How Corporate Media Threatens our Democracy - By Bernie Sanders

[Donkees]

HOW CORPORATE MEDIA THREATENS OUR DEMOCRACY
This is a crisis we can no longer afford to ignore.

BY BERNIE SANDERS

JANUARY 26, 2017 | FEBRUARY ISSUE | IN THESE TIMES

Excerpt:

Why is it that the mainstream media sees politics as entertainment, and largely ignores the major crises facing our country? The answer lies in the fact that corporate media is owned by, well, large multinational corporations.

These powerful corporations also have an agenda, and it would be naive not to believe that their views and needs impact coverage of issues important to them. Seen any specials lately as to why we pay the highest prices in the world for our prescription drugs, or why we are the only major country on earth not to have a national health care program? That may have something to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars each year that drug companies and insurance companies spend on advertising.

And let us also not forget that the leading personalities we see on television are themselves, in most cases, multimillionaires with very generous contracts. That does not make them evil or bad people. It just makes them very wealthy, corporate employees who bring to their jobs the perspective that very wealthy corporate employees bring.

No sane person denies that the media plays an enormously important role in shaping public consciousness and determining political outcomes. The current media situation is a very serious threat to our democracy.

The very first amendment to our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the right of the people to express their points of view from the rooftops, to allow themselves to be heard. That is something I passionately believe in.

Unfortunately, as A. J. Liebling wrote back in 1960: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” And the people who own the press, radio and television stations, and book publishing and movie companies are becoming fewer and fewer, with more and more power. This is a crisis that can no longer be ignored.

FROM THE FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE

From Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders. Copyright © 2016 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

BERNIE SANDERS, the Independent senator from Vermont, has been featured in In These Times—as both an essayist and as the subject of articles—since March 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington.

http://inthesetimes.com/features/bernie-sanders-corporate-media-threatens-our-democracy.html