The communication potential of contemporary mass media is immense. It can communicate with us about the entire world and it can stimulate and inspire us with entertainment. The realisation of this potential has been frustrated by interrelated networks of people who have controlled major media over the last century. Those interests see media as a means to control and manipulate people rather than as a means to inform and inspire people. The approach in this book moves beyond the abstractions and systems approaches often used in criticisms of media to an analysis focused on the concrete groups that dominate media. These groups do constitute a system, but one that must be understood in its terms of all of its historical features -- economic, political, and social.