Media mergers are larger and more common than ever: Viacom/CBS, Disney/ABC and AOL/Time Warner. When will the acceleration of corporate control of media stop? On the heels of the successful anti-trust suit against Microsoft, politicians from as opposite sides of the spectrum as Senator Paul Wellstone and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani agree that media monopolies ought to be the Justice Department's next target. Herbert Schiller, author of Information Inequality, discusses how a lack of a communications policy regulating media conglomerates poses serious consequences to the functioning of a democratic society.

Herbert Schiller
Herbert Schiller, a noted authority on communications policy and media, passed away in January 2000. He founded the communications department at the University of California at San Diego. He wrote many important books, including Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression, Information and the Crisis Economy, Mass Communication and American Empire and Information Inequality.