This brings us right back to the FCC decision to allow big media companies to own even more outlets. The desicion to silence dissent, or at least the potential for dissent in these seven station's regions is very troubling for those who value freedom of speech.
As luck would have it, my e-mail box is filling up with information on Sinclair Broadcasting's ties to the GOP.
1. the graph clearly proves that among the 20 biggest regional media outlets, only 3 other media companies contributed more to the Republican party than Sinclair Broadcasting.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.asp?Ind=C2100
This just arrived as well.
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Bush Bypasses National Media in Favor of Regional Broadcasters
The Bush administration, displeased with the news coverage of the war in Iraq, bypassed the national media outlets by using five regional broadcasting companies to disseminate his message more directly to the American public.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, told The Washington Post that White House is savvy in strategizing to bypass the national media because viewers tend to trust their local news more than network television.
President Bush granted a series of exclusive interviews to Cox Television, Hearst-Argyle Television, Tribune Broadcasting, Belo and Sinclair Broadcast Group on Oct. 13, 2003, to discuss improvements in Iraq. This was an effort to reach news organizations that do not regularly cover the White House, according to Associated Press.
As the government took the business arrangement to own movie theaters away from the studios, they should do something about these media monopolies. It's making it easier and easier for the government to control content whether one wants to believe they do it or not.
hi infowarrior- Thank you for providing this data. Some might say this clubby arrangement the White House has with a few hand-selected regional media conglomorates suggests a quid pro quo.
No wonder Sinclair says x-nay on the ightline-Nay. :wink:
This is bullsh*t!
Rush Limbaugh's been blathering about it too.
naturally, he thinks we don't have the right to make the choice whether or not to see it.
he thinks it's political too.
Course, it's a diferent story when conservatives speak of the war dead; they're heroes, but that's as far as it goes. No emotion necessary.
Get your war on baby!
This makes me sick, and it makes me sicker to see people defending this action by ABC.
I would love to know what you think is "unpatriotic" about reading the names and showing pictures of soldiers who gave their lives for the country, Foxfire.
hi Suzy- I agree 100%. Who does this foxfry think she is defining what is patriotic and unpatriotic for the world? She's really too much -- totally off the hook.
I just watched the show that replaced Kopples. 80% of it was bush and his mouthpirces politicing. And just to put this in perspective the radio waves belong to me and you and every other US citizen. The conglormates are just renting them untill we deciede weve had enough of thier partisianship. All it takes is a congress with some ba-ls to correct the thievery of our airwaves by business.
I agree, Rabel. They are hardly the people's airwaves any more.
I agree -- I hope this gets some Washington heads fired up to do something about the public airways getting away with such blatant censorship and partisanship. The law that a station must give equal time is being cleverly by-passed in many was but this is the grossest example I've ever run across.
At the end of the reading of the American dead in Iraq last night on Nightline, Ted Kopple said that as of yesterday, 737 Americans had died in Iraq -- seven hundred and thirty seven.
This number will easily reach 1,000 by the election.
According to today's New York Times, in addition to the dead, forty more were wounded. No wonder more forces are needed in Iraq.
?
If Fox TV would've done this would the Right Wing have been objecting?
hi pistoff- Well, I don't think Fox News would've ever done anything so touching and honest as what Nightline did Friday night. Murdock and Ailes are radical, rightwingers and the types that get off on empire.
Plus, the talkingheads on Fox News are far more interested in gossiping about Bill Clinton's sex life and what Michael Jackson did, or didn't do at neverland ranch.
This is an opinion network -- not a news network.
Outrage
This is outrageous. We cannot see the faces of those who died for us? Says who? ABC? I didn't know the news media thought it had to power to decide what we Americans can think and see or not. Pravda comes to mind. You can't say anything bad about an evil thing like war? This is yet another glimpse into the ongoing demise of our civilization. We must be consuming too many chemicals that have adverse effects upon our brains, because we sure are getting hysterically stupid about things like honor and shame, duty and valour...Seeing the faces of the fallen puts the war in its PROPER perspective, not the sanitized, legitimized version we are getting. You know, in the Vietnam War, the TV stations were broadcasting the actual fighting and other horrific images, and it took years for people to turn against the war, and not until it was clear the powers that be were losing, not winning. Now the excuse to ban coverage is to avoid lending people to come to the decision to be against the war. It's insane, and a monumental excuse to deprive us of our right to know and our freedom to decide.
Something wicked is growing within America, like a malignant cancer, and it will not stop growing until we cut it out of the collective body. Everyone knows who I am talking about. There is one near you.
