Here's the Hardball transcipt in which he mentions that issue:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/1000254.asp?cp1=1 DEAN: Not with a 10-foot pole, am I touching that one.
Where we’re at right now in this cycle is that we need somebody to mitigate the power of corporations. Corporations are not bad things. They’re neither good nor bad. But the problem is, they’re a bad influence on society if they get too much power, because their basic interest is the bottom line. And they forget that human being have-human beings have souls. We’re not meant to be simply cogs in a machine.
And right now, we’re at that cycle where we are cogs in a machine. When I first went to Iowa, the lesson I learned from about 20 ordinary people was, we don’t trust our employers anymore because they don’t value us, because they’ll move our jobs anyplace, including offshore.
MATTHEWS: How do we reregulate America? Is that what you want to do, put-enforce more public policy?
DEAN: I want accountability. What I really want is accountability. I don’t think it’s OK for ordinary people to invest in mutual funds and then find out that you’ve been cheated in the stock market.
I don’t think rMD+IT_rMD-IT_it’s OK for Enron to steal ordinary working people’s pensions. If the CEOs goes broke, so be it. They took a lot of risks. They made a lot of money. There are a lot of ordinary people who have nothing to retire on because of what happened at Enron. And its Tyco and its Global Crossing, and again and again. And this administration is permitting it and winking at it. And I’ve had enough of that.
MATTHEWS: What about the Democrats that went along with...
MATTHEWS: Travel, the Democrats’ Ted Kennedy was part of that deregulation, the deregulation of radio. There are so many things that have been deregulated. Is that wrong trend and would you reverse it?
DEAN: I would reverse in some areas.
First of all, 11 companies in this country control 90 percent of what ordinary people are able to read and watch on their television. That’s wrong. We need to have a wide variety of opinions in every community. We don’t have that because of Michael Powell and what George Bush has tried to do to the FCC.
MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?
MATTHEWS: Well, how about large media enterprises?
DEAN: The answer to that is yes.
I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country. We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP.
MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You’re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?
DEAN: What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.
MATTHEWS: Well, would you break up GE?
MATTHEWS: GE just buys Universal. Would you do something there about that? Would you stop that from happening?
DEAN: You can’t say-you can’t ask me right now and get an answer, would I break up X corp...
MATTHEWS: We’ve got to do it now, because now is the only chance we can ask you, because, once you are in, we have got to live with you.
MATTHEWS: Are you going to break up the giant media enterprises in this country?
DEAN: Yes, we’re going to break up giant media enterprises. That doesn’t mean we’re going to break up all of GE.
What we’re going to do is say that media enterprises can’t be as big as they are today. I don’t think we actually have to break them up, which Teddy Roosevelt had to do with the leftovers from the McKinley administration.
MATTHEWS: ... regulate them.
DEAN: You have got to say that there has to be a limit as to how-if the state has an interest, which it does, in preserving democracy, then there has to be a limitation on how deeply the media companies can penetrate every single community. To the extent of even having two or three or four outlets in a single community, that kind of information control is not compatible with democracy.
MATTHEWS: How-how far would you go in terms of public policy?
MATTHEWS: This is not-what you describe is not laissez-faire. It’s not capitalism.
DEAN: It is capitalism.
MATTHEWS: How would you-what would you call it?
DEAN: I am absolutely a capitalist. Capitalism is the greatest system that people have ever invented, because it takes advantage of bad traits, as well as our good traits, and turns them into productivity.
But the essence of capitalism, which the right-wing never understands ” it always baffles me-is, you got to have some rules. Imagine a hockey game with no rules.