A Corporation is a large firm or collection of firms sanctioned to act as a single unit and is accepted as an entity by the law. Corporations sell their goods in only one market. On the other hand, a conglomerate is defined as a large corporation made up of several diverse and distinct companies. In a conglomerate, one of the firms owns more shares in other smaller firms which conduct its activities separately (Schneider & Spalt, 2016).
The issue of media conglomerates in the United States has become rampant, with upto 90% of the U.S. media being entities of five media conglomerates. The major conglomerates are Warner Media, Disney, NBC Universal, CBS Corporation, and Viacom. Media ownership is a contentious issue that has often raised ethical concerns (Sjøvaag & Ohlsson, 2019). Having media conglomerate that controls the mass media will have its merits and demerits. If mass media were under the conglomerate, the people would be able to decide for themselves what they want to see, and the government control would be minimized ( Crane, Kawashima, & Kawasaki, 2016) . Also, the media would be able to operate as a business, to make a profit, and therefore, it will have to offer the audience what they want to hear or watch.
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One of the shortcomings of allowing conglomerate is the issues of accounting-related problems, disclosure of company information, and other management misconduct ( Duchin, Goldberg, & Sosyura, 2016). Due to lack of transparency form the company management team, the conglomerates stock is always valued at a discount, that is, it is usually lower than the actual value. This aids the conglomerate in tax evasion. Besides, there will be reduced competition in terms of the media perspectives and viewpoints since the firms will be serving under the same management ( Schneider & Spalt, 2016) .
The best alternative way that the media might be organized and be more ethical would be by operating as a single entity. This would be encouraging competition; in that, everybody will be seeking to provide quality and content of the standards. In my reasoning, this would be ethical in that the media firms would be committed to delivering that which pleases their customer.
References
Crane, D., Kawashima, N., & Kawasaki, K. I. (2016). Culture and globalization theoretical models and emerging trends. In Global culture (pp. 11-36). Routledge.
Duchin, R., Goldberg, A., & Sosyura, D. (2016). Spillovers inside conglomerates: Incentives and capital. The Review of Financial Studies , 30 (5), 1696-1743.
Schneider, C., & Spalt, O. (2016). Conglomerate Investment, Skewness, and the CEO Long‐Shot Bias. The Journal of Finance , 71 (2), 635-672.
Sjøvaag, H., & Ohlsson, J. (2019). Media Ownership and Journalism. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication .
