"So again it's misspecifying the problem to speak about "concentration" - it's the class ownership of the means of consciousness production that's at issue. The problem with the US media isn't its Herfindahl index - it's the conditions under which it's produced: by capitalists under shareholder pressure to maximize profits. The focus on "concentration" is perfect for a Naderite critique of capitalism, which is obsessed with scale and scope, and not social relations."
Doug,
You're probably familiar enough with Chomsky and Herman to know that they cite class control as exactly the reason media concentration has occurred. Concentration is the outcome of the class control, absolutely -- but the narrowing of ownership does exist nonetheless and I don't find it annoying that people complain about the narrowing of onwership. I don't think their complaining about it necessarily entails that they have some un-radical, "liberal" solution to the problem.
We need a worker- and community-controlled system of media control, where ownership of the presses is democratized, ceded to the working class -- after a radical redistribution. This is something that probably won't happen unless there's a social revolution, which I fully support. I don't think complaining about narrowing of ownership -- which is a real phenomenon -- means you can't endorse the radical solution to it: social redistribution of the means of production (in this case, the media) into the hands of the public.
-B.