August 7 - Obama Cancels on Putin; Media Properties as Playthings for Billionaires; The Washington Post Company's Rotten Core

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Part 1	We begin with today’s announcement from the White House that President Obama is cancelling his summit meeting with Russian president Putin but will attend the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg. Kimberly Marten, a professor of political science at Barnard College of Columbia University joins us to discuss how much the Snowden affair affected the decision and the other irritants besetting bilateral relations like Putin’s assault on LGBT rights.
Part 2	Then we speak with media analyst Robert McChesney, co-author with John Nichols of “Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media-Election Complex is Destroying America”. Following the purchase of the Washington Post by the billionaire owner of Amazon, we look into how failing newspapers and magazines are become playthings for billionaires, and discuss the collapse of the news media in which professionalism has been replaced by commercialism as resources for reporting are cut, and investigative journalism is all but eliminated.
Part 3	Finally, we examine the most lucrative part of the Washington Post Company that was not sold to Jeff Bezos, and that is the Kaplan for-profit division which accounts for 55% of the company’s revenue. David Halperin, a senior fellow at Republic Report where he has the article “Bezos Purchase of the Post Leaves Graham with Kaplan For-Profit College” which is also at The Huffington Post, joins us to discuss how the Post’s former owner got the White House to water down rules that would have held these predatory diploma mills that saddle students with crippling debt, accountable.