by Robert McChesney
In this 90 minute address, Dr. Robert McChesney argues that the disappearance of journalism from newspapers and broadcast media marks the twilight of democracy. Back in the days when Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists started their newspapers, the US Postal Service was mailing them for free. At the time, newspapers were 90% of post office volume, and accounted for 2% of its income, a massive government subsidy. Only a massive subsidy --- a stimulus program for journalism, and stripping corporate owners of dozens and hundreds of stations that some of them own, can begin to make real democracy possible.
For the past 30 years, no matter which party has been in power, the US economy has produced more and more “bad” jobs – because the Race to the Bottom is ruling class policy.
It is true now just as when Glen Ford wrote these words in 2019. In any alliance with corporate oppression and militarism, Black America squanders reservoirs of respect among the Earth’s peoples.…
The U.S. has used its influence to steal another country’s oil revenues. Venezuela is in the crosshairs because it dares to be socialist in the hemisphere the U.S. claims as it’s “backyard.”
The late Glen Ford would probably refer to events in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and elsewhere as the “blowback” from France’s colonial past.
“The structural crisis of capitalism in its neoliberal form has created a legitimacy crisis for the capitalist rulers, making the use of force a permanent strategy for maintaining their dominance.”
