This Is What Dollarocracy Looks Like - Sen. Sanders on Corporate Media

[TomCADem]

The collapse of meaningful journalism along with the flood of corporate political ads due to Citizens United has lead to the historic low turnouts coupled with record amounts spent on campaign advertisements.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/189169/what-dollarocracy-looks

Dollarocracy is about a lot more than the money raised and spent in campaigns. It is about the collapse of meaningful journalism, resulting from the downsizing and closure of newspapers, the replacement of local news and talk radio programming with syndicated “content” from afar, the reduction in political coverage by local television news outlets, and the horse-race coverage and spin that tend to characterize national news programs on broadcast and cable television.

When Americans look to television for news, what they get instead is a slurry of spin that tends, all too frequently, to reinforce a broken status quo. Nowhere is this more true that in debates about economics, which tend toward a narrow centrism rather than broad and realistic discussions of income inequality, failed trade policies, and the crisis that is created when crony capitalism replaces sound strategies for maintaining manufacturing and putting new technologies to practical use.

When the economic debate is vapid, when it does not go deep and explore the real questions that vex working Americans, the political process loses meaning. Many Americans simply opt out, which drops election participation rates to shamefully low levels—New York, with a full slate of statewide contests, had the lowest actual turnout since the state Board of Elections began tracking totals in the 1970s; turnout in California and Vermont, both of which had full slates of statewide contests, hit historic lows; in New Jersey, with a Senate contest and several tight House races, turnout was only 31 percent, “possibly the lowest the state has ever seen.”

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“Because it’s not in the interest of the corporations who own the networks to actually be educating the American people so that we’re debating the real issues. It’s much better to deflect attention away from those issues and get into the story of the day,” explained Sanders.

[freshwest]

1. It's sad that he even has to say this to an electorate who hasn't caught onto it yet.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Corporate fascism.