Icahn Demands Time Warner Breakup

This article, dated August 16th, is written by Jane Martinson for the far left-wing English newspaper The Guardian.

The notorious corporate raider Carl Icahn, infamous for his hostile takeover of TWA in 1985, is calling for a breakup of the media conglomerate AOL-Time Warner. Icahn, according to Ms. Martinson's report, leads a group of shareholders who want the media behemoth to sell it's cable business. Ever since AOL bought out Time Warner in 2000, it's stock value has gone down by half.

As far as Distributism is concerned, it would have been better if there were no media conglomerates in the first place. Centralizing ownership and management of media outlets into fewer and fewer hands, whether those of big government or big businesses like AOL-Time Warner, is absolutely wrong. In the USA, six conglomerates own the majority of radio, TV, newspaper and motion picture companies. Such monopolization is inhuman.

Icahn's call for this breakup is a good first step. But we Distributists would go further and demand the breakup of ALL media conglomerates, in America and worldwide. Keeping media local and responsive to the public, rather than distant and answerable to almost no one, is the ideal to strive for.