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ensure that there would be a free and independent press, given, what amounts to a subsidy to
be adversarial and independent, that's the source of the post office. One of the reasons why
there are such major attacks against it today. We don't want those of the corporate sector and
those who work for them, don't want a free and independent press. They want to control it. It's
called neoliberalism, turn decisions away from government, which has the flaw that it is
responsible, responsive to some extent of the population. Turn it over into unaccountable
private and then you're safe.
This is going on through American history. When radio came along in the 1920s and 1930s,
there was a great battle there was a very significant battle about whether the airwaves publicly
owned should be used for the benefit of the public and controlled by the church groups,
educational institutions. Other groups wanted it to be free and open. Public radio under public
control, corporate business sectors were strong enough to be able to beat that down. Radio
became private, privately controlled, tiny fringe. The same thing happened in the late 1940s with
television, the same battle. Should it be in the public domain, it's public property, after all, or
should it be handed over to private institutions to run the way they do? Well, you know the
outcome of that the United States has nothing like BBC, France, others, it's a privately owned
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