Media Matters with Bob McChesney
Sundays at 1 pm Central on AM580
Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.
Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The media are central to all our lives," he says. "Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society."
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Sunday, June 07, 2009
Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate
Our guest this week is Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate. Nader first came onto the national scene with his book "Unsafe at Any Speed" about GM and its Chevrolet Corvair. We will be talking with him about the GM bailout and other recent economic developments.
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Nader is brilliant as always. If I were to forward this or any other conversation with Ralph nader to any of my friends, they would ridicule me because it’s Nader. The first reason, is that he’s “just another politician”, which is a comment on the cynicism the public feels towards politicians, no matter who they are. The negative reaction I would receive for encouraging discussion on the issues would also include the notion that even the act of discussing these issues is absolutely pointless and subjective (there are always two sides to any story, afterall!) and takes away their important time from pursuing matters it’s even embarassing for me to mention here. Also, the public’s mind has been succesfully hijacked, frankly, by the coroprations; these topics aren’t in the mind. To the point that thinking or discussing these topics is simply taboo.
I need to start going door-to-door speaking to my neighbors, starting from my next door neighbor to discuss these things. I really need to, I often feel this way. But I don’t. I must be a coward.
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