Disney

Walt Disney is a massive company and is the largest conglomerate in world in terms of revenue, first founded by Walt Disney and Roy Disney in 1923. Despite being known as a family company it has come under much criticism for having racial and sexual subliminal and hidden messages. For example in The Lion King, the voices of the hyena’s were voiced by black people, people saw this as racism because they thought Disney were getting the message across that black people were evil and scroungers. They also came under pressure from the human rights division by having poor work facilities for people who make Disney’s merchandise. In the same way, the animal rights co-operation complained that at one of Disneyland’s theme parks, Animal Kingdom were keeping animals in captivity and reported that many animals had died due to accidents. Also one of Disney’s companies ABC Network came under a lot of criticism for wanting to show controversial TV programmes on significant dates. They wanted to show a 2 part documentary called The Path to 9/11 on the 10^th and 11^th September 2006. Also they scrapped an idea of filming a storyline on, One Life to Live, about a school shooting rampage on the day the Virginia Tech massacre occurred on April 17^th 2007. Disney has had many partnerships with other film companies but has always broken down between the owners. Disney’s and Pixar’s partnership broke up after the production of Toy Story 2. The film was intended to go straight to video but Disney disobeyed so they could get more money.

News Corporation

News Corporation, owned and founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1979, is the world’s second largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue. News Corporation mainly concentrate on newspapers and own over 200 different newspapers in a number of countries and own 29 different magazines, mainly based in the UK, USA and Australia. However one of the biggest scandals of 2011 broke out revolved around News Corporation and its owner Rupert Murdoch. In July 2011, News Corporation had to shut down The News of the World due to allegations of phone hacking. Various victims include, former PM’s, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and family victims of the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. Due to these allegations, News Corporation withdrew its bid to purchase the final 61% stake in Sky to completely overtake the company. In August 2005 the Murdoch family owned approximately 27% of the shares, however nearly all of the shares were voting shares and Rupert Murdoch retained effective control of the company. Nonetheless, John Malone of Liberty Media had built up a large stake, with about half of the shares being voting shares. Therefore, in November 2006, News Corporation announced its intention to transfer its 38.5 per cent managing interest in DirecTV Group to John Malone's Liberty Media; in return it bought back Liberty's 16.3% shares in News Corp., giving Murdoch tighter control of the latter firm. Murdoch sold 17.5 million class A shares in December 2007.