section_path: Ethical issues and criticism
section_name: Ethical issues and criticism
paragraph_text: Ethical issues and criticism
  
  Lack of local or specific topic focus is a common criticism of mass media. A mass news media outlet is often forced to cover national and international news due to it having to cater for and be relevant for a wide demographic. As such, it has to skip over many interesting or important local stories because they simply do not interest the large majority of their viewers.
  
  The term "mass" suggests that the recipients of media products constitute a vast sea of passive, undifferentiated individuals. This is an image associated with some earlier critiques of "mass culture" and mass society which generally assumed that the development of mass communication has had a largely negative impact on modern social life, creating a kind of bland and homogeneous culture which entertains individuals without challenging them. However, interactive digital media have also been seen to challenge the read-only paradigm of earlier broadcast media.
  
  Since the 1950s, in the countries that have reached a high level of industrialisation, the mass media of cinema, radio and TV have a key role in political power.
  
  Contemporary research demonstrates an increasing level of concentration of media ownership, with many media industries already highly concentrated and dominated by a small number of firms.