The Cast

The Cast of Orwell Rolls in His Grave
(and what they have to say) 

Charles Lewis
Founder, Center for Public Integrity.

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“The media controls whether or not a politician gets his mug on the tube, and that’s power.
That’s the ultimate power in a political realm—controlling perceptions.”

“People sense, I think, that the financial elites and the political elites have become one in the
same and that the people themselves have no voice in Washington, or in their state capitols,
that they are somehow being left behind.”

“The gate keepers of the truth are not the reporters, they are the owners and the lackey editors
who work for the owners and they’ll decide what flies and what works and what pays the freight
in terms of advertising and the numbers.”

Author of the book: The Buying of the President 2004: Who’s Really Bankrolling Bush
and his Democratic Challengers—and What They Expect in Return.
www.publicintegrity.org

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Robert McChesney
Professor, University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana campus

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“We have in theory and practice, a weak democracy, a frighteningly weak democracy.”

“To remove controversy from story selection there becomes a tremendous reliance on
official sources. It means those people in power, political power or business power are
the sort of assignment editors. What they want to talk about becomes news. If they agree
they don’t want to debate something—like the CIA—it’s virtually impossible
to introduce it as a story.”

“The media companies are extremely successful because they actually control the means
by which the public can learn about debates. Exxon would love to own the media, or Philip Morris,
so any debate over cigarettes has to go through them.”

Author of the book: The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics
in the Twenty-First Century
www.robertmcchesney.com , www.mediareform.net

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Mark Crispin Miller
Author, Professor, New York University

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“There is no evidence, whatsoever, for the claim that there’s a liberal bias in the media.
It’s based entirely on a stereotypic view of the reporters themselves…their own personal
views have nothing to do with what gets on t.v.”

“Goebbels said that what you want in a media system, and he meant the Nazi media system,
is to present ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.”

“Media Reform is something that is absolutely crucial. It is the primary issue.
It is the most important thing. Nothing is more important!”

Author of the Book: Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order

Authored and starred in a one-man show which played in New York ,
“Patriot Act: A Public Meditation”, at the New York Theater Workshop

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Bernie Sanders
Senator from Vermont:

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“What we see, what we hear and what we read is being controlled
by fewer and fewer large multi-national corporations.”

“The function of the media is to educate you to live in a democracy,
which is pretty serious stuff.”

“You have reached the stage in American politics where the issue
is not a debate over ideas. The issue is whether ideas at all matter.”

Author of the book: Outsider in the House
www.bernie.org

Feature article about Bernie Sanders appearing in Orwell Rolls in His Grave:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-07-26-senator-filmed_x.htm

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Mark Lloyd
Visiting Professor M.I.T.

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He is the co-founder and executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications
Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan project he founded to bring civil rights principles and
advocacy to the communications policy debate.

“Once the Reagan administration was done, there were MORE rules, but they called it
deregulation. It’s almost this Orwellian use of language, where you create new rules but
the rules change because they benefit industry and you call it deregulation. And people feel
that’s good, because people like deregulation, people like fewer rules. They like simpler,
cleaner, old Western rules but it’s a trick, it’s not what’s really happening.”

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Greg Palast
Investigative Journalist

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“The number of votes [2000 election, Florida] not counted was
in direct proportion to the black population of the county.”

Author of the book: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About
Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters
www.gregpalast.com

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Vincent Bugliosi

Attorney, Author

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“In a fair and just world, these five [Supreme Court] justices belong
behind bars as much as any white-collared American that has ever lived.”

Author of the book: The Betrayal of America : How the Supreme Court
Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President

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Aurora Wallace
Associate Professor, New York University

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“There is an illusion of choice that’s maintained when you can have
100 channels on your cable system …and the owners are a few five or six.”

“It’s a democratic issue. It means one viewpoint will come to dominate in
most of the outlets we use for what’s going on in the world.”

Referenced in the book: The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media’s
Effect on Our Children
by James P. Steyer

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Michael Moore
Filmmaker, Author

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“The top 1% that controls the top 90% of the wealth have two major political parties
doing their bidding for them, and the other 99% have NO political party representing
them and NO representation in Congress and yet that 99% ran around saying, “we’re free,
we’re free, we live in a democracy.” Ooh, we’re gonna look like assholes.”

“If they [republican machine] would stoop this low, to steal our White House, what else
are they capable of doing? I want to know.”

Directed: Fahrenheit 9/11, Capitalism, a Love story

Author of the book: Dude, Where’s My Country?
www.michaelmoore.com 

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Danny Schechter
Filmmaker, Author

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“We falsely think of our country as a democracy, when in fact it has
evolved into a mediaocracy.”

Director of the film and author of the book: Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception
How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq
www.newsdissector.org/weblog

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John Nichols
Journalist/Columnist: Capitol Times, The Nation

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“The media is so used to accepting the spin. So they don’t cover the news anymore.”

Author of the book: Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media

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Peter Mitchelmore
Former Editor of the New York Post

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“That’s where the panic starts, through the media coverage—
newspaper coverage.”

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Jeff Cohen
Founder of FAIR

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“In the late 70’s all these people said, “cable television as panacea”.
It reminds me now of “the web will solve every problem—we’ll have a level
playing field. Where your website will compete with Disney, Murdoch
and Viacom’s websites.” NO!”

Author of the book: Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias and Blather in the News

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Jeff Chester
Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy

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“Open access [internet] is being replaced by a system of closed access.”
http://www.democraticmedia.org

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Tim Robbins

Actor, Director, Writer, Activist and Founder of The Actor’s Gang

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“A chill wind is blowing in the nation. A message is being sent through
the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel…if you oppose
this administration there can and will be ramifications.”

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Dennis Kucinich
Congressman, Ohio (D); Former Presidential Candidate

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“They [9/11 families] are saying to America, don’t use this [9/11]
as a basis for going to war [with Iraq].”

Author of the book: A Prayer for America, with Studs Terkel
http://www.kucinich.us

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Maurice Hinchey
Congressman, New York (D)

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“Without dissent, you don’t have a democracy, you have a dictatorship.
And that’s what we’re getting from the White House.”
www.house.gov/hinchey

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Tony Benn
Former Labour MP and Cabinet Minister

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“Politics is now presented in terms of politicians and not politics.”

Author of the book: Free Radical
www.tonybenn.com

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Jim Ryan
Former Anchor, Good Day New York , FOX5

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“Now in New York we’re talking a duopoly. Regulations have eased considerably,
the whole ballgame has changed…”

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Joe Klines

Former Producer, FOX5 News at 10

“Everybody [news networks] has the same mindset.”

“If it happens, but you didn’t hear about it, did it happen?”

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Byron L. Dorgan
Former Senator, North Dakota (D)

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“In nearly 200 cities, newspapers will be able to buy the t.v. station.
Fewer mergers and acquisitions? Nonsense, that stands logic on its head.”

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Tom Daschle
Former Senator, Minority Leader, South Dakota (D)

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“The list of well-organized people and organizations who oppose all or part
of the FCC’s media ownership rules is one of the strangest lists of strange bedfellows
you will ever hear. Opponents include: Walter Cronkite, William Safire,
The National Rifle Association, US Conference of Catholic Bishops,
The National Organization of Women, Jessie Helms…”

Author of the book: Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress
and The Two Years That Changed America Forever

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Janine Jackson

FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) Program Director

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Latest Book: The Fair Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s
(Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries), with Jim Naureckas
www.fair.org/extra/writers/jackson.html

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Trent Lott
Senator, Mississippi (R)

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“Theoretically, deregulation is good. But it is not always the right way to go.”

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Michael K. Powell
Former (R) FCC Chairman

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“I have no idea who is celebrating our decision [deregulation
of media concentration rules].”

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Kathleen Q. Abernathy
Former (R) FCC Commissioner

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“What you have to balance is the first amendment rights of the licensees
[media corporations] against the rights of the public to have diversity,
localism and competition.”

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Michael J. Copps
(D) FCC Commissioner

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“Today the FCC empowers America’s media elite with unacceptable levels of influence
over the ideas and information upon which our society and democracy depend.”

“I see centralization [on further media concentration], not localism. I see uniformity,
not diversity. I see monopoly and oligopoly, not competition.”
www.fcc.gov/commissioners/copps