Over at The Nation, Mark Miller has an interesting short article entitled "The Death of News" that is worth checking out.  In it, he chronicles the grim developments concerning media consolidation.  As Miller pointedly observes:

In short, our very lives and liberty are at unprecedented risk because our press has long since disappeared into "the media"–a mammoth antidemocratic oligopoly that is far more responsive to its owners, big shareholders and good buddies in the government than it is to the rest of us, the people of this country.

This is a drum Noam Chomsky has been beating for some time.  Of course, like much of the truth, his views typically fall on deaf ears.