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Struggling with the supreme power of the global media oligopoly, independent content provider have not given up their grounds.
Even if social, political and cultural issues appear on the menu, quite often views and opinions scratching on the corporate and political powers idealised picture are excluded.
"Nobody wants to go out and invent something and invest hundreds of millions of dollars of risk capital for the public interest." (John Malone, Chairman of Tele-Communications Inc.)
Involvement. In contrast to commercial media, the independent content providers plat du jour mainly consists of the critical observation of public interest issues. With the intention on bringing aspects and standpoints neglected by the mainstream media on the surface.
"In relation to media concentrations, the notion of pluralism is understood to mean the scope for a wide range of social, political and cultural values, opinions, information and interests to find expression through the media." (Council of Europe)
| An Unequal Pair with Unequal Stocks | |
| Commerce | vs. Criticism |
| The 1998 revenues of the big five of media amounted to US$ 91,144,000,000. | Independent content provider usually act on a non-profit basis and organisations like Constant (BE) or e-lab (LV) to a considerable extent depend on donations and contributions. |
| Viacom, the no. 3 of content production and distribution has nearly 112,000 employees. | Generally alternative media are run by a small group of activists, most of them volunteers. |
| The worlds fourth biggest media company, Bertelsmann, has operations in 53 countries. | Many provider of independent digital content like RTMark (US) have no office spaces at all, but exist only on the Web. |