How Big Money and Big Media Undermine Democracy

Reporters John Nichols and Robert McChesney spoke with Bill Moyers this week about the dangers of “money and [the] media election complex.” The duo has a new book out: “Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.”

“Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote,” says McChesney, a professor and leading scholar of communications at the University of Illinois. “Dollarocracy means the rule of the dollars: one dollar, one vote. Those with lots of dollars have lots of power. Those with no dollars have no power.”

Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, tells Moyers: “Dollarocracy has the ability to animate dead ideas. You can take an idea that’s a bad idea, buried by the voters. Dollarocracy can dig it up and that zombie idea will walk among us.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Moyers & Co: