A big part of my book deals with the caliber of journalism. Our journalism in general is deplorable, and on elections in particular it's very ineffectual. There are a lot of problems, a lot of them having to do with to problems within the professional code of journalism, which defines its role as the regurgitation of what people in power say. Another big problem is that we allow people with money to basically buy what's talked about in campaigns through running TV ads.

If you go to go to countries in Europe or Asia or even Canada, even with all the Internet and cable TV and satellite, public systems tend to be the most popular stations in the countries. In some countries like Norway and Germany, public stations are, if anything, more popular than ever as people see what Rupert Murdoch's got in store for them in the commercial stations.

The number one lobby that opposes campaign finance reform in the United States is the National Association of Broadcasters.

So the system we have in radio and television today is the direct result of government policies that have been made in our name, in the name of the people, on our behalf, but without our informed consent.

And they've got to be held accountable; our broadcasting system has to be made accountable; and unless it is, it's going to be very hard to change anything else for the better in this country.

In 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.

And understand that scarce spectrum is used today for example for cell phone operators, they have to pay for the airwaves they use, for their services.