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Professional journalism, although it has its advantages, is hardly neutral; it was a response to — and an abettor of — the monopolization of commercial news media, especially newspapers. In particular, professional coverage of politics as it evolved in the United States under commercial auspices tends to be stenography to those in power, where elites pick the topics and set the range of legitimate debate. Even at its peak, say in the 1970s, it was problematic. , its independence from overt commercial interference, its commitment to actually covering a community, its emphasis upon factual accuracy — was disintegrating under commercial pressure from the corporate news media system as it became an area for massive profitability.

At present the smart money says that the big guys will win and the wise move is to accept the inevitable and abandon any hope of social change. But the same smart money once said communism was going to last forever unless overthrown from without, and that South African apartheid could never be removed peacefully so it was best to work with the status quo white regime. Smart money is often more interested in protecting money than in being smart. Nobody can predict the future, especially in turbulent times like these.

As Ben Scott, who ran Free Press’s Washington office at the time, put it: “The idea was that Free Press would have experts in Washington who could PREFACE TO THE 2015 EDITION xlv go toe-to-toe with the corporate lawyers, but we also could organize millions of people to support our proposals for more democratic policy. ” 11 Free Press absolutely boomed in the five years following its creation, growing to have a staff of a few dozen and an effective e-list of 600,000 people. ) Free Press worked with progressive FCC members such as Michael Copps to hold several dozen town meetings across the country on media policy issues, which often attracted hundreds of people and long conversations on media that sometimes went deep into the night.