press freedom around the world is being threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors – political authorities.”

Here’s a flip-card question to emphasize a key distinction.

That’s not to say that governmental entities never intervene in media matters, as you saw in the in the presentation above and you’ll read later in this chapter’s section about TikTok. Generally speaking, though, business owners have more control over media content than the U.S. government.

Freedom of Speech for Whom?

In the heyday of U.S. print newspapers and the printing press, a popular expression said that freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. That concept from U.S. media history repeated itself in 2013 when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post and in 2022 when Tesla co-founder Elon Musk acquired Twitter (which was soon rebranded as X).

Today, one could update the expression to say that freedom of speech is guaranteed to those who own communications satellites. According to an analysis from the Space Daily website, by mid-2026 roughly two out of every three active satellites orbiting Earth belonged to Starlink, a company run by Elon Musk through SpaceX.

It can be difficult to judge the extent to which powerful media figures and businesses directly control what we see and read. For example, in early 2025, editors of The Washington Post rejected a cartoon (shown above) that depicted Bezos, Musk and other media figures (including Mickey Mouse to represent Disney) offering money and/or loyalty to a statue of Donald Trump. The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, immediately resigned and wrote a column on Substack titled “Why I’m Quitting the Washington Post.”

A Post editor said he disagreed with Telnaes’ interpretation of the events that led to the cartoon being rejected. Telnaes, however, said the decision to kill her cartoon was “dangerous for a free press.”

One month later, the newspaper’s opinions editor resigned in protest after Bezos sent an office memo to the the staff. Bezos memo told the opinions staff  that “we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”

Media Conglomerates

Some companies are so gargantuan that they own lots of other large companies. The chapter introduction mentioned that the Disney conglomerate owns ESPN and ABC, for example.

Please spend some time exploring the labeled web links in the following presentation slides, paying attention to the companies and assets owned by each media conglomerate.

Study the presentation slides by using the forward button or clicking on sections of the control bar. To enlarge any interactive presentation in this book, click on the lower-right full-screen option (arrows). 

You may be wondering why Netflix didn’t appear in the presentation slides above. For now, Netflix is a single huge company focusing primarily on one business through one medium, which is entertainment video. Netflix does not own a bunch of other subsidiary media companies.

Conglomerates occasionally grow so large that the federal government intervenes. In 2024, for example, a judge ruled that Google had become a monopoly that prevented fair competition. One concern involved Google making deals with Apple for Google to be the default search engine for the Safari web browser on iPhones, iPads and Mac computers, thus limiting consumers’ choices for online search tools and dissuading other companies from developing new search products.

And as an addendum to the impact of governmental figures on social media platforms, Meta agreed to pay President Donald Trump $25 million in 2025 to settle a lawsuit that Trump originally filed in 2021 shortly after Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts had been suspended.

What About TikTok?

Until 2026,  the version of TikTok used by Americans was owned and operated by the Chinese media conglomerate ByteDance. TikTok has an interesting regulatory history in the United States.

As TikTok rose to popularity in the 2020s, many U.S. parents and politicians became concerned about TikTok’s collection of private data as well as its influence on users, especially teenagers. A New York Times article said U.S. lawmakers and regulators feared that “TikTok could share sensitive data about the location, personal habits and interests of Americans with the Chinese government,” and that the app could be used to spread propaganda.

The NY Times article also noted that “TikTok itself is not available in China — users there must access a different ByteDance app, which follows Chinese government directives on censorship and propaganda.”

In 2023, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on Face the Nation that the Chinese equivalent of TikTok gives Chinese youth far more STEM-related content to shape their interests toward those careers. Conversely, in the United States, popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat are not required to shape their content to push younger users toward educational goals, such as promoting STEM careers.

In 2024, members of the U.S. Congress passed legislation, signed into law by President Joe Biden, to ban TikTok nationwide or force ByteDance to sell TikTok. This decision relates to the earlier chapter section titled “Media Control,” as the Chinese government can require Chinese companies (such as ByteDance) to share user data and run businesses in a manner that benefits the Chinese government. This is typically not the case for U.S. media companies.

In January 2024, Shou Zi Chew, who was TikTok’s CEO at the time, testified during a U.S. Senate inquiry about Online Child Safety , which led to this confrontation between Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and Chew.

Hawley’s style at times was confrontational, but this was not just a politically partisan debate. Democrats also criticized TikTok.

In January 2026, TikTok announced an agreement between U.S. and Chinese officials so that an American version of TikTok will remain available to more than 150 million active TikTok users in the United States.

As a result of the 2026 agreement, the U.S. version of TikTok became a jointly owned venture among several companies, and ByteDance’s ownership stake was reduced to approximately 20%.

Due to state (not federal) laws, TikTok is still banned from Wi-Fi connections on some college campuses, including the University of Arkansas.

Net Neutrality

Now we’ll look at a long-evolving debate related to internet control and access in the United States.

Differing views about net neutrality have raged for more than two decades. Here’s a fun (but maybe opinionated) 2018 video from Burger King that tried to explain net neutrality via the Whopper.

The video is humorous and provides an interesting case study in corporate advertising for public relations advocacy. The video isn’t directly trying to sell Whoppers; instead, it tries to make viewers feel as if Burger King is on their side about the need for net neutrality.

For our purpose in this chapter, though, the video effectively frames one part of the net neutrality debate: Should media companies be allowed to control tiers of internet access and content?

As a simple example, if Media Business A pays an internet service company to prioritize speedy online connections for consumers to access streaming content from Media Business A, does this put the much smaller Media Business B at an unfair disadvantage? Media Business B may be new and unable to pay an internet service company so that consumers enjoy speedier connections.

(Or put another way, would it be OK for Netflix to pay internet service companies more money to ensure the Netflix subscribers have a faster, more reliable connection, even if that puts some of Netflix’s smaller competitors at a disadvantage?)

Let’s consider a few policy questions in the following presentation.

Study the presentation slides by using the forward button or clicking on sections of the control bar. To enlarge any interactive presentation in this book, click on the lower-right full-screen option (arrows). 

One net neutrality group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, provides this definition: “Network neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services.”

The evolving debate has already taken several twists and turns. Federal net neutrality laws were repealed in 2018. However, in 2024 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reclassified broadband as a public utility, much like water and electricity, which would have strengthened the government’s ability to monitor and enforce net neutrality regulations.

In early 2025, though, a federal appeals court struck down the FCC regulations, ending governmental attempts to regulate broadband internet providers as utilities. This ended net neutrality on the federal level, for now, but the debate continues as a matter of philosophical fairness.

A key question is whether internet access should be considered a right or a privilege.

Data Collection and Protection

We’ve briefly discussed who controls what we see, watch, read, and hear in U.S. media. Due to widespread adoption of the internet, we could add one more question. Who controls and safeguards the data that is collected as we consume and interact with mass media platforms?

Through IP addresses and other personal identifiers, it’s easy for media conglomerates to collect data for future research or sales. With artificial intelligence, some of these processes become more automated.

A programmer for Research Company A can collect data and include a privacy statement about data usage for research only. That may not prevent Data Company B from purchasing Research Company A’s data and then selling it to advertisers (now twice removed from the source) or Advertising Company C.

For example, an investigative article in Vice described how the U.S. military bought location data from ordinary apps. It featured this subheadline:

A Muslim prayer app with over 98 million downloads is one of the apps connected to a wide-ranging supply chain that sends ordinary people’s personal data to brokers, contractors, and the military.

The article noted that several app developers “did not know their users’ location data was being sent to defense contractors.”

More recently, a New York Times report chronicled how the Pentagon tried to hide that it bought Americans’ data without a warrant. The article detailed the workaround for law enforcement officials to purchase broad swaths of data rather than target individual users’ phone records.

Obtaining location data from U.S. phones normally requires a warrant, but police and intelligence agencies routinely pay companies instead for the data, effectively circumventing the courts.

Closing Thought

Consider two competing interests that surfaced in this chapter.

• Large global media conglomerates seek to profit from worldwide consumers.
• Many countries attempt to limit or control citizens’ access to outside information.

You may occasionally hear the term “walled gardens” referring to each country having its own regulations for governmental control of media.

In the future, large media companies may be forced to alter products, entertainment and information based on the conflicting regulations in hundreds of worldwide walled gardens.