Roundtable Wrap-Up: RT 14-Wednesday Part 2

Wednesday afternoon’s discussion was centered around the examination of the influence that business has on the “fourth estate”. The table moderator, Donald Bowers, used the United States’ two major media conglomerates, Time Warner and Viacom, as prime examples of the impact that big business had on the information we receive. The amount of news and entertainment networks that fall under these two corporations illustrated how widespread the decisions of each company’s board of directors has on the dissemination of information.

Daniel, an officer in the Royal Navy, educated the delegates on the how Great Britain's state-run news outlet, the BBC, is funded and operated. Daniel’s knowledge of state-run news agencies led the group towards discussing the pros and cons of both government-run and commercialized media outlets. After deliberating the inevitable biases that would be formed by both government-run and privatized news agencies, the table delegates concluded that it is preferable to have biased projected by private companies rather than by governments.