There is no real answer [to the U.S. economic crisis] but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.
Robert Waterman McChesneyAdvertising is the voice of capital. We need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it. The fight against hyper-commercialism becomes especially pronounced in the era of digital communications.
Robert Waterman McChesneyThe notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers ... is absurd.
Robert Waterman McChesneyThe commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they're extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.
Robert Waterman McChesneyAs the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society.
Robert Waterman McChesneyIn the US, commercial interests stole the airwaves early on, before public broadcasters could get a stab at it. And the deal that was made with public broadcasting was, "Okay, we'll allow there to be a handful of public stations to do the educational programming that commercial broadcasters don't want to do, but the deal is they can't do anything that can generate an audience, anything that's commercially viable." Anything they do that could be commercially viable could be considered unfair competition to commercial interests and should only be on the commercial stations.
Robert Waterman McChesney