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.

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.

The problem of how to make the Internet advertising friendly bewildered and obsessed Madison Avenue for much of the 1990s. Advertising won.

Now, the one thing that's clear is that we need nonprofit, noncommercial media - not just broadcasting - more than ever in the United States. We don't need a purely nonprofit, noncommercial system, but we need a significant nonprofit, noncommercial system. Advertising-run media, profit-driven media, simply is not acceptable as the entirety of our media system. There's no defense for it.

Our existing media system today is the direct result of government laws and subsidies that created it.

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.

An informed public democracy means rule of the people. A media system is absolutely essential to that process, if people are going to be political equals, they to have to have the information and tools so they can actually be participants. That's liberal democracy 101.