You'd think the DNC would learn that when they attack these other people in the media all it does is boost their ratings. Rush had the largest audence in the nation prior to Obama. Then after Obama attacked Rush his ratings went throught the roof.
What Limbaugh and Beck are really freaked out about: Their racket is under scrutiny!
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It's a fear that's laced with paranoia, stoked by misinformation and prejudice and fed to millions of people via powerful media. But most of all, it's a fear of the changes that an overwhelming majority of Americans called for when they stepped into voting booths last November.
Since then, the old guard has fallen into alignment with old media to hijack the public debate over reform, and vilify reformers as anti-American. And to them the most anti-American notion of the lot is the idea that we need to reform the media itself.
"Part of the strategy of this fundamental 'transformation' of America is to silence dissent," Glenn Beck said on Fox last month. The "most diabolical, hidden parts of this plan," according to Beck, are efforts to reform media through "localism and diversity" -- two principles that have grounded modern communications policy for decades.
Beck was later joined on the program by Rush Limbaugh, who called localism and diversity part of the growing tyranny of the left. This issue is "simply un-American," Limbaugh crowed. "They're trying to do this back-door route with diversity... to shut you up by shutting us down."
Not to be outdone, Lou Dobbs stated falsely: "When you talk about diversity, [you aren't] talking about ethnic, racial or religious diversity, [you 're] talking about more liberals on the air."
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While Beck and his ilk want to portray diversity and localism as a dangerous conspiracy to censor, the fact remains that these ideas have been staples of communications policy since the beginning. The central mandate of the Federal Communications Commission -- as enshrined in the Communications Act of 1934 -- is to promote localism, diversity and competition in the media. This same principle of localism has been a rallying cry for several generations of true conservatives.
Broadcasters get hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of subsidies and the right to use our airwaves in exchange for a basic commitment to be responsive to the interests of local communities.
Moreover, the Supreme Court recognized that "safeguarding the public's right to receive a diversity of views and information over the airwaves is ... an integral component of the FCC's mission."
Sadly, the FCC has failed to live up to this standard. And what mainstream media's fear-merchants are most afraid of is not censorship, but an FCC that actually does its job ...
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Beck and Limbaugh, in particular, are two corporate welfare babies who owe much of their existence to this regulatory failure, which handed control of our airwaves to massive conglomerates like Clear Channel and ABC Radio to broadcast their fear agenda via a syndicated network of centrally owned radio stations.
The cable sector that carries Beck and Dobbs' nightly paranoia is itself a gigantic bundle of government handouts, having built invaluable local monopolies via granted rights-of-way that beam these two into nearly every den in America.
Try calculating what it would cost to get your content across America without a local or federal government clearing your path, and you quickly realize that blowhards like Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh are three of the nation's biggest beneficiaries of public largesse.
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Obama plans to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows of ABC, NBC, CBS and sit for interviews with CNN and Spanish-language network Univision. He's skipping Fox, whose news channel he has said is "entirely devoted to attacking my administration."
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... According to Univision's corporate communications, Al Punto (531,000) does better than FNS (417,000) in the all-important 18-49 demographic (and has done so for the last 10 months), and it often beats CBS's Face the Nation in that demo as well.
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[Joe "You Lie!"] Wilson, who was reprimanded this week by the House for his outburst at Obama last week, said that by excluding Fox, the president was not being fair.
“If people are going to be on the Sunday talk shows, they should be on all of them,” Wilson said.
Wilson, incidentally, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” last week, but not on any of the other Sunday shows.
Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told The Hill that Obama has “handpicked” his audience.
“I think that Fox News would ask some realistic questions that members of Congress are asked and the American public is asking. And he’s the one who’s choosing not to take part in that,” Sessions said on Wednesday.
In Dear Leader's book " Dreams from my father" he referred to his grandfather
(the herbalist, not witch doctor) as having ants in his anus because he couldn't sit still. This appears to be hereditary.
Linear Mode
