Latest Fox News "Mistake"

It's no longer a surprise when Fox News pulls stunts like this - identifying Republican Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter on screen during a broadcast as a Democrat. It's now a surprise when the network doesn't do it. This is anything but a mistake. C&L has a short list of other instances of Fox's, ahem, "mistakes."

I wonder, if Specter would have made supportive statements today AG Alberto Gonzales during the latter's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, would he "earn" an "R" from Fox News? What, is Fox News now the athletic department of Congress? I guess so - Republicans now have to prove their conservative mettle to earn the much coveted "R" during Fox's asinine and absurd "news broadcasts."

And Rupert Murdoch wants to buy more media outlets in the United States? This is precisely the reason why we must demand strictly enforced, reasonable limits on any person, corporation or entity of any political persuasion from owning too many media outlets in the United States.

I have over 20 letters I've been meaning to write to my Congressional representatives, and this is near the top of the list - the FCC needs to roll back media ownership limits. NOW.

During vacation next week, my fingers are going to be sore from pounding away at my laptop keys. Of course, I will share these letters with you and encourage you to write your leaders about a host of issues as well.

Murdoch quashes China stories; let's let him buy the WSJ? No way.

I found a pretty interesting article in this morning's New York Times, which reports some scandalous behavior over at the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. (Which I refuse to read - see the headline at right for a stark reason why.)

It contains some gossip about the paper's Page Six gossip column, which makes for some amusing reading, but one passage in particular caught my eye.

An excerpt:

Page Six, The New York Post's free-swinging showcase for gossip about canoodling celebrities and cheating spouses, ran a tell-all item yesterday about a subject it does not usually cover in eye-popping detail: itself. And it had some pretty juicy details: the editor of the paper patronized a strip club, and the longtime author of the column, Richard Johnson, once took a $1,000 cash gift.

And that was not all.

The item also raised anew long-heard allegations that Rupert Murdoch, The Post's owner, had directed the Page Six writers to avoid items that could be seen as critical of China, where he was trying to do business. [Emphasis Mine]

The 675-word item was the latest twist in the long-running dispute involving Jared Paul Stern, a former freelance contributor to Page Six. He was suspended in April 2006 amid allegations that he had demanded money for favorable coverage — allegations that the authorities later declined to prosecute.

But the fight rages on. Mr. Stern now says he might sue Page Six, and as part of the legal preliminaries, his lawyer obtained a statement by a fellow former reporter for Page Six, Ian Spiegelman.

That four-page blast opens with allegations about Page Six and the editor of The Post, including the strip club and the $1,000 gift. While confirming those assertions in the item, the editor, Col Allan, was quoted as calling Mr. Spiegelman's claims a "tissue of lies."

Gossip aside (is anyone surprised that a writer for the sleazy Post would take a $1,000 bribe of sorts?), what really got my dander up was how Murdoch allegedly told Page Six staffers to avoid unflattering stories about China, because he was trying to do business there.

This is exactly the reason why Murdoch should not only be prohibited from buying The Wall St. Journal, but he should be forced to sell off part of the media empire he already owns.

Media conglomeration is a direct threat to our democracy. The argument for media conglomeration is always "let the market decide" and "I/we [CEOs and corporate boards of these companies] don't interfere with the news departments and/or editorial decisions."

But this is simply the latest example that heads of media companies DO interfere with news and editorial decisions, and our government must put a stop to it.

Murdoch is hardly the only example. In the last 10-15 years alone, CBS and ABC have also been in the middle of some heady controversies about corporate talking suits and lawyers preventing their news divisions from reporting stories that didn't serve their corporate interests.

In the case of CBS, it was the high-profile case of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, formerly of Brown & Williamson (a very large American tobacco company that has since merged with Phillip Morris), who decided to go public on 60 Minutes with the revelation that his former employers knew full well that tobacco was not only addictive, but that B&W was adding chemicals to its cigarettes to make them more addictive.

Faced with the possibility of an enormous lawsuit from B&W, CBS coerced the producers of 60 Minutes to air a sharply edited version of the story, which later became a huge story. (It's important to note that CBS in the process of being sold to Westinghouse, and the heads of the network did not want the sale jeopardized with a high-profile lawsuit.)

I digress, but the story of CBS is an amazing one, which was turned into a very good movie, The Insider, starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.

But, the angle of Wigand's story that didn't get nearly as much attention as it deserved is this - when should a sale or corporate merger override the public interest, in this case the health of tens of millions of Americans? Of course, the answer is "never," unless, in this case, you happened to hold thousands of stock options in CBS or Westinghouse.

Anyway, this is the cost of mega-mergers and media conglomeration with our supposedly "free" press.

Our press is only as free as the corporate boards who run our media companies want it to be. And that scares me.

Who among us thinks it would be a good idea for Rupert Murdoch to own ANY more newspapers, radio stations, television networks, etc.? The only people who like such a move are on Wall St.

Thankfully, it looks as if his purchase of the WSJ is not going to happen, but only because the Bancroft family who owns a controlling interest in the paper won't sell, not because our government is stepping in and saying, "Nice try, Rupert - you own enough."

It's time for our government to say "enough" when it comes to media conglomeration. But, unfortunately, we will probably have to wait for those changes to take place - does anyone believe the big business fetishists in the Bush administration would put a stop to Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ?

Bill Mahr, censored!

So, it seems that a giant media conglomerate has struck again. Bill Mahr, on Larry King Live on Wednesday night (above), made the assertion that many people in high leadership positions in the Republican Party are gay, and he named Ken Mehlman, the current head of the RNC.

In the subsequent rebroadcast of Larry King at midnight, Mahr's naming of Mehlman was edited out of the broadcast.

I just finished watching last night's episode of Bill Mahr's show, Real Time with Bill Mahr, and no mention of gay Republicans.

Before I go any further, and this will come as no surprise to any regular readers of this blog, I don't care if any or all of the leaders of the Republican Party are gay. I really don't. The only issue I would have with it is their fervent anti-gay stance on just about every social issue, including gay marriage, which they want to amend the Constitution to make illegal in all states.

The issue this raises to me is media conglomeration, and how an increasingly consolidated media controls what we hear. In essence, with some exceptions, we only hear what these media giants, and the politicians who benefit from their campaign largess, want us to hear. That ought to frighten every American.

I'll bet everything I'm worth that one or more of the following happened:

1. An attorney representing Ken Mehlman and/or the RNC made a phone call to Time Warner with these threats: a lawsuit; and worse for Time/Warner, the threat that no prominent Republicans would appear or give interviews on CNN, HBO, Time Magazine, etc. Time/Warner owns all three (and a whole lot more).

2. Bill Mahr was told to shut his mouth, which he did on his show last night. No prominent Republicans announced.

Okay, I freely admit that it was stupid of Mahr to even allude to the fact that he was going to out Mehlman, which he ended up doing on Larry King anyway. It's unwise, and he's better have proof, or there would have been a lawsuit, a point I'm sure Time/Warner's lawyers no doubt made to Mahr in fairly animated terms.

But, is it right that a phone call from the RNC or a lawyer can effectively shut someone up? In this case, probably, because Mahr was out of line, IF it's untrue. But, what if Mahr has rock solid proof? The threat of a lawsuit has censored him. That's not good for our democracy.

Neither is media conglomeration, which has taken place at a breathtaking pace under this administration. A Republican-controlled Congress relaxed regulations a few years ago that allowed companies to purchase and own more radio and television stations.

The example above is just one way that this rapid consolidation of ownership can come back and bit democracy in the ass.

Anyone remember the 2004 election-year media censorship? In 2004, The Sinclair Broadcast Group caused a huge controversy when it forbade eight of its ABC-affiliate stations from broadcasting an April 30 episode of a Nightline that was to pay tribute to the 721 soldiers killed by reading their names on the air. The reasons given? That it undermined the war effort. A little investigation uncovered the fact that all of the senior leaders at Sinclair were maxed out contributors to the Bush campaign.

But, Sinclair wasn't done. In October 2004, Jon Lieberman, a Sinclair executive, revealed in an interview with the Baltimore Sun that Sinclair planned to order all 62 (Yes, 62!!!) of its ABC affiliates to air Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, a documentary critical of Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activism just two weeks prior to the presidential election. Public outrage followed, and Sinclair aired an edited version, and they fired Lieberman for revealing company business.

If our government prevents something from being broadcast, it's called prior restraint. But, what do you call it if a large media conglomerate friendly with the party in power forbids unflattering material to that party from being aired? Second-degree prior restraint? A threat to a free press and our very democracy is more like it.

I'm very hopeful that the new Democratic-Congress will immediately repeal the relaxed restrictions on media ownership and put in place more sensible restrictions; restrictions that don't put too much power in the hands of enormous media companies, their executives and their stockholders.

Our democracy, and our free press, depend on it. I'll be writing much more about this in the coming weeks and months, including what we can do about it.