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James Harris: On the phone we are talking to Elliot Cohen, the author of The Last Days of Democracy. Elliot, let's start with your theory. For the most part, you're saying that our government in the United States is coming to an end. And that we are headed toward a dictatorship, toward authoritarian rule. The idea that we will one day be like Nazi Germany was … is hard for a lot of Americans to swallow. Why do you believe it to be true?
Elliot Cohen: We are not saying things off the top of our heads; we do have the operations and secret prison camps in Europe, we torture prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. This regarding the Geneva Conventions and the NSA spying programs warrantlessly. Bush is issuing signing statements, which is tantamount to nullifying congressional lawmaking powers. Cancellation of habeas corpus, enabling individuals as enemy combatants just by virtue of whether the president deems that hostile to U.S. interests. I mean this goes on and on for individual facts as to why one might say that America is becoming a dictatorship. And as far as the issues of the media and how the media is being controlled, I think there's many insiders who admit the same facts that I've stated, in fact, they come from such -- I mean, the issue here is not that the media is somehow an ideologue in cahoots with the government for ideological purposes. It's rather that the media is a moneymaking machine and is being controlled by the purse-strings -- through the government.
Josh Scheer: Now, aren't there good people in the media who are trying to do something? Are they wimpy? Or are they not speaking loud enough? What do you think is the cause of the problem with the media?
Cohen: Well, the cause of the problem isn't the good journalists who are in the trenches and risking their lives to get out stories. They're still there. What happens is when the news is edited, what facts that are damaging to government, the censorship kicks in. And the stories just don't get out there from the mainstream. And, so, it's not that it is a sense of wimpiness of individuals who are risking their lives. I think there needs to be a realization, however, that is it really worth risking your life when the story is going to be cut, edited, censored, in a way that the news isn't going to get out. And so it's not at the lower levels of journalists in the trenches; it's the higher levels of editorship and ownership where -- I mean there's a lot of reasons for this. First of all, 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.
Scheer: That's what I'm talking about. When I say wimpy, I don't mean obviously the person in Iraq trying to cover for Indymedia. I'm talking about those people in power who are editors, who are publishers, who are the owners, shouldn't they have some kind of standard, because they are the Fourth Estate, speaking truth to power ... ?
Cohen: The way things are going is they're thinking as corporate executives and not journalists. They're thinking about their obligations to their shareholders; they're thinking about their bottom line. And that kind of thinking is incompatible with the Fourth Estate that's independent of government -- not when you're in business with the government. One of the major problems as far as the media is concerned is media consolidation and these large corporations that control the media being not these good journalists of the Fourth Estate, but rather simply businessmen trying to make a profit.
See more stories tagged with: american democracy, civil liberties, elliot cohen
James Harris is a radio producer and filmmaker based in San Francisco.
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