The bleep goes on ...

Moving right along with the agenda.

From the 14 points of fascism.

6. A controlled mass media

Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

UnFCCing fair!

If James Madison was correct when he observed:

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Then it follows that the Obama FCC not only "killed" the Fairness Doctrine, but has sought to drive a nail into democracy's coffin.

Inside scoop: The FCC intends to release all 83 rules they deem outdated on Wednesday. Apparently, or so I'm told by sources inside the FCC, Genachowski's office mistakenly sent out a press release on the Fairness Doctrine elimination today.

There is one rule in particular I am keen on, it's called the Zapple Doctrine (no, I am not making this up.)

Zapple says that TV and Radio stations must accept any candidate's ads, and those stations may not fact check them or alter them. But if broadcasters run Third Party ads, on the other hand, they can be held liable if the ads are misleading.

Anybody have a clue where I'm going with this?

One thing is certain, and the Third District Court of Appeals affirmed it, stations still only get licenses to broadcast IF they "serve the public interest."

Since neither the President nor the FCC seems to be able to define "public interest obligations," it's up to we the people to do it ourselves. I'm going to Wisconsin next month to teach people to do just that.

Obama seems to think that the inside-the-beltway propoganda machine of the Democrats can compete against the well-oiled, rightwing, propoganda echo chamber. What Obama does not understand is that progressives are beginning to hate the inside-the beltway point of view almost as much as the right wingers. He doesn't realize he is a small and increasingly less popular faction within one party. The right wingers will tell you to shut up because they have an opposing view. The insider crowd will tell you to shut up because the progressive point of view infringes on their power games in Washington. We don't care about your careers in Washington, we care about the health of the nation. Democrats (even when they have majorities) are more concerned about themselves (status quo) than their country.

notice how once something starts going down the plug hole it starts to accelerate rapidly ... buy guns and gold.

"paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and other hard right commentators to use the public airwaves as little more than a one-sided propaganda tool."

Seriously? Why did it only pave the way for conservative commentators? Ridiculous - it paved the way for ANYONE who could thrive, did it not?

You people refuse to accept reality: There is no national radio audience for hard-left politics - period. Air America could not even survive with millions of George Soros dollars.

Want proof? Why is it that only Democrats support the doctrine, while Republicans oppose it? Why does the left support taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS while conservatives oppose it?

Seems to me that if so many Americans support liberal ideology - and your party's agenda - liberals and conservatives would switch sides here, would they not?

Obviously, anything about "fairness" would have to be obsolete in this present corrupt time. PresObama is not representing the wethepeople: byebye.

Mike said at 8:

"paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and other hard right commentators to use the public airwaves as little more than a one-sided propaganda tool."

Seriously? Why did it only pave the way for conservative commentators?

I didn't say "conservative commentators," I said "hard right commentators". There is nothing "conservative" about them.

But to answer your question, it paved the way for hard right commentators because the stations (and the free socialist government licenses with them) were snatched up by corporations with a hard right, corporatist agenda, and so they put people on the air who not only will not challenge that corporatist agenda, but who will support it at all costs --- even over country.

Ridiculous - it paved the way for ANYONE who could thrive, did it not?

It did not. I realize you've not been here before, but as we have discussed many times here, there is no competition in corporate talk radio. I work in it (to a small extent, as a regular guest host for the Mike Malloy Show, and as a frequent guest on many other programs) and I can tell you that there is no competition. The game is rigged. By way of example, if one right leaning corporation owns two talk radio stations in one town, and one of them is a Rightwing station that has been around forever, achieved number one status in the market and serves their business interest, and the other one, which was only recently added, with not even half as many megawatts (and therefore less than half the public reach) challenges that corporate interest, do you think they are interested in seeing the smaller station take away listeners from the Rightwing station and threaten their number one status?

That's how corporate talk radio now works since Clinton's Telecommunication Act which succeeded in robbing the market of ALL competition. The broadcast licenses are divvied out to a handful of corporations who have no competition in most markets. That is called a monopoly, not competition.

You people refuse to accept reality: There is no national radio audience for hard-left politics - period. Air America could not even survive with millions of George Soros dollars.

Actually, Soros had nothing to do with Air America to my knowledge. Though I realize you've been trained, by Rightwing corporatist talk radio propaganda to believe Soros funds everything that is not right wing.

In any case, why do you suppose it is that Stephanie Miller, a non-Rightwinger, beats Rightwing Laura Ingraham, a hard Rightwinger, in virtually every market where they go head to head in the morning? But Ingraham is on 400 affiliates while Miller is on 40? Weird, isn't it?

It's almost as if there is something other than "competition" at work on the airwaves, eh?

Want proof? Why is it that only Democrats support the doctrine, while Republicans oppose it?

Clearly, Democrats don't support it, as it was a Democratic administration that did away with it for good, as noted in the story above. That said, it's obvious why Republicans oppose it. For the same reason Qaddafi opposes any opposition to his monopoly on power. Is that a real question?

Why does the left support taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS while conservatives oppose it?

Because NPR and PBS are the only bastions left on our publicly-owned airwaves which aren't wholly corporately controlled and piping out corporatist propaganda 24/7. They just pipe it out 20/6 instead, and that's not good enough for Rightwingers who want the benefits of free radio licenses (socialism) without the responsibilities of serving the public interest, as required to hold those licenses (though unenforced by the pathetic FCC.)

Real conservatives wouldn't mind the competition, but there are no real conservatives in talk radio, at least on the Rightwing side of the aisle.

Seems to me that if so many Americans support liberal ideology - and your party's agenda - liberals and conservatives would switch sides here, would they not?

I don't even understand that question. And if your suggestion is that "my party" is the Democrats, you'd be making even more of a jackass of yourself than you already have here. But with 98% of the public airwaves given over to one extreme side of the political spectrum, your party, presumably the Republicans, succeeded losing in a landslide referendum in 2008 . Weird, huh? You'd think there'd be at least as large of a percentage of non-Rightwing talk on our public airwaves to reflect that. Sadly there is not. Because there is no competition in talk radio.

Please feel free to go educate yourself and get back to us, though.

Yesterday the mass media told everyone that the NATO-led rebels had taken Tripoli and had captured Gaddafi and his sons.

Many of us warned people not to believe anything the mass media tells them.

Today it turned out that Tripoli hadn't been taken and Gaddafi and sons hadn't been captured.

So, on to the next bunch of lies. Since I don't pay any attention to the mass media, preferring to rely on trusted sources on the ground, I rarely get misled.

Having a Fairness Doctrine contradicts the basic principles of our capitalist plutocracy, which is based on injustice and inequity, so the fact that it once existed was a temporary anomaly.

Barack Obama has been proving his entire campaign was a lie, he's not a democrat but has intended to further the interests of the oligarchs. He is the worst mistake of the Democratic Party since before the Civil War, an obvious and cynical fraud, using the trappings of a civil rights leader to mask a willing tool of the oligarchy. He can't be dumped without risking splitting the Democratic Party, he is the greatest friend that the anti-democratic, modern Republican Party has ever had.

I despised Reagan and the Bushes but there is a special kind of regard for someone who has matched most of their worst actions with the rankest and most cynical hypocrisy. I can't wait for him to leave office and he and the Genachowski's of his administration take their place along side the scrapings of the Bush II regime in the real rulers of this former republic. They are beneath contempt.

I have to say, we could have expected no less from Bushack HW Obama, arguably the most right wing President in the nation's history.

I would like to meet the guy who writes his rhetoric for him, and vote for THAT guy. Anyone know where I might find him?

If it looks like a Republican, walks like a...etc, I can only conclude that Obama IS a Republican. I won't be fooled by pretending he is anything else.

And...(quoted from Brad's article - emphasis added)

Despite efforts by a very small handful of Congressional Democrats and a few progressives to restore the Fairness Doctrine in some form, most such efforts were largely abandoned after the Rightwing media machine used its dominance of the public airwaves to declare any such efforts as an attempt to silence Republican voices on those same airwaves.

This would be hilarious if it weren't true. The description of this is probably overused but it is so appropriate --- Orwellian.

Mike @8 wrote:

it paved the way for ANYONE who could thrive, did it not?

Not!

The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine along with corporate consolidation under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 paved the way for the corporate message (both hard-right and mainstream) to be the exclusive message that is seen, heard and read by the American people.

As Amy Goodman observed in Exception to the Rulers, we don't have a "silent majority." We have a "silenced majority" --- silenced by the corporate and hard-right media.

The classic example was a study done by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) for the week before and the week after Colin Powell’s UN address. Of the 393 “experts” appearing on four major networks (CBS, NBC, ABC & PBS) only 3 were anti-war --- this at a time when 61 percent favored diplomacy and inspections over war.

In Weapons of Mass Deception Danny Schechter demonstrated how major media were willfully complicit in the Pentagon’s deceptive but brilliantly conceived media management strategy --- a strategy which White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card likened to a product roll-out.

It was pure Hollywood, a master narrative embodying the "good guy/bad guy formula that works so well on the silver screen" It was a narrative that defined Iraq as the problem and preemptive war as the only solution.

Television, with its flair for drama, its ability to heighten the moment through musical presentation, its ability to use carefully placed graphics beneath anchors with flags on their lapels, was the perfect medium for Fox "News," the right-wing echo chamber and other corporate propaganda outlets.

As noted by Paul Krugman, if "you ask why do the Europeans see things so differently, well, one answer is …they don’t have…’Countdown Iraq,’ ‘SHOWDOWN IRAQ,’ ‘Target Iraq’ on their screens nonstop."

It took Obama to do what Republicans have tried to do for decades - end any chance that a two sentence rule would stop their propaganda operations. What an ASS. He is a Republican.

The entire Republican empire of deception was threatened by the fairness doctrine. Now Obama has guaranteed that "corporations can censor reasonable views of those who disagree with them, and they may censor issues vital to the community they serve."

The entire lie machine that rules our nation could be brought down if they had to allow someone on their networks to point out their lies.

The fairness doctrine was created to stop the use of Americas airwaves for propaganda as the german airwaves were used under Hitler.

Obama does the republicans dirty work to screw America. What an ASS.

Obama, the corporate Democratic leadership and the GOP are all part of what Noam Chomsky refers to as "the elite consensus."

Their differences are superficial.

In Paging Eugene McCarthy I argued that the ideal would be for a true progressive candidate to challenge Obama in the primaries so as to overcome the "lesser-evil" paradigm.

If none surfaces, we the people must muster the courage to say "no" to the lesser-evil paradigm and to back a third party candidate who does not represent the interests of corporate America.

Oh, Brad. I think you'd be a bit closer to the lyrics with: FCC --- What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'! Say it again, y'all.

If anyone still has any doubts as to whom the Obama administration really represents, there’s this little tidbit from Democracy Now!

Barack was Wall Street's man even before he was elected.

Man, the Kool Aid flows freely with you addicts, doesn't it?

Education is just fine, thanks.

Keep the delusional circle-jerk going boys, you're awesome at it!

Mike @20, at a loss for a substantive reply said:

Man, the Kool Aid flows freely with you addicts, doesn't it?

Nice try, Mike. You offered Kool-Aid, we offered you independently verifiable facts in response which, obviously, you're unable to speak to because your Kool-Aid dispensers haven't offered you the juice you'd need to respond substantively.

You've been duped by the folks you foolishly decided to believe in. They made a chump out of you. Sorry about that.

But your name calling and attempted insults in lieu of an actual response was neat-o! We are all very impressed!

See ya!

Ben Stein nailed it months ago on Sunday Morning, when he urged the Republican Party to nominate Obama for President: http://tinyurl.com/3nodq55. I've always cringed at his whiny voice and usually whiny commentary on Sunday Morning, but he's been nailing it frequently this year, including his recent celebrated forays into schooling Republicans on economics.

I sure hope that this will convince a few more Liberals not to vote for Obama. At every turn he never misses a chance to be a Corporate Whore.

Nice video, CambridgeKnitter. I especially liked the idea of Alan Grayson challenging Obama in the primaries.

Had to chuckle in reading Mike @20. Amazing how Tea Tards take pride in their ignorance.

Ernest, a few weeks back a commenter on the FireDogLake Sunday Talking Heads thread recommended including Sunday Morning in the lineup, arguing that it was often the only one worth watching. I quite agree. We have had Tavis Smiley taking everybody to task for refusing to acknowledge poverty and poor people, and we had Ben Stein (again!) laying out why the Republican prescription for the economy is dead wrong (before his more publicized O'Reilly Factor gig), just to name two. It's not as good as the show Charles Kuralt created and hosted, but it's still better than most of what the so-called news divisions of the major networks put out, and it still leaves us somewhere in nature at the end of every show.

Mike @ 8 --- It is as Brad says in radio. Monopoly situation. It's the opposite of competition. I remember when small-town radio was live, with a local dj, call ins and remotes. Nothing is live anymore, stations are automated, Limbaugh and other righties are piped in, and public radio is the only place anymore where a spectrum of views is offered (however, public radio will not touch issues like you get here on the Brad Blog. No voting machines, no 911 evidence, no Brad Manning, there are strict taboos).
There's a perception that ratings will ensure competition, but it hasn't happened. When just a few companies (people) control the whole scene, ratings don't matter.

To Mike at 8:

Seriously? Why did it only pave the way for conservative commentators? Ridiculous - it paved the way for ANYONE who could thrive, did it not?

Mike is not totally off here - others did thrive in the deregulation and consolidation besides Limbaugh, notably Howard Stern. Though not a political show, Stern's anti-FCC rallies and protracted campaigns against censorship did cement the idea that public figures can legally be mocked, slandered and libeled, without any right to rebuttal time.

Limbaugh was always biggest but it was because Clearchannel was "clear cutting" markets to ensure he was #1 by buying stations and closing them down, merging stations, automating stations, and killing jobs, killing diversity and killing local news bureaus all over the US. It's true Soros or someone on the left could have done this too, but probably had moral qualms about propaganda and the predatory Wal-Martization of radio.

You people refuse to accept reality: There is no national radio audience for hard-left politics - period. Air America could not even survive with millions of George Soros dollars.

Very, very wrong. NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered have maintained comparable audiences to Limbaugh and #2 Hannity. They are usually excluded in ratings lists because Arbitron and others only compile commercial numbers so they can set values for advertising demand.

Not only this, recent reports say Limbaugh's audience has dropped 30% meaning he may have actually fallen behind NPR. You might also be horrified to learn that many NPR stations across the country are listener-supported, meaning people love their insanely successful left-leaning radio so much they have actually been sending them money directly for over 40 years.

Want proof? Why is it that only Democrats support the doctrine, while Republicans oppose it? Why does the left support taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS while conservatives oppose it?

Republicans oppose it because they want lying and propaganda legal. Democrats support it (not many really, there have been no legislative proposals for years now) because they are helplessly losing the messaging wars but in the end realize government cannot be the arbiter of fairness because government officials are the most partisan of all.

Lost in this debate is the erosion of professionalism on the right. Even when in place, the Fairness Doctrine more often called on station management to ensure balance, making "all reasonable efforts". Limbaugh and Hannity not only lie and omit relevant facts, they censor out callers who they disagree with.

Everyone knows they do it, even their defenders say they are not newsmen or journalists, just opinion or entertainment shows. But the reason Mike should be concerned is that they are cowards - a major difference with hists like Maddow or Hartmann is that they welcome right wingers on to debate.

So Mike will never get to hear Limbaugh or Hannity's ideas vetted, challenged or put to the test. But this is because they are just hired speakers anyway, paid by the Heritage Foundation to read talking points every single day.

Hello Ernest Canning,

Love your comments especially #18 and #25. Pride goeth before a fall. What else do the Tea Tards have? To answer that question see #18

absolutely nothin!

The impact of media consolidation, Bill Moyers observed, is that “virtually everything the average person sees or hears, outside of her own personal communications, is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the share prices. More insidiously, this small group of elites determines what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth coverage of anything, let alone the problems real people face day-to-day, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive.”

The internet neutrality regulations FCC passed December 2010 are stronger for wired internet (cable and DSL mostly) than for wireless internet people are migrating to (cell phones and tablets like Ipads, Blackberry Playbooks, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, and e book readers like the Nook and the Kindle with wifi or 3G connections). One of the big disappointments to me in tablet computers is no ethernet port to connect to a wired network. The Progressive Voices phone and tablet app was started by some Air America founders to bypass radio with the mobile internet. Lack of protections for wireless internet neutrality could lead to the same narrowing of opinions expressed because progressives can't pay for enough bandwidth like they couldn't buy radio stations.

When I was in the US Air Force, many years ago, I worked at an Armed Forces Television Station in Germany. I learned, the influence, TV had via the TV's sitting in the Living Rooms of every home.
The Vietnam was was just starting to ramp up and I usually read difficult material like the "Washington Report" to the GI's families.

I became a news junky for all those years but also a shortwave listener of stations through out the world, like Radio Moscow, today the voice of Russia. I very rarely hear the Voice Of America but Communist Radio International, Radio Havanna Cuba, and Others are actively on the air.

I live in the state where "Choose the Right", Government is bad, Regulation is bad, No Laws unless it benefits the Rich while we have 20% of our community in Poverty and wages are 80% of the nation. At any given day, I hear Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck on Six Radio Stations with an outside antenna at the same time. I usually listen to Limbaugh's program until he tells a lie or gives mis-information, usually about 3 to 5 minutes and then I turn him off and go to NPR where I get a balanced viewpoint.

The AM airways, in our community have been taken over by the Right Wing Extreme Politico's and there is something wrong with that. When I try to call in to talk radio, I am allowed two sentences and then "muted" immediately and then slammed by the Right Wing host for 10 minutes intermingled with a commercial. I have no voice.

I am fuming inside, I have no voice, there is no other media outlet for me to air my opinion. It is as if I do not exist, just send in your Income Taxes, pay 15% Social Securtiy taxes, 7% Medicare, Pay 80 cents in gas tax, while the sponsors of these Right Wing Programs pay at a 15% tax rate. They have money, I have little.

I have never felt my voice is being stifled so much by People who are very wealthy. It is like a slow burning fuse that eventually will blow up.

The recent ruling of Low Power FM Community stations are being hampered in licensing by the National Association of Broadacasters, the Powerful Corporate Media.

I think the FCC did the right thing to discontiue a law that is not enforcable, like some of the Sex laws describing what sex acts are prohibited in the bedroom, but the FCC needs to come up with some way, that removes my "burning fuse" not being allowed to express a different view from the Right Wing Corporate Rich Elite agendas that permiate the airways around the clock in my community.

I read, how in 1933, the Nazi Party gained enough votes to rise from 33% to 40% and credit the gain to the New Media of Radio that had just started 10 years earlier. The Nazi's had one theme "Tell a lie over and over, and people think it is the Truth".

We have the same going on with talk Radio of the Limbaugh types that I think are close to the same programming of the Nazi's in 1933. Over the next 12 years, 50 million died as a result.