The Cassini Case In 1997 NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons led to heated controversies, because it was fueled by plutonium, a substance that could cause serious environmental and health problems if it were released into the atmosphere. Still no major U.S. news outlet in broadcasting or print reported in depth on the risks of the Cassini mission. Westinghouse-owned media like CBS and NBC (also partly owned by General Electric) for example had only reported that children were invited to sign a plaque inside Cassini. Not surprisingly Westinghouse and General Electric are two of the largest corporations with defense contracts and nuclear interests.

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Extract of Disney’s Content Production and Distribution Holdings Although the traditional media companies first steps into the digital sphere were fairly clumsy, they have quickly learned from their mistakes and continued to enlarge their Internet presence. Time Warner now for instance operates about 130 Web-Sites (http://www.timewarner.com/corp/about/pubarchive/websites.html). Anyhow the stronger online-engagement of the big media conglomerates by 1998 has led to the establishment of a new pattern: "More than three-quarters of the 31 most visited news and entertainment websites were affiliated with large media firms, and most of the rest were connected to outfits like AOL and Microsoft." (Broadcasting and Cable, 6/22/98). During the last years many of the smaller players in the field of digital media have been driven out of competition by the huge media conglomerates. This mainly is a result of the advantages that the commercial media giants have over their less powerful counterparts: As engagement in online activities mostly does not lead to quick profits, investors must be able to take losses, which only powerful companies are able to. Traditional media outlets usually have huge stocks of digital programming, which they can easily plug into the Internet at little extra cost. To generate audience, the big media conglomerates constantly promote their Websites and other digital media products on their traditional media holdings. As possessors of the hottest "brands" commercial media companies often get premier locations from browser software makers, Internet service providers, search engines and portals. Having the financial resources at their disposition the big media firms are aggressive investors in start-up Internet media companies. Commercial media companies have close and long ties to advertisers, which enables them to seize most of these revenues.

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