1) The author feels that the merge would be very harmful because this would give the public a biased point of view and would therefore contradict the notions of a free, diverse and independent press. One of the main arguments that arises from this is that this is a civic issue. Since the media would be run by one big corporation, it would distort the media stories as the opinion is only coming from one source. The audience would not get all points of the story and instead would get a biased point of view which therefore makes this a civic issue. This could also be a journalistic issue because then the journalists are pressured to cover stories with the beliefs of the corporation in mind. This is also an issue with the free and independent press as they will become endangered because of their lack of freedom of speech and the competition with the big corporations.
2) The danger of not having a free and independent press is that then there wouldn’t be as many opinions in the media. The audience has the right to different views in the media without it being tainted by a big corporation. This is a central aspect of democracy because without having a free and independent press it can contaminate the opinions of its audience.
3) I agree that the ideas and opinions on the internet have stayed relatively free and outspoken. There are many different resources that people voice their opinions in such as social networking sites, blogs etc. Alternate ways to get news on the internet is by looking at news videos, or reading blog sites.