The following infographic was created by Jason at Frugal Dad to show that almost everything Americans read, watch, or listen to about news, politics, and public policy comes from news sources owned and operated by just six big companies. That's a pretty big drop in the number of differently-owned news sources from 1983, when there were at least 50 companies that controlled most of the American media:
As Business Insider notes about the infographic:
"This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't own AOL, so Huffington Post isn't affiliated with them. But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates 'the illusion of choice,' Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren't owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year."