Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America

447 Pages·2013·2.45 MB·English

by  John Nichols

http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/ChrisRedfield
DOLLAROCRACY
John Nichols Robert W. McChesney
Also by and

It’s the Media, Stupid (2000)
Our Media, Not Theirs (2002)
Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell
Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (2005)
The Death and Life of American Journalism: The
Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again
(2010)
DOLLAROCRACY
How the Money-and-Media Election
Complex Is Destroying America
JOHN NICHOLS
AND ROBERT W. McCHESNEY
Copyright © 2013 by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney
Published by
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Designed by Pauline Brown
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: 978-1-56858-711-0 (e-book)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Whitman, Amy, and Lucy
I speak the password primeval,
I give the sign of democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart
of on the same terms.
WALT WHITMAN, SONG OF MYSELF
CONTENTS
Foreword, Senator Bernie Sanders
Preface
Introduction: Privilege Resurgent
1
This is Not What Democracy Looks Like
2
The $10 Billion Election: What It Looks Like When
Billionaires Start Spending
3
The Architects of Dollarocracy: Lewis Powell, John Roberts,
and the Robber Baron Court
4
The Bull Market: Political Advertising
5
Media Corporations: Where the Bucks Stop
6
The Rise and Fall of Professional Journalism
7
Journalism Exits, Stage Right
8
Digital Politics: There Is No Such Thing as “Too Much
Information”
9
The Right to Vote: Beginning the New Age of Reform
Notes
Index
FOREWORD
United States Senator Bernie Sanders
M
ore than a decade ago, in April 2002, I opened a crowded meeting at
the Unitarian Church on Main Street in Montpelier, Vermont, by
announcing, “I want to welcome you to what I believe is the first
congressional town meeting ever organized to address the issue of
corporate control of the media.” For the next several hours, John Nichols,
Bob McChesney, and I had the remarkable experience of talking with and
listening to citizens who were ready to engage in a serious discourse
about the role of a free press in sustaining democracy. The people got it,
as they almost always do. Even then, they could see what we saw: a
decline in the amount and quality of journalism and a parallel rise in the
influence of Big Money in our politics.
The media reform movement that Nichols and McChesney have done
so much to foster—as the authors of four books on media policy, as
advocates for independent media, and as cofounders of the nation’s media
reform network, Free Press—has always sought to address that concern.
I’ve been proud to work with them on media issues and proud of the
successes we have had in pushing back against consolidation of media
ownership and in supporting public and community broadcasting and
maintaining net neutrality.
But Nichols and McChesney have always argued that realizing the
full promise of a free press in America must be seen as the founders saw
it: as a way of providing the information and ideas that sustain
democratic discourse and enable citizens to cast informed votes. And the
past decade has, unfortunately, been rough on democratic discourse and
on democracy itself. Local newspapers have closed or been downsized.
Coverage of statehouses and even of Washington, DC, is declining.