Re: Nashuatelegraph.com: Bringing back old Fairness Doctrine wouldn't be, um, fair

Ian Gallagher — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:12:18 -0000

When private corporations monopolize a limited medium and use it for propaganda, freedom of speech demands equal time for opposing views. The right to turn the knob is meaningless when the only choice is off.

Clear-channel radio, with 1,400 stations, was created with the sole purpose of being a propaganda vehicle for right-wing ideology and to defend a right-wing government, right or wrong. If a talk-radio host must follow the party line in order to keep a job, the host is a paid propagandist.

Re: Patrick & Hazlett on Fairness Doctrine

Ian Gallagher — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:37:12 -0000

The Fairness Doctrine would not prevent a single person on talk radio or television from expressing his or her point of view. What it would do is provide a format that would prevent the one-sided arguments, half-truths and non-truths, and personal attacks that make up much of today's heated media format. prevent the indoctrination of single-view political ideaology's - and the ability to hear both sides, or multiple sides, of a position. Americans should be thinkers, and not followers, on important issues that affect the country and the world. Once educated and able to form an opinion, then falling on either side of an issue is okay by me.

The Fairness Doctrine does not give the government the ability to license and control the airwaves - that is something that the government already does and has done for more than 50 years. Second, no, The Fairness Doctrine in no way gives the government control of political content. What it would do is remove the veil from in front of politcal parties and wealthy political investors that currently control the airwaves and makes them accountable to broadcasting facts - and of course fairness. What does a broadcaster have to fear about providing equal time for an opposing view?

Re: Gore Buys Carbon Credits From…Himself?

Ian Gallagher — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:54:59 -0000

Twelve years of unmerited influence and half-truths swathed in red, white and blue patriotism met its demise with a dagger to the heart served up by revelations from the Iraq Study Group substantiating that everything right wing talk radio had said was right about the Iraqi, was wrong.

Born the day Rush Limbaugh mid-wifed Newt Gingrich's Contract For (On) America, RWTRR lived a healthy and wealthy life duping a great portion of the America public into voting against their own best interests.

Right wing talk grew larger and louder over its lifetime, adding names like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Dennis Prager and many more imitators. They each spent three hours a day catchphrasing words and thoughts - no matter how rickety their evidence (if any) - that the mainstream media would give equal time and space along side the truth.

All of a sudden, the truth was only worth 50% of any issue.

Enabled by a gullible mainstream media hoping to hitch itself to the growing Lords of Loud audience, the Rove-inspired red-herrings were greased up even more by talk radio's band of Professor Harold Hills and shoved charmingly down America's throat. And, as with all great con men, these snake oil salesmen sold hole-cloth, betraying the public trust and making fistfuls of dollars doing it.

To be fair, they had to. It's was a Catch-22. If they had trusted their audience with the truth, they'd have no audience.

But November's election and the ISG report finally drained life-giving oxygen from a lying heart. Not only did the public begin to understand they were being duped, but even the FOBIJB (Friends of Bush including James Baker) could no longer ignore the tide. Of course there will continue to be FOBIL (Friends of Bush Including Lieberman), but they will sustain escalating losses, just as the LOL are losing audience in droves.

But the one-two punch of November's mid-terms compounded by the Iraq Study Group's revelations, knocked a terminal hole in any credibility right wing talk may have had left.

Limbaugh admitted he was shilling for Republicans who didn't deserve to be elected, then attempted to hush the death knell rung by the ISG by recasting it, oh so hysterically, as the Iraq Surrender Group. Get it? He changed one of the words. Second-rate comics who are dying on stage always go for the insipidly obvious and as with the comics, it never gets the audience back.

Hannity has gone off the deep end calling everyone else but himself wrong. He persists on telling liberal callers that we found WMD even though Bush doesn't seem to have gotten the same intelligence Sean has while Curt Weldon and Rick Santorum were voted out of office whipping the same dead horse.

Beck asks an American Congressman to prove he's not working for the enemy.

Prager believes the same Congressman holding his bible will bring down American civilization.

O'Reilly can't drum up many recruits to fight this year's War Against Christmas, and how many times can you hear "look at me" with out re-tasting last night's dinner?

And Savage...? Well, just "Savage."

Oh, they'll keep some listeners, but they'll be talking to a choir who doesn't care that they're hearing to a bunch of cloutless charlatans who never had the balls to serve our country but have no problem sending other families into life-changing horror; fans who don't care their heros had it wrong, and had it wrong over and over. And when it came to the war...dead wrong.

Now any relevance these cascading Lords of Loud might once have had, if not dead, is on life support. And if there are some in the legitimate media who still choose to give these mongrels of misrepresentation any time, space or air, they do it at the risk of their own relevance.

Right-wing talk show relevance was never married but leaves behind soon to irrelevant offspring: Dick Morris, Bernie Goldberg, Tom DeLay, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, David Limbaugh, Bill Kristol, Michelle Malkin, General Tommy Franks, Oliver North, James Dobson, Whitewater, Swift Boaters, Flip-flopping, Terri Schiavo, The buses, Outing covert agents as appropriate government behavior, WMD, Saddam's close relationship with bin Laden, If you're against the war your against the troops, If you're against the President's policies you're against America, Activist judges are making laws, "Making progress," Tax relief

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