This post complements yesterday's in which I focused on the impact of growing media control. Paul Krugman's article adds a nice explanation for the paradox that the major US private media outlets have been acting like state-run media, while in Britain, the BBC which is government owned has worked very hard to be objective and balanced.

Krugman states, " A recent report by Stephen Labaton of The Times contained a nice illustration of the U.S. government's ability to reward media companies that do what it wants. The issue was a proposal by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to relax regulations on media ownership. The proposal, formally presented yesterday, may be summarized as a plan to let the bigger fish eat more of the smaller fish. Big media companies will be allowed to have a larger share of the national market and own more TV stations in any given local market, and many restrictions on "cross-ownership" --owning radio stations, TV stations and newspapers in the same local market --will be lifted."

No need to book a trip to Oz because it is coming to us.