One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials.

Local television news, on both radio and television, is so appalling. Makes print journalism look like the greatest stuff ever written.

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.

The public gets not one penny from them in return for those airwaves.

Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.

The whole process of getting licenses to broadcast, which took place decades ago, was done behind closed doors by powerful lobbies, and wealthy commercial interests got all the licenses with no public input, no congressional input for that matter.

In the United States, both the upper levels of the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pay of the corporate media and communication giants.