It's owned more and more by Disney, General Electric . You have two of the four major networks owned by people that have huge investments in nuclear power and nuclear weapons-both GE and Westinghouse. Turner is implicitly asking whether democracy can survive in a world dominated by companies such as his own. Corporate ascendancy does not yet threaten to lead to absolute corporate power, but it involves the growing public powers of corporate entities that are defined by the corporate mystique as private enterprise. In addition to capturing huge global markets for traditional products, corporations are invading traditionally pubic sectors such as medicine, education, social services, and law enforcement.
Corporations now own and manage huge domains of the public sector.
The corporate mystique has helped to obscure not only the very question of corporate power, but how deeply personal the subject is. The personal identity of today's worker, consumer, and citizen is becoming a corporate construction. Every citizen has a place in the world of corporate ascendancy, including those not working in the corporation or not working at all. It is impossible to underestimate the extent to which one's own moral integrity and sense of self-respect stem from how one is situated in that world, and the extent to which most of us are involved as both agents and targets of corporate power. In the past, corporations have served as a shelter from the cold calculus of the market, breeding loyalty and moral commitment among workers and consumers alike.