Media of the United States consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. The U.S. also has a strong music industry. Many of the media are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sale of copyrighted material. American media conglomerates tend to be leading global players, generating large revenues as well as large opposition in many parts of the world. Further deregulation and convergence are under way, leading to mega-mergers, further concentration of media ownership, and the emergence of multinational media conglomerates. Critics allege that localism, local news and other content at the community level, media spending and coverage of news, and diversity of ownership and views have suffered as a result of these processes of media concentration.

Theories to explain the success of such companies include reliance on certain policies of the American federal government or a tendency to natural monopolies in the industry. See Media bias in the United States.

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

Ideologically identifying with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism, and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. Chomsky is the author of over 100 books. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.

Jeff Greenfield (born June 10, 1943) is an American television journalist and author.

He was born in New York City to parents Benjamin and Helen. He grew up in Manhattan and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1960. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1964, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Cardinal. He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the Yale Law School in 1966, where he was a Note and Comment editor of the Yale Law Journal. He also served as a speechwriter for Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Greenfield lives in New York and Salisbury, Connecticut. He was married to Carrie Carmichael until their divorce in February 1993. They have one daughter, Casey, and one son, David. On April 24, 1993, he married Karen Gannett, from whom he is now divorced. On Feb. 12, 1997, he met Dena Sklar, whom he subsequently married.

Over the course of his career he has reported primarily on domestic politics and the media, and occasionally on culture. He appeared on the Firing Line television program in 1968. He served as media commentator for CBS News from 1979 to 1983 and as Political and Media Analyst for ABC News from 1983 to 1997, often appearing on the Nightline program. He served as a Senior Analyst at CNN from 1998 to 2007. On 1 May 2007, Greenfield returned to CBS News to serve as Senior Political Correspondent and plans to leave CBS at the end of April 2011. He is currently doing political commentary on NBC Nightly News. Mr. Greenfield has been host of the national public television series "CEO EXCHANGE", featuring in-depth interviews with high-profile chief executive officers, for five seasons.

Douglas Gene "Doug" Stanhope (born March 25, 1967) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and author known for his on-stage drinking and abrasive comedy routines.

Stanhope quit high school after his freshman year. His comedy career began in 1990 in Las Vegas.

Stanhope has made appearances at several major comedy festivals, including the Montreal Just For Laughs, US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Chicago Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where he won the Strathmore Press Award in 2002.

Stanhope was the winner of the 1995 San Francisco International Comedy Competition where he edged out notable comedic actor Dane Cook in a three-week contest. He's appeared in dozens of national and international standup comedy television specials. He claims that his appearance on the BBC television show, Live Floor Show, (broadcast March 20, 2003) was fueled by "ecstasy". According to Stanhope, "TV is just for the money; live performance is where it’s at."

In 2003 and 2004, Stanhope co-hosted the fifth and sixth seasons of The Man Show with Joe Rogan.

Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, (born April 7, 1931) is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. He is also known for a fundamental contribution to decision theory, the Ellsberg paradox.

Ellsberg was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1931, the son of Adele D. (née Charsky) and Harry Ellsberg. His parents were Jewish and had converted to Christian Science, and he was raised in a Christian Science atmosphere. He grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Cranbrook Kingswood School. His mother had wanted her son to be a concert pianist but he stopped playing in July 1946 when she was killed in a car crash, together with his sister, after his father fell asleep at the wheel of the car in which the family was traveling and crashed into a culvert wall.