The Last Days of Democracy: Elliot Cohen Speaks Out

“I think the journalists associations and the schools of journalism need to start making a unified stand that, you know, journalists need to be vanguards of democracy. We need to get back the Fourth Estate, and we can’t simply support these large corporations allowing this go down the tubes and that’s exactly what’s going on.” – Elliot Cohen, "The Last Days of Democracy"

James Harris and Josh Sheer of Truthdig spoke with Elliot Cohen, author of “The Last Days of Democracy,” who argues that the United States is in political and cultural decline, with media and telecommunications giants engaged in “a well-organized effort to hijack America.”


http://www.truthdig.com/interview/page3/20070802_last_days_of_democracy/

Cohen proceeds to remind us of the royal corporate owned MSM family tree and just how much it absolutely has no expressed intention in a bazillion years of ever telling us the truth:

“When you look at the media and its interests, its bottom line is its major interests. And how does it attain its bottom line? Well, it does it through military contracts, for instance. Because these companies are not just newsrooms, they are giant conglomerates. Take, for interest, General Electric. General Electric has interests in producing jet engines for military contracts with Lockheed Martin. And the war in Iraq is something that builds up these revenues, and when it comes to advancing the media ownership, how many cross-ownership markets and how far can you advance your national market? Well the FCC is the one that grants those wishes and ... so there’s lots of reasons why, not withstanding tax incentives and other little government perks, why the media would be beholden, you know, to the politicians who hold the reins of government. And when you have such an aggressive government as we do, which is ideological and has this desire to control and amass great power, then you have really a recipe for dictatorship. And that’s what we have: We don’t have an independent Fourth Estate doing its job. And we have problems there.” In short, our days of decline are economically motivated by a few journalists (both MSM and alternative) who suck up to corporate elites.

But Cohen holds out hope for the internet, suggesting that the Fourth Estate can somehow conceptually hold its own with progressive voices dedicated not to lining their pockets but to conveying truth – those who would refuse to hold court with the arrogant corporate elitists that guard the gate. With the big bloggers (whoever they deems themselves to be) wielding their snouts into the corporate trough, the pay-for-play system where blogger “bandwidth” is evaluated not by journalistic expertise “dealing in truth” or quality of information disseminated, but rather its capacity to reach lots of people seeking specific spin on information that MSM outlets have omitted. Like those corporations with the deepest pockets which can control the truth better than those without, the same motivations exist for alternative media outlets that schmooze at the same trough. Click link below to read

Journalists and Politicans do the Hussle


http://tootruthy.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html


The political and cultural decline of our last days of democracy, as Cohen describes them in this article, indeed is attributed to the collusion of media (both MSM and alternative) and telecommunications giants in their well organized play to “hijack America”; but it is rooted in the greedy, final push to the trough by corporate elites who will have succeeded in taking us into the Third World splendor of a Have and Have Not, caste system society that eradicates the competitive middle class. The ruse that ‘we the people’ can “take back America” with this corrupt, two-party system of corporate owned, bipartisan politicians and the MSM and sycophant alternative media that feed off of them begs review. Look for the 2008 candidate who picks up the slogan

"IT’S NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID. IT’S YOUR JOB.”

Right now, there is not ONE candidate standing up for the middle class, with one possible exception of Kucinich. As the incongruent John Edwards -- bought off by technology elites who says on one hand he is "pro-worker" yet then says he is for selling out our technology jobs for the educated middle class

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_213145503.html

throw a wrench into his credibility as the "people's candidate." Unless he doubles back on that like he did on his Iraq vote, all Edwards is doing right now is speaking in support of people at the poverty level when the majority of educated Americans (with college degrees and advanced degrees) are the very citizens that this government, with its collusion from corporate elites (Technology, Wall Street, Big Pharma) have MSM and ‘big bloggers’ to thank while they control the message to the growing numbers of truth seekers who have long since trashed the local rags.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/48988/?page=1

Watch how the subprime lending heist, our disappearing jobs and plummeting wages, Iraq, civil liberties, infrastructures and corporate tax shelters play out in your neighborhood. Have wages gone up? Are we out of Iraq? How are those mortgage lending rates and home foreclosures coming? And then write about it. After all, the glorified internet with its progressive blogger gatekeepers haven’t been totally hijacked. Not. Yet.