Hightower Lowdown

Time Warner is being gobbled up by America Online in the world's largest corporate deal, valued at $165 billion, and the media establishment is gushing with enthusiasm. USA Today says the merger represents the victory of high[-- ]tech, 21 st-century firms over the conventional conglomerates of the last century, and compares it to the 13 colonies defeating the British.

But hold your hyperbole right there. The revolution of 1776 was about freedom and democracy. This merger is about consolidation and centralization, not only of economic power, but also of information itself. It allows AOL, through the cable lines that Time Warner has run into our homes, to begin controlling our access to the Internet limiting our information sources and choices. It brings the democratic promise of the Internet into the python's grip of the corporate media.

Forget "greater consumer service," "corporate synergies," and any of the other buzzwords being used to rationalize the merger. The deal is about nothing but the bottom line, and this merger fattens certain media moguls' bottom lines substantially-AOL's chief exec Steve Case will per- sonally pocket $440 million, Time Warner honcho Gerald Levin will get $880 million, and Time Warner vice-chair Ted Turner will get a whopping $5 billion from the deal.