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May
31, 2003
Michael Powell: Act
Dumb, Hand 'Em A Check
Is
a Television a Radio or a Billboard?
by LARRY MAGNUSON
Forget Michael Powell? It's almost too easy to
do. When he's not out antitrust busting at corporate cocktail
parties where John Q. Public and the paparazzi are shunned, Powell's
been staying out of the public view on his own. The job of FCC
Chairman, as Powell sees it, involves keeping his head down and
doing the detail work: poring over industry indices and cleaning
up the remnants of communications monopoly restraints.
The very last in a line of media deregulators
(what's left?), Powell seems to view his custodial duty as sweeping
away the few regulations that continue to delay the enthronement
of the American Orwellian Broadcasting Network. The public will
not attend and the press will probably not be invited to that
fete either, so don't expect headlines like MEDIA MONOPOLY CELEBRATED!!
These days corporate journalists are too docile to be gate crashers
and, like Powell, are not asking the questions they should.
Why focus on Powell? After all, this
is the age of deregulation (newspeak: monopoly capitalism). The
now-defunct Fairness Doctrine was born before Powell came into
the world. This 1949 amendment to the Federal Communications
Act mandated diverse and opposing viewpoints be present on the
public airwaves. Michael Powell was a college freshman when Reagan,
Packwood, and Fowler first took the Fairness Doctrine to the
mat and passed a tag to Scalia and Bork, who subsequently ruled
that Congress actually hadn't made the Fairness Doctrine a "binding"
law (like they usually do). By the time Bush 1 left office and
the Doctrine was dead, Michael Powell held only a minor Republican
sinecure in the Department of Defense.
But In the early 90s Powell finally found
his calling as a trustbuster at the Department of Justice's Antitrust
Division. He must have been good, for just as the ink had dried
on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Clinton appointed Powell
to the FCC in an after-the-bell punch. The 1996 Act immediately
transformed the original FCC Act of 1939 into an all you can
eat buffet for corporate media consolidators. By the time Powell
arrives on the scene, six conglomerates control a preponderance
of electronic media in the US. Their mammoth holdings also encompass
non-electronic First Amendment endeavors like book publishing,
newspapers, and magazines. So, after all this, it is Powell's
turn now. What he does will affect what America sees, reads,
even the music it listens to.
At this juncture, there's not much more
to do to complete the monopolistic infrastructure that accepts
news as a profit-driven commodity occupying a shrinking space
between the commercials. At the same time, wider audience shares
are sought by applying market values of saturation and dominance
and production values of uniformity and low cost. The news included.
At this corporate media end time, it may seem as if Powell's
just there to cast a vote and turn out the lights, but there's
still much to lose when the final vote is taken on June 2nd.
And it is Powell who holds the key that may lock out what's left
of the diversity and public interests he is sworn to protect.
Somehow I still feel uncomfortable reminding
everyone that it's all come done to what Powell and what he will
do. Even it there were only crumbs left to offer the six-headed
Hydra that controls the propaganda waves, to single out custodian
Powell for criticism just feels wrong. In his work-a-day world
at the FCC, Powell sees his public interest duty as a binary
task to 'validate or eliminate' in his own words. With so much
at stake and with such clear and pressing choices, Powell already
seems a figure besieged. So much so that he has eschewed normal
public contact. So beleaguered he is that even away from his
offices he has felt compelled to stay in anonymous hotel rooms
like a Howard Hughes recluse, only emerging to confabulate with
corporate media reps. Ought we not leave this lonely laborer
and weary traveler alone, and let him emerge on his own June
2nd Groundhog's Day to perform his coup de mot on the free press?
And even if we wanted to question him, where would we find him?
Don't look for FCC Chairman Michael Powell
with his collar up at your local bus stop. Though he walked up
the civil service ladder in three striding steps, he is no longer
a mass transit rider. Chairman Powell doesn't catch the Yellow
or Blue Line out of DC as much as he rushes about with a plane
ticket and an agenda in the back of an ordinary DC limousine.
With the maddening global schedule his communications crusade
demands, he rarely has time for sluggish terrestrial transportation
at all. But if you do see a chubby African American in a tailored
suit suspiciously eyeing the advertising panels at your pick
up point, it will probably not be Powell, although it should
be him.
After all, some institutional force needs
to guarantee that the public's interests of fair play and free
speech are upheld even in the non-electronic media. But Powell's
purview does not include billboards or bus panels, Newsweek or,
heaven forbid, The Wall Street Journal. Or could it? The crossover
relationships between electronic media and traditional print
media are now intimately and vastly incestuous. Ironically, may
Powell who should be signaling frantically. It seems that electronic
news and print news are often the same words from the same computer.
And the same corporation. But wait a minute. Make Michael Powell
into real Big Brother? O writer, regulate thyself!
However unlikely, consider that if we
are to be saved from a homogenized corporate media that is dealing
in electric and paper media and whose own unbridled animus is
profit and whose public offerings will not be permitted to vitiate
(or touch a hair on the head of) its own great Cash Nexus, young
Powell is, indeed, first in the line of defense against the media
giants. He's got a few remaining rules he could whip out and
use, but where is he when you need him?
Topping the crest of monopolistic capitalism
has been a giddy ride, as the often airborne Powell himself might
tell you, could you catch him in mid-flight. Indeed, he and his
entourage have generally remained aloft like NORAD bombers in
a continuing first-class air marathon from Las Vegas to Palm
Springs to London and then back to Vegas again--an endless vigilant
circle of 'validating or eliminating' the remaining few restraints
that have imprisoned the Big Six media monopolists in an open
cage since the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed without
public hearings by either Congress or the FCC.
Examine the voluminous flight logs of
the Have Fun Will Travel (HFWT) Committee of the FCC. You will
see New Orleans and Las Vegas for what they are: sumptuous but
lawless convention centers that menace media fairness again and
again. Switzerland and Singapore are among the many foreign hot
spots that have demanded dogged public interest protection. According
to The Center for Public Integrity, both Democratic and Republican
FCC Commissioners and their watchdog staffs have been whisked
away on 2,500 junkets since 1995. As CPI's investigation makes
clear, there is no exotic location that lies beyond Powell and
crew's vigilance, which does not cease even when the final shrimp
bar has been rolled away. (Powell's two day Honolulu raid somehow
became a nine day expense paid maneuver). But who's complaining?
These 2500 out of office forays aren't expense account items
coming out of the pocket of those overtaxed denizens at bus stops
and Metro lines. They're junkets and don't cost a thing!
If this trip to Honolulu sounds like
a vacation, don't be fooled like the gullible media giants who
fall for the FCC's white pockets routine time after time. This
year's Hawaiian Broadcaster's Convention demanded the same endless
two day treadmill. The only obvious reward after some toe-to-toe
get-togethers ('Motivation, Commitment and Mental Toughness')
was the Cocktail and Pupu Reception that comprised a third of
the total agenda hours. Imagine the weary evening: after training
sessions, a group exhausted DC media crime-stoppers talking First
Amendment shop over corporate canapes and booze. Mental Toughness?
Aye, and courage as raw as oysters.
However, for the series of recent meetings
that his Commission held for citizen stakeholders, Powell's act-dumb-and-hand-'em-the-check
routine could not work. So after attending the first meeting
at Columbia University, Powell, a parsimonious spender of government
(not corporate) funds, declined to attend further public meetings
concerning the ramifications of further centralization of the
media infrastructure. The infrastructure that also gives First
Amendment free speech a place to be. Or not to be. He saved the
taxpayers a lot of needless free speech talk (he's made it clear,
his mind's made up), and saved them a few hundred bucks of travel
money. More costly will be his vote to dissolve diversity and
disenfranchise public interests in the air waves.
The final public meeting was held last
Wednesday in Atlanta. Powell, of course, was not there, saving
the country the usual per diem. But neither was CNN that only
had to walk a few blocks to get there. Even more cost conscious
than Powell, ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS saved themselves a lot of
money by not showing up with cameras or mics. The media no show
at the Atlanta public meeting typifies corporate journalism's
weighing-in on the issue of the public interests vs. the profit
motive. Based on this non-coverage of such an important issue,
we may suspect little movement in the February poll numbers that
showed 72 percent of Americans had heard "nothing at all"
and 23 percent claimed to have heard only "a little"
about the current FCC media cross-ownership debate. Look for
full coverage on June 3rd.
Powell contrasts today's media mix of
cable, Internet, and satellite broadcasts to the pastoral party-line,
Real McCoy Fifties. He draws the conclusion that today multiplicity
means diversity. Susan Eid, Powell's legal adviser who worked
for MediaOne Group (a DOJ antitrust target), says Chairman Powell
"has long since advocated that, if you're going to do an
honest evaluation of the rules, you have to look at the marketplace
as it exists today, not how it looked thirty or forty years ago
when we had black-and-white TV, no remote control, and three
choices of TV programs."
From other contemporary viewing positions,
however, the screen looks smaller than ever. Just a few days
ago, nonprofit Children Now released a study of children's programming
in the Oakland area before and after media takeovers there. From
1988 to 2003, children's programming declined by 47 percent.
In fact, diversity is dying everywhere on U.S. TV screens, and
what's replacing it is a bland homogeneity that make media companies
more profitable, whether it's the cheapest of reality programming
or the "reality" news interviews that often substitute
for expensive investigative news stories. For instance, only
a few significant news stories appear on CNN, recycling around
the clock, with the remaining filler between the advertisements
relegated to interviews with "experts" or debates between
"experts." It's a thin product.
The political viewpoints shown on the
corporate news are either one, two or three, depending on your
own political viewpoint. Some who perceive remnants of political
pluralism say there's two viewpoints available. There also a
case to be made for the Republican, the Democrat and what's between
them, though that middle ground is smaller than a Coalition of
the Willing island. While CNN is certainly not responsible for
the make-up of the American electorate, there is an evident case
to be made that the right and far right now have an embedded
presence on the corporate media, with talking heads like Richard
Perle and James Woolsey everywhere. Their think tanks and policy
institutes are ubiquitous and their pedigrees most often go unidentified
by CNN. Though maybe I'm wrong. Somebody get Michael Powell or
a congressional sub-committee over here and let's find out. But
hearing Noam Chomsky or Arundhati Roy on corporate TV is like
winning the Power Ball. Buy a ticket and wait.
The public's views are represented by
e-mails and a few man-in-the-street, woman-in-the-studio one-liners.
Public polling, often blatantly unscientific, is presented as
symptomatic of the nation's views , even as Wolf Blitzer reminds
you this may not be so. It is a wonder that, on a planet of two
hundred nations and six billion people, so few events, issues
and viewpoints air on CNN's 24/7 news marathon.
Subtracting out the air time for whatever
Black Man Wanted or White Woman In Peril inhuman interest story
currently running would leave space to examine events like the
massacre in the Congo or the current FCC giveaway. So it's not
just the homogeneity that's troubling, nor the lack of political
diversity, it's also a disturbing absence of critical issues.
In the FCC case, it's an advantageous omission by Big Six media
corps that have lobbied Powell to decide on the case on their
terms and not the public's.
If the 1996 Telecommunications Act is
a fair precursor, the mergers and consolidations Powell may facilitate
will narrower coverage even further, and the currently proposed
deregulation simply liberalizes the 1996 Act. That act, while
allowing more concentrated control and ownership of coast to
coast venues, also let national media players reach deep into
local markets, homogenizing further, and sometimes with a right-wing
ideology of the raving persuasion.
Paul Schmelzer's "The Death of Local
News" describes how the big players conduct themselves when
they go on the road:
Tune into the evening news on Madison,
Wisconsin's Fox TV affiliate and behold the future of local news.
In the program's concluding segment, "The Point," Mark
Hyman rants against peace activists ("wack-jobs"),
the French ("cheese-eating surrender monkeys"), progressives
("loony left") and the so-called liberal media, usually
referred to as the "hate-America crowd" or the "Axis
of Drivel." Colorful, if creatively anemic, this is TV's
version of talk radio . . . Hyman's commentary is piped in from
the home office in Baltimore, MD, and mixed in with locally-produced
news. . . . it is very likely to spell the demise of local news
as we know it.
The company that serves up this screed
is Sinclair. No matter where your hometown, Sinclair offers right-wing
viewing only. As the U.S.'s biggest TV broadcasting company not
run by a major call letter network, Sinclair's 62 stations have
24 percent of the national market.
Although there is some overlap, when
combining Sinclair's market share with the 36 percent of Americans
that watched Fox News for their primary war coverage (Gallup),
even a dead asleep mathematician can figure out that media constriction
of the neoconservative brand has become rampant. And grassroots
political activism is inconsequent here. It's the corporate media
Juggernaut that's delivering a unilateral political product.
Fox's yellow journalism before and during
the Iraq invasion remains regrettable and embarrassing. Sinclair's
political bias is as easily recognized as it is broadly disseminated.
But when you look at their viewership figures, the search is
over for the balance that the Fairness Doctrine called democratic
fair play, even before taking into account any of the political
proclivities of CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC.
Regrettably, the "public public"
airwaves are also takeover victims, gradually sliding down a
slippery slope into corporate arms. PBS's Sesame Street and Frontline
depend on corporate noblesse oblige for air time. Sooner or later,
children may be confusing Big Bird and Captain Crunch, while
adult viewers have already become suspicious of corporate exposes
sponsored by the corporations themselves. PBS still has public
dollars and support, and Bill Moyers is still on, where ownership
of the airwaves is a recurring issue. How long ownership of the
airwaves remains an issue is the issue that Michael Powell will
help to answer on June 2.
Jeffrey Chester and Don Hazen point out
that during the war US media shut out debate and selectively
limited analysis--a pandemic circumstance that a vigorous FCC
should investigate. Also never reported, behind the telescreen
invasion maps, other maneuvering was going on. The Big Six were
sending their best troops towards the executive branch:
For the media companies to be heavily
lobbying the Bush administration for give-aways that will net
them billions of dollars--while they are providing mostly uncritical
coverage of the war--gets to the crux of our media problem. (AlterNet,
May 1, 2003)
What Michael Powell must decide on June
2nd is whether further consolidation of TV media will restrain
or facilitate an already monolithic voice that puts government-friendly
chauvinism in its journalism, giving the uneasy impression that
its news is for hire.
It should be no surprise that the public's
radio waves are similarly concentrated in corporate hands. Many
are cross-media corporations that control TV stations, among
a long list of information venues. Clear Channel Worldwide, Inc.
acquired more than 1200 US stations in their ride to the top
during the deregulated nineties. But Clear Channel's influence
runs deeper than this. It controls about 40 TV outlets, while
its subsidiary, Premier, syndicates 60 programs to more than
7,800 radio affiliates. On the air, Clear Channel's is clearly
pro-war. Typically, one of its major personalities, Glenn Beck,
lead in organizing pro-war "Rally for America" demonstrations
across the country. Clear Channel thus directs a huge media infrastructure,
oversees content distribution, and wields a particular political
axe over its holdings. Michael Powell's examination of the broader
public interest could start here.
Clear Channel has not been content with
broadcasting pro-war calls to arms. On their radio stations,
voices against the war are exposed, ridiculed and extinguished.
How suffusive is their strength? Everyone in America witnessed
the vilification of the Dixie Chicks, whose Clear Channel opponents
held CD stompings. Under overwhelming pressure by media-inspired
attacks, the Dixie Chicks folded their tents, recanted a single
sentence uttered, and tried to pick up the pieces of their tractorized
CDs.
Of course, the despised kind of CD stomping
or book burning would be a bonfire lit by government's match.
Citizens and groups are free to burn anything, from flags to
Dixie Chicks CDs to Enron certificates. The performance of such
acts demonstrates that a healthy range of dissent is live and
kicking. However, when these acts are approved and enabled by
a spreading corporate behemoth that has a political plan for
everyone, someone should start shouting "Fire!" And
there is no counterbalance. Pacifica Radio, a progressive venue,
has 4 stations.
For television viewers and radio listeners
alike the results are concentrated and uniform: we see and hear
a narrowed range of images and talking points that the corporate
giants distill for us.
I am praying that Michael Powell is a
big music fan. If he has neglected to see the stagnation and
constriction of political diversity on corporate TV, he's still
got a great chance to identify censorship and content manipulation,
for music spans television and radio alike and it's been hit
hard.
A week after 911 Clear Channel advised
its stations and affiliates to avoid a list of 150 songs, among
them Lennon's "Imagine," and, quite oddly, Barenaked
Ladies "Falling For The First Time." Though Clear Channel
soon claimed the songs were not "banned," we all know
what we'll play when the boss suggests tennis. Albeit awkwardly
managed by Clear Channel, the list was the first unmistakable
landmark of the vast new media control after the passage of the
Telecommunications Acts of 1996.
No such Clear Channel list for content
manipulation emerged during the invasion of Iraq, but by then
the DJ's ducks were in a line and the ideological hush in place.
These days nothing in the way of protest songs, which so dramatically
framed and even defined the Vietnam era, are heard on Clear Channel's
hundreds of outlets. As Brent Staples remarked in the February
20th New York Times:
Which brings us back to the hypothetical
pop song attacking George Bush. The odds against such a song
reaching the air are steep from the outset, given a conservative
corporate structure that controls thousands of stations. Record
executives who know the lay of land take the path of least resistance
when deciding where to spend their promotional money. This flight
to sameness and superficiality is narrowing the range of what
Americans hear on the radio--and killing popular music.
Not to say the killing of an ideology
that allows and encourages the possibilities for peace.
Finally, forget MTV. On March 27th, MTV
devised an amorphous "war" category of music videos
that were verboten for the duration of the war against Iraq.
Among the odder titles expurgated in this massive censorship
were Aerosmith's "Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and "anything"
by the B52s. We might ask, "What was left?"
The airwaves you once had a share in
are now managed those who brand the Dixie Chicks traitorous femme
fatales and predict attacks from the B52s, who'll come out full
force, hurling . . . rock lobsters. From the Love Shack. Odd,
indeed, but what else aren't we hearing? Lenny Kravitz's "We
want Peace," for starters.
If you don't like Clear Channel's 1200
stations and can't pick up anything else, you can dive headlong
into the thicket of websites. Indeed, it is your best option
for joining your voice to a free speech stream. But if you opt
for the Internet, hope you become at least as well known in your
field as Lenny Kravitz, and even then your visibility, like Lenny's,
will be marginal.
Kravitz, who covered John Lennon's "Give
Peace a Chance" in 1991,found out about the constriction
of free expression in the televison and radio marketplace. Without
the Approved stamp from media centers like MTV (Clear Channel
Worldwide also peddles concert tickets) even the well-known like
Lenny are unvoiced or marginalized. This time Lenny went for
the Internet. Recorded with Kadim Al Sahir, "We Want Peace"
was issued by the rock artist only on the web site of
Rock the Vote . Ever heard of that site? (It was down when
I tried it today). Ever heard the song? (It's mighty fine).
The FCC's proposed deregulation allows
for more megacorp control of the Internet. At least right now
the Internet gives you the possibility of voicing alternate political
and artistic perspectives, and forming alliances with the like-minded.
Certainly, the neoconservatives who are fueling the Angry Simpleton's
administration with their flammable 'power projection' foreign
policy have also looked the Internet over. Not surprisingly,
they have recognized the free speech free-for-all the Internet
currently affords. They're deeply concerned about it.
The New American Century's "Rebuilding
America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New
Century " identifies the Internet as a key asset to be dominated.
Among a grandiose list, this bulleted entry:
"CONTROL THE NEW 'INTERNATIONAL
COMMONS' OF SPACE AND 'CYBERSPACE,' and pave the way for the
creation of a new military service--U.S. Space Forces--with the
mission of space control."
Looks like the Big Six have a silent
partner. I don't expect Michael Powell to don his space boots
and guard the satellite feeds--it's very chilly out in space,
and it's getting downright freezing here. Maybe you'd better
fire up that site today--tomorrow may be too late.
BILLBOARDS
Let's see. For balanced news and diverse
political discourse, we've had to forget TV and radio. The Internet
is fine for now, even though corporate media dominates the news
there. (The 20 twenty news sites with the most hits are Big Six
cyber spin overs). How about something simple that you know even
your neighbors will see? Local and direct. How about a billboard
to get your message across? Forget that, too.
Peace Together, a small group from Beckeley,
West Virginia raised funds and signed a billboard contract with
Lamar Advertising. Encouraging forethought and reflection about
the impeding war, Peace Together's billboard simply asked, "Why
Iraq? Why Now?" But Jim McMillan, vice president and general
manager of Lamar Advertising, killed the deal, refusing to sign
the contract.
"I decided to remain neutral. I
am exercising the freedom to remain neutral.'' McMillan said.
As recent as Camus and old as the New Testament stands the ethical
proposition that lukewarm neutrality is offered no one in life--a
decision not to choose also expresses will and viewpoint. McMillan
effectively chose to obstruct Peace Together's mild, thoughtful
free speech. The sign never went up.
A fine and practical precept: think globally,
act locally. Sinclair, whose NewsCentral is piped from a corporate
hub and masquerades in the local news space, is doing exact that.
Peace Now tried Lamar Advertising and failed. The way other electronic
media conglomerates are buying up a dominating local presence--in
non-electric local advertising as well--is a few bus panels short
of totalitarian.
In 2000, The Anti-Trust Division of the
Justice Department jumped into the billboard debate. Looking
at the restraints that DOJ's imposed on Clear Channel, its seems
as if they were trying to act for competitive public interests
when they made an anti-monopolistic ruling that included all
Lamar's billboards.
Here's the opening of DOJ's own August
29, 2000 press release:
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REQUIRES DIVESTITURES
IN CLEAR CHANNEL/AMFM MERGER:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of
Justice today required Clear Channel Communications Inc. and
AMFM Inc. to sell AMFM's partial ownership interest in Lamar
Advertising Company in order to proceed with their proposed $23.8
billion merger. The Department said the deal, as originally proposed,
would have resulted in higher prices and lower quality services
for radio and billboard advertisers.
Clear Channel's voracious growth plan
included a buy-out of AMFM 's considerable communication assets.
AMFM controlled a 29 percent share of Lamar Advertising and two
seats on its board of directors. But when Clear Channel was spending
billions on the road to radio hegemony, it had bought up Eller
Media Company, an outdoor advertising competitor to Lamar.
Thus the Department of Justice concluded:
"The divestitures required by the consent decree ensure
that customers of both types of advertising [radio and billboard]
will continue to enjoy the benefits of competition--low prices
and high quality services."
Michael Powell should have been there
to see what happened. (Powell had left as chief of staff in 1997).
AM/FM sold its stake in Lamar, so the DOJ stopped the billboard
part of the merger. But that was all. Clear Channel grabbed up
all AM/FM electronic outlets on its way to controlling 1,225
radio and 39 television stations in the US. So much for DOJ anti-trust
enforcement.
And Clear Channel now controls 776,000
outdoor advertising displays, including billboards, street furniture
and transit panels. Similarly, Viacom (who owns CBS) controls
Viacom Outdoor which owns 900,000 billboards and hundreds of
thousands of transit display faces. And the list goes on and
on. Media giants aren't just electric any more, they're frightening.
In Florida, citizens are trying to recover
home rule of their bill boards. But Fairway Outdoor Advertising
(7th largest in the US) is owned by Morris Communications which
owns the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville which publishes
pro-billboard editorials without admitting its vested interest.
So it goes.
Corporate media's accumulative restructuring
has erected massive pylons of businesses that include electronic
and non-electronic outlets They have urged on deregulation for
its cost-effectiveness through integration. Integration predicates
that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. Clear
Channel's 1200 stations are doing right-wing politics. What are
their hundreds of thousands of billboards doing? Look at a list
of the Big Six's staggering and interwoven holdings and try and
decide where free speech stewardship should begin and end.
This point is that all areas of free
speech need protectionary oversight. Free speech is a constitutional
sin qua non. Guardianship to prevent the public airwaves from
being hijacked by conglomerates with political agendas? Certainly.
And when they also own most of the nation's billboards and bus
panels, let's send someone down to the bus stop to read them
and see what they say. Then let's all talk about it, if there's
still somewhere we can get together and talk.
Michael Powell, of course, should not
go poking around down at the Metro station. He is preparing to
make a momentous decision on June 2nd that will affect the practice
of free speech in this nation. I all hope he realizes that current
media agglomeration has produced not diversity, but an insidious
uniformity of national and local control. And it's got to be
Powell who does it. Right now, Michael Powell is the last man
standing.
Powell has previously in his life shown
himself to be courageous and tough. As a platoon leader of an
armored division stationed at Hamburg, he sustained injuries
during duty that prostrated him for a year in hospital while
he recovered. He persevered and walked away a whole man. I am
watching to see if he will do that same thing again.
The FCC he chairs has vital and vast
concerns in the cross-communications era. Holding megacom media
to First Amendment openness and fairness is one of its founding
mandates. Intellectual honesty is harder to demand. But if licensees
mix ideology and political agendas into products clearly labeled
and distributed as "News," it's time to rein them in.
Instead, a baneful deed could be done against public interests
just at the moment when democratic principles and courage are
most needed:
Theseus, son of King Pittheus (Colin
Powell), enters the labyrinth. In the darkness, he hears voracious
howls from a monster bent on domination (Michael's old cocktail
buddies). Girding his loins for battle, Theseus draws forward
to allay that dark force (as ominous as Richard Perle) which
is silencing the innocent (us).
Let's finish this story together, free
speech style. Let's make this conventioneer a hero. Call him
at 1-888-225-5322.
Lawrence Magnuson lives in rural Tennessee with his son on the
leafy shores of Kentucky Lake. He can be reached at: lawrence@pmicomputers.com
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