Here is a little data to explain what is different between the time of Civil War and now. The key question that explains a lot is how many media owning businesses (radio, TV, press) were there in the USA at the end of the Civil War or even World War II and how many are there now? The answer is something like 5,000 (basically 100 per state) in 1950 and it is now 5.

Here is a chart showing the change since 1983.

As an investor, I always want to understand how the media are positioned when they say anything. When they are telling me that markets are bad (which they have consistently for the last 8 or 9 years) I am guessing that they are positioned for the markets to keep going up. Now I am not a political commentator, but there is a similar question, what do they gain by standing by a particular position?

Now let's talk about FAKE MEDIA. I will do this by means of a recent example pertaining to the UK's referendum to leave the European Union. I saw a Facebook post (too hard to dig it out again) that said the EU was fining UK £850 million if it stayed in the EU. Well I clicked the link and read the newspaper article (it is important to me as I have investments in UK - EU decisions affect my investments). Here is the headline and the link to the article

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/733547/REVEALED-Britain-fined-850-MILLION-remains-full-member-EU-single-market

Note the headline does not mention the word FINE but the article URL does. The article does not mention it either. All the article says is the EU have revised its budget and the UK's share of the increase will be £850 million. Clearly if they leave before the budget payment is due - no payment needed.

Now I am not sure how fake the real media was in this case BUT I do know the Facebook post sharing the article was fake media.

As this post implores - be warned and learn the techniques to tell real from fake.

Data from media ownership comes from Media Reform information Center and the chart can be found at http://www.corporations.org/media/