The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races.
Robert Waterman McChesneyA 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.
Robert Waterman McChesneyBasically what they're saying is, if you want to be on TV, if you want to be a credible candidate, you've got to buy ads. And if you're not buying ads, you're not a credible candidate, we don't cover you.
Robert Waterman McChesneyOne 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.
Robert Waterman McChesneyBut the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.
Robert Waterman McChesneyEven if someone wanted a purely free-market, competitive media system, it would require extensive government regulation to set up those markets. All our largest media companies are based on the grant of explicit government monopoly privileges and licenses, or franchises, or subsidies. The government didn't come in after the system was in place, it built the system in the first place.
Robert Waterman McChesney