authors and writers group for several years at the college. here is his most recent book, digital disconnect. professor, what is your feature in the book digital disconnect. >> guest: it has been about making the world a far better place. it has to do with the large commercial pressures that have changed the course of the internet dramatically. unless we redirect this in a better path, future will not be as glorious as we once thought it was. >> host: he talked about the internet through political economy. what do you mean? >> guest: i think the problem that we have when we study the internet is that the importance of capitalism and the relationship of capitalism to the democracies downplayed. technologies are having a super power over society. i think that we sort of need to go back in with the classical relationship of democracy and see how the internet fits into that to get a sense of why the internet has evolved to where it is going. that is why i talk about physical and economic analysis. >> host: is some examples of how you think that it has turned away from democracy. >> guest: if you look at the beginning of the internet, the founder of netscape said that when the internet began when he was working in the early '90s, it was a militantly egalitarian cooperative environment. by all accounts it was a great equalizer for democracy and gave quality for all people and information for all people and it avoided large monopolistic corporations and in general it was going to be a self-government. which had never been fully tactical prior to the internet being practical. people actually had the information required to govern their lives in that sense. so that is a high bar of the internet when it began. i think oftentimes to this day, people say yes, that is what the internet is doing. on certain key points in our mythology, what has happened is that are specific areas where we have turned in the opposite direction. i will give you an example. one of the great ideas is you could go on and not be known who you were so you didn't have to worry about being monitored in the way the internet is developed is for commercial reasons because this is the way that commercial interests can make money off the internet so we have a division between what was 20 or so what it is today. >> host: you talk about loneliness and personalization. >> guest: we are giving people the power to build sources i'm collaborating people are concerned with this drawing of things together. evidence suggests that the internet is producing a lot of people who are lonelier than they were before. they have fewer friends. the more time that they have been immersed in social media and the smart phone and something, it is less time that we engage with human beings. >> we really want to take this debate. but even if you do, then what do you do about it? you have to explain why does that take place in the first place. >> host: you spent quite a bit of time in "digital disconnect" and you have a proposal in this book. what is the proposal and why do you spend so much time on journalism? >> guest: i confess that i have a passion for journalism we have seen a dramatic decline in i think that it is an existential problem for government in this country there was no money to pay reporters than traditional news media and there's an element of truth to that. i think the research shows the decline going to commercial news media began on a per capita basis back in the 80s and was in full swing before the internet had any perceptible effect of the business models. when we look at journalism we often think it is a personally vibrant healthy enterprising entrepreneurs businesses and investors could make money to produce the best possible journalism the fact that we had advertising support for the last 100 and 25 years for journalism is giving the illusion of being commercially viable much of our journalism is subsidized by massive government subsidies. to the extent that the advertising provided this, those days are now gone. from certain points that they make in the book, it is really crucial. it is simply that the traditional notes of advertising where an advertiser rise in advertising on a magazine or tv show or even on a website, then some of the money for this goes to pay for the content on the website and that is the deal. that is the dodo bird. that is not happening anymore. an advertiser says he won a demographic because i want 30 million hits. and they find those 30 million women, whatever website air on. it produces the content that is only smidgen of money. even five to 15%. there was just not money enough. even if they had this specific target audience. as a result, the business model is a tragic thing that is going on in our society today. is human nature is breaking down and closing. dean larson has done a lot of great work on social security and the housing bubble and he came up with this idea 15 years ago and basically every american would be allowed to donate $200 of government money and so the government would have no control of money. it is purely about individuals that generates $400,000 suddenly and you can actually have a heck of a good product in a neighborhood if you do a good job. so you produce great competition and have no government control in a massive public subsidies. you can have people make a living during journalism. the only condition i would promise that i wouldn't have much government oversight everything that would be produced with as a result of the subsidy would have to be put online immediately and not protected by copyright and anyone can use it. the public would not be subsidizing private property or public goods. >> host: robert mcchesney, there are a couple of for-profit groups, "the wall street journal" and "the new york times", if people want to read the products, is it not fair that they should pay for it? >> guest: the logic makes sense. as a scholar, i am not a shareholder of "the wall street journal" or "the new york times." the explosion of boston marathon a couple of weeks ago, and i think that is how information is in a free society. we should be encouraging this distribution are not putting up walls to pay to get inside. and this supported journalism for the rest of us and at best it is going to stop this of the outlets. >> host: you think we will start to go down rather than looking at the broad spectrum. >> guest: it's not really what i am concerned with in the book is so much less than it used to be. they are the ones that jumped out when they talk about partisan journalism today. a great advance is that it brought a tone to the news that was more partisan that it is a pretty reliable indicator. so in terms of economics, what fox news did brilliantly is that you don't have a report that is covering anything in the news channel with the resources they generate journalism, you ought to have entertainment or something provocative to draw attention to. this was exactly a substitution for doing real journalism. and i think msnbc, which is now part of the liberal part of this is following the same pattern. it is a logical place to go so that you have some value added. but for society having a handful of cable television networks, giving their opinions and this every day and i don't want to beat a dead horse, but this is really crucial. it has absolutely plummeted in the last 15 years. you understand it is used to be covered and make it into news generation ago. they no longer has this today and that is the great process. >> host: robert mcchesney in your and year book "digital disconnect", you talk about pr professionals and journalists and how that has spread. >> public relations is a field that blossomed in the 20th century in the united states and it began -- it's job is to try to keep firms in the public relations, people to get their way with legislators and government. it is important to massage public opinion. it plays a very important role in the key part of what it does. so this job is to insert the search officially. so you could get a story in there that could be favorable to the client. in 1960, there was one public relations person basically for every working journalist. and by 2010 the relationship was for pr people and we have seen a sharp increase in the number of working journalist in the last couple of years. so i suspect the ratio is now moving closer to five to one or 61. what this means is that a lot of people still turn on tv. you have what is left of it that is part of the news. you still have stuff that is called news that is the pew research that has shown but they are out numbered. it's a five to one ratio. so to use the english language properly, we are really getting propaganda. >> host: moving onto some other topics, robert mcchesney, what you think is the aggregator such as the huffington post? >> guest: i think that aggregators can sift through a lot of material. if you find one that you trust, you count on them to save you a lot of work that you'd normally do not a very important role in the news media system. >> host: we are talking with university of illinois professor robert mcchesney about his book "digital disconnect." page 168 from your book. professor, you said with soap and 2011 in this but in 2012, all signs point to this legislae thrust shrinking the right of citizens and expanding the national security state and the internet giants. >> guest: i wrote that come in that is true. what i mean by the internet giants and a whole chapter is dedicated to this is a key part of the book, if you're called and the promise of the internet is that it was going to break down a novelistic giant corporations and create much more competitive markets so they would not have to take shoddier products from other companies so instead of being a force for competition, it is the greatest generation. and what you see online is gigantic firms that dominate that have monopoly for entrances that are making enormous amounts of money as a result. facebook, microsoft, ebay, they all have monopoly franchises trade i don't mean they sell 100% of everything. pure and total monopoly. most of those monopolies almost never exist and they don't even exist. john dee rockefeller did not have a novel in nonsense. you have such a large percentage in the market you control the market and control who is allowed in and who is not an under what terms. when you have over 50% of the market, you definitely have a monopoly. they are awfully close to it. many are in the same range as the monopoly of standard oil which i think was in the 80s. the ladies. it is impossible to challenge and they become vastly profitable as a result and you get some sense of this. thirteen of the 32 largest companies in terms of market value and who investors are betting on our internet companies. thirteen of the 32 largest. sometimes it fluctuates. to put it in the comparison, only three banks of the 32 most valuable companies and these are the ones everyone agrees about that they own the government. all the companies i just mentioned, although facebook is still on the outskirts, it is not yet in the top 30. so my point is these are monopolies and in the economic sense there is immense political power and they're used to getting their way. if they are in agreement on something so that they agree on a specific issue, they will always get their way. it is one of the reasons that monopoly is considered by democratic kerry to be such an enemy of the government because it gives private economic government matter how well intended it might be with and you just can't deny that sort of power. that was just the situation we're in. they all make their money to varying degrees. all of them to a certain degree. by collecting data on people. they say that if you get something for free online, you are not the customer, you are the product and when you go online for facebook or google or anything, you are giving that service because that company is taking everything you do online that they can get their hands on, which is more than you can believe. creating a profile to package you and sell you and there's one other group that is very interesting to do that and that is the u.s. government and the national security forces and intelligence community which is now under creating cyberspace is one of its main or campaign of war. you have the asia command in the south america command and now you have the internet command. and they are dead set to get all the information that they possibly can as well. vertically understandable. more they know about everyone, they are going to do their job as they perceive it protecting the united states. accomplishing their goals. both of these sides have something that the other ones. so what we are seeing is a mirror image between the huge over giants and the security part of the government. including sharing it than they can get this on their own and from the companies they have the u.s. government doing their work for them and protecting copyright abroad and also with the u.s. government is that it pays for much of the research and almost all of them come out of military spending. it's really a marriage made in heaven. so goes back to democratic theory and in democratic theory is not helping of monopolies that democrats intend to take the government or have a militarized state working with the monopolies. that is why i raised the issue and fight over issues like sopa and cispa are so very important. >> host: robert mcchesney writes in his book "digital disconnect" is its almost unimaginable, like trying to compete the distance to a far off galaxy in millimeters. over 850,000 people have top-secret clearances some 1300 government agencies in 2000 private companies are collecting intelligence and have top-secret clearance and a massive self-interest and bureaucracy with no public accountability and barely a trace of congressional oversight. robert mcchesney, in your and your conclusion one of the things that you call for is heavy regulation of digital natural monopolies or conversion of them to nonprofit services. how would you regulate some of these companies? >> guest: i think when you with a company like google or amazon or apple, most people in america, the first response is to say what you reduce them what we did to at&t in the 1980s and what we did to standard oil a hundred plus years ago. to break it up into a much smaller competitive company and then you have the benefits of the market without the monopoly cost. and the problem with that is a solution. the reason these companies are monopolies is the nature of the technology and network and economics generally monopoly. so if i have a facebook for social media or two get a job logo for social media, there will be a billion other people in all her other books, lb right there. everyone will use this service as a rule. some other giant that comes along. many can push you towards a monopoly. we can't really get around a monopoly, economists say that you have three choices. one is to do what we are doing, which is what the monopoly do whatever they want, basically. to hope your luck in the nothing that happens. but that can be unaccountable. secondly is to do what they tried to do and have done throughout her history like we did the at&t, is the heavy government regulations. strong government regulations that would allow the monopoly to exist in exchange for letting them have these monopoly profits. the deal was they would not discriminate against anyone or to use different layers of pricing. they have to go into rural areas when imbued profitable otherwise. so that is one option of regulation are you i think the third option, this is the one that milton friedman has mentored through chicago suggested, and i talk about it in the book. once affirmed it is this big, we are talking about firms that are within the hundreds of billions of dollars from only rational way is to have government run nonprofit commercial. if you don't want that much commercial power, it will bottleneck in the economy post that we've been talking with robert mcchesney, one of the founders of repressed and he sits on the board of that organization. his most recent book is "digital disconnect." in 2006 david horvitz included robert mcchesney on his list of the 101 most dangerous professors in america. here's the cover of the book or this is the communicators on c-span2. >> c-span is created by america's cable companies in 1979 and is brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> secretary of state john kerry named the secretary of state as u.s. special envoy for his israeli and palestinian negotiations. he is hosting negotiators at a state department dinner tonight. he says negotiations will be tough, but the consequent is it not time could be worse. you can see the entire news conference online at c-span.org and hear a few minutes of he said. smack good morning, everybody. as you all know, it has taken many hours and many trips to make possible the exemption of israeli and palestinian negotiations. they are now en route washington even as we speak here. i will have more to say about this moment and what our hopes are after our meeting concludes tomorrow. this began with the historic trip the president obama this year to the middle east. without his commitment and conversations therein without his engagement in this initiative, we would not be here today. he charged me with the responsibility to explore resuming peace talks. and in our meetings with benjamin netanyahu and others, he conveyed the expectations for this project. getting to this has also taken the courageous leadership of the president and i salute both of them for their willingness to make difficult decisions and to advocate within their own countries and their own leadership teams. i've

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