This DIY-style documentary co-written and featuring author and professor Robert McChesney takes us through the history of the development of American informational media outlets from print media to the unregulated beginnings of the internet to the contemporary era of Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. It would be of interest to political science majors or college classes in media ethics.
The film’s goal is to answer some rather deceptively simple questions: Does capitalism lead to more democracy? And does privatizing media outlets, handing over the distribution of online data to huge monopolistic enterprises like Facebook rather than the government really mean more freedom of access to information?
Anyone remotely familiar with McChesney’s critical stance toward monetization of the media can pretty much guess the answers. But what’s really fascinating, beyond the obvious doomsaying about the personalization of online news, data mining, and every online user turned into a potential consumer, is the historical insight into just how, in the early days of the internet, the worst nightmare of the founding fathers came to pass: government collusion with big business.
In this case, the democratic potential of the World Wide Web was transferred into the hands of private corporations and media conglomerates, leading to the online monopolized landscape we see now. Today, just a handful of companies like Comcast, ATT, and Verizon charge huge fees for access to the internet. And of course, with Facebook, Amazon, and Google dominating cyberspace, online monopolies have created a rival, like the kind Gilded Age companies such as Standard Oil had.
Of course, any sentient being paying attention to the hyper-speed development of disaster capitalism in America knows that we aren’t necessarily freer as a people because of it. But it’s good to have educational documentaries like this around to actually explain, step by step, the intricate ways government and private industry work together to gleefully turn us all into consumerist fodder for the likes of modern-day monopolist robber barons like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Recommended. Aud: C, P.