Speaking of Anti-1st amendment dren

[Michael Tee]

<<Actually, suppression is also restricting the POV.>>

Yeah but the owners of the station are restricting the POV they don't like so by your logic they are suppressing it.  Because if they owned less stations, someone else would own them and give a chance for other POVs to be heard.

 <<And limiting the number of stations for one POV is restricting that POV and suppression.>>

Well, I'd say they restricted that POV but they didn't suppress it as long as it can stil be heard.  But the actual proposal was not oriented towards POV's but only towards ownership.  If one owner is forced to divest from two stations, the new owners of the two stations may or may not take up the same POV as the divested owner.  The stragegy calculates that the diversified ownership will in fact lead to a diversified spread of broadcast POVs.

[BT]

Satellite radio should be enjoying this debate.

[Universe Prince]

The report concludes, not surprisingly, that concentration of ownership is the reason for the predominance of conservative views.  Conservative views are more likely to be carried on stations owned by corporate owners who own many stations than on stations constituting the only broadcast holdings of their owners.

Put another way, rich station owners favour conservative views.  Not-so-rich owners favour more liberal views.  This seemingly obvious statement of fact is borne out by the study.

The glaringly obvious problem here is that radio station owners are in business to make money just like every other business owner. Which means that if liberal talk shows made as much money for the station owners as conservative talk shows, then there would be more liberal talk shows on the air. The answer to the perceived problem of a lack of liberal talk shows is then not more government regulation, but better competition from liberal talk show hosts. If the liberal talk show hosts cannot create a show competitive enough to survive in the marketplace, that is no one's fault but their own. They need (to borrow a phrase from a sign I recently saw) to put on their big girl panties and deal with it.

[Brassmask]

The myth that there's no MSM bias to the left is also BS.  And it's no wonder how the left would want to supress the right's free speech in the 1 area they don't have such a monopoly.  Can't be having those opposing viewpoints just running rampant.  That'd be far too tolerant

Again, how's that ultra-lib Air America doing?

[sirs]

<<Same apparent Tee leaf connecting of dot logic you use . . . >>

Yeah, but I usually show you the dots and ask you to connect them to arrive at my conclusion. 

LOL...you're joking, right?

You come to a conclusion alright [that the MSM has a left-wing bias] but so far you haven't shown any dots to connect up to it.

Actually, I did.  You simply chose to ignore them

<< . . .  corroborated by not just the repetition of Bush bashing stories compared to Dem bashing stories . . . >>

You kept a careful count of the repetitions?  Most of the stories I see on the MSM are pro-military, but maybe you can tell me what "Bush bashing" stories you have seen repeated recently?

Funny, most of the MSM are predominantly anti-war, anti-Bush, or anti-GOP, if not combined.  You must be watching Fox all the time, I guess

<< but also the frequent polling that shows how 80+% of MSM folk vote Democrat>>

What the hell do their votes have to do with it?

The ignorance you display is very unbecoming.  The vast majority's predisposition in voting Democrat simply helps validate how the vast majority of stories that are pro-dem, pro-Social causes, pro-global warming, etc, with the flip side being so many that are Anti-Bush & anti-war.  Then again, you knew that already.  It's kind of a cheesy defense attorney ploy of compartmentalizing.  If you look at their voting habits ONLY, then you can state "what the hell do their votes have to do with it?".  However, if you look at their voting habits combined with the everwhelming stories that lean left, then you can arrive at a more accurate assessment of the bias built into the MSM 

As long as they are still allowed to provide a right-wing POV, there is no suppression at all in requiring them to provide a left wing POV as counterbalance. 

Do you hear yourself?  REQUIRING THEM TO PROVIDE A LW POV??  RW POV can only be "allowed" if a LW POV is mandated.  Boy, that sure sums things up nicely Tee.  I couldn't have said it better

Suppression is not allowing a POV to be expressed at all.  Which of course was never an issue, as it has never even been considered.

No, that's actually prevention.  Suppression can indeed be some form of coercion to keep a POV from being expressed.  As I referenced earlier, you apparently have no problem with radio stations that go belly up financially trying to mandate a LW POV that people don't want to listen to, since it's a win win for you.  Either a LW POV is mandated for people to hear, or the RW POV is PREVENTED from being heard all together, as less people listen to the station all together.

<<NO ONE IS PREVENTING ANYONE TO MAKE THEIR VOICES HEARD.>>

Of course they are.  If there are only 24 hours of airtime on a station and I don't let a left-winger speak on it, I have shut the guy out of the hearing of all the listeners to my station.  

Why can't you "let a left winger speak on it"?  Oh that's right......no one wants to listen to them.  So, to get around that little problem you need to mandate that stations provide an equal voice to any RW host they have, and if they're market share and ratings go down, so be it.  And if they can't provide an alternate host, then all the better to silence the voice you can't stand being allowed to speak

<<And what the hell do you call the 24/7 doom and gloom reporting of Bush and Iraq by the MSM  . . . ?? >>

You are paranoid and crazy.  There IS not "24/7 doom and gloom reporting of Bush and Iraq on the MSM."  I don't know what the hell you are talking about. 

Just talking about more of those pesky facts keeping getting in the way of your pre-disposed mindset

Nobody is allowed to challenge it directly, nobody calls him a liar, nobody calls him a war criminal and nobody says he deserves to lose.  They treat him with a great deal of totally undeserved respect.

More of that alternate reality you keep trying to reference, apparently.  I've completely lost track of how many Dem politicans, Liberal pundits, and the like being "interviewed" by MSM folk like Wolf Blitzer, and those folks literally call Bush a liar, literally heep gobs of disrespect all over him, and never, outside of the occasional Chris Wallace interview, do you get the newscaster attempt to get the whacked out lib to defend his point/accusation.  It just is allowed to pass calmly by as if it's gospel truth

<< Oh yea, they're just reporting the news....minus of course all the stuff that might actually show the positive accomplishments made.>>

POSITIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS?  Are you totally nuts?  

No, just realistic.  But thanks for helping to reinforce my point about your pre-conceived template.  Dictator deposed, new Democracy planted, new Iraqi Constitution that was put toegther far sooner than anyone dared to believe, the vast majority of Iraq thankful for our efforts at both taking out Saddam & bring freedom to their country.  Yea yea, I've conceded long ago, that things aren't all rosy, that things in Iraq haven't gone as well as many had hoped, war rarely does, and that many innocent civilians lived have been lost, also a frequent issue with war.  The point is I can be objective and see BOTH the good and bad occuring in Iraq, and with the war on Terror.  Can't say the same for those so completely blinded by Bush hatred and unadulterated loathing for the U.S. military, they can't see straight, and will rationalize any and everything that happens as bad, and of course caused by Bush/U.S.

<<Gotta love that tolerance....especially coming from someone who has has no problems of cartoon characters pissing on the Christian cross.""

The cartoon character (a little kid) pissed at the base of the cross, not on the cross.

Yea, that makes it so much better and more "acceptable"         Again, thank you for making my point, better than I could ever have

[sirs]

The myth that there's no MSM bias to the left is also BS.  And it's no wonder how the left would want to supress the right's free speech in the 1 area they don't have such a monopoly.  Can't be having those opposing viewpoints just running rampant.  That'd be far too tolerant

Again, how's that ultra-lib Air America doing?

Last time I checked, no one outside of the rabid left wanted to listen to them.  Your point?

[Michael Tee]

No, sirs, I am not joking.  When I connect the dots, I show you the dots.  When you claim to connect the dots, there are no dots to connect.   The proof is in your failure to produce a list of dots when challenged.  For the record, responses such as "You're joking, right?" and "I showed you the dots, you chose to ignore them" are not generally considered to be the equivalent of actually listing the dots you claim to have connected.

Not only do I not watch Fox "News," I don't even know where to find it on the dial.  I usually watch CNN, but I didn't see it this morning so I went to their website.  This is their list of today's stories:
?   Israel to release Fatah prisoners | Journalist: Don't rescue me
?   'Terror leader' warns Westerners | Interview  | In The Field
?   U.S. launches BAE corruption probe
?   Thousands flee Pakistan cyclone | Flooding causes havoc in UK
?   Aborigines threaten Ayers Rock ban
?   Police probe Disneyland ride death
?   Why is Putin popular?  | Arctic struggle  | Eye on Russia
?   U.N.: Afghan opium output soars
?   Parents fear suicide pact as third teen buried 
?   John Lennon's sons end 8-year feud
?   Judge tosses $54M laundry case
?   Shark pregnancy baffles aquarium
?   Harry Potter stars promote big-screen adventure 
?   CNN Wire: Updates on world's top stories

Strangely enough, the current news list of this "left-wing" "gloom & doom" medium did NOT report the death of 33 people in three suicide attacks in Mosul, although it's front page in al Jazeera, and there are no attacks on Bush listed. 

"Terror Leader" Warns West is obviously part of the Bush campaign of hyping the "terrorist threat" to sow fear among the American people to perpetuate his fascist grip on the country, and "Why Is Putin Popular," although I haven't seen it, is most likely going to be an examination of why people like authoritarian, anti-democratic leaders, "strongmen," and as such more favourable to Bush than to his opponents. 

Nary a word about U.S. casualties in Iraq today, or Iraqi civilian casualties to date or any of the "gloom and doom" scenarios you claim predominate their coverage.  The big story, which doesn't show on this list, was a big picture (to the left of the list)  of Paris Hilton getting out of jail with a link that leads to the story, obviously the lead story of the day and typical of the celebrity fluff and domestic violence which serves to distract most of the population from the crimes of the Bush admnistration, the ongoing plight of the 45 million Americans without health insurance, the sufferings of the war's wounded, the daily crime toll in the ghettos or anything else remotely connected to the fate of America's victims of war, racism and injustice.   

Yeah, that's some "revolutionary" medium alright.  Lenin would be proud.

Once again, facts standing in the way of your Bullshit fascist theorizing.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow CNN will actually call Bush a war criminal and call for his impeachment.

<<The vast majority's predisposition in voting Democrat simply helps validate how the vast majority of stories that are pro-dem, pro-Social causes, pro-global warming, etc, with the flip side being so many that are Anti-Bush & anti-war.  >>

Uhh, NEWSFLASH, sirs:  The "vast majority" don't get to pick what stories run or what slant to give them or what "experts" get interviewed.  That's up to the editors and guess what?  THE EDITORS WORK FOR THE OWNERS.  Get it?  Maybe now you'll understand why you don't see much of Juan Cole or Ariana Huffington or Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader, but lots and lots of John McCain and Paris Hilton.

<<Do you hear yourself?  REQUIRING THEM TO PROVIDE A LW POV??  RW POV can only be "allowed" if a LW POV is mandated.  Boy, that sure sums things up nicely Tee.  I couldn't have said it better>>

Well, yes, I do hear myself.  And I know I sum things up nicely.  And I'm sure you couldn't have said it as well, let alone better, yourself.   But what actually is your point, sirs?  Just what are you getting at?  You realize, of course, that I am not allowed to build myself a radio transmitter and start broadcasting on 1070 mHz, because the government has already assigned that frequency to someone else even though that someone else has no ownership claim on any specific frequency of radio wave other than what the government grants him?  You realize of course that EVERY radio frequency that will carry a radio broadcast signal has already been assigned to someone by the government?

If you are in favour of free enterprise and competition, why shouldn't the government allow only one person or corporation to have or control only one of the radio frequencies that it assigns?  Then you'd have maximum competition, each station competing against all other stations for listeners.  Isn't THAT the ideal?



 

[Universe Prince]

As long as they are still allowed to provide a right-wing POV, there is no suppression at all in requiring them to provide a left wing POV as counterbalance.  Suppression is not allowing a POV to be expressed at all.  Which of course was never an issue, as it has never even been considered.

Unless of course they are not allowed to provide one side without the other, which was the essential enforcement of the "Fairness Doctrine" before and one of the reasons it had a suppressing rather than encouraging effect on the media. To suggest that there is no suppression involved in requiring one side or the other to also be presented is an assertion either naive or ignorant.

In some areas the wealthier station owners have cornered the market and can give the people whatever they want to give them, so they will always make enough money from the station to satisfy their wants or needs and at the same time indulge themselves by purveying to their captive audience the kind of political views that they want them to hear and withholding from them the kind of political views that they don't want them to hear.

Except of course that if people don't want to listen, they don't have to listen. They can listen to the Oldies station of the Top 40 station or the Country station or the Christian station or the Public Radio station. I'm sure your argument is easier to make if you talk as if somehow there is no market pressure on talk radio stations to make money, but that simply is not the case.

Moreover, the government already sees to it that the people do NOT necessarily get what the people want to get from the MSM.  There is a huge male audience that wants to be able to see naked women and even hard-core pornography on their TV screens and because they can't, there is a huge trade in pornographic imagery on the internet.

Obviously you never heard of the Playboy Channel.

Yet a network was fined $500,000 for a momentary nipple flash.  If your theory held up, the government would stand back and let market forces have their way, but you know and I know that will never happen.

You of all people should understand that what the government does and what it should do are not always the same thing. The government should stand back and let the market forces have their way, and I wouldn't dismiss that as impossible just yet. The times, they are a-changing.

So IMHO all this blather about market forces and audience choices is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.  The fact is that the government has decided what you can and cannot watch on MSM TV, market forces and viewer choices be damned.  The air waves belong to nobody.  The government issues licences to broadcast upon them at various specific frequencies and a lot of those licences have found their way into the hands of some very wealthy people.  As a result of which, ONE TYPE of viewpoint, a POV that is acceptable to this small group of rich men, is predominating and slowly driving out competing POVs.  If the trend continues, one small group of men will have virtual control over the content of talk radio.

Now see, I think that should prompt one to oppose the government regulations that have allowed for this sort of situation arise. I know I oppose them. But you, you want more regulations that are going to make more difficult, for anyone but those very wealthy people, even entering the market and operating in even a small market. That I simply do not understand. It makes zero sense to me.

If you have no problem with the rich monopolizing talk radio and controlling who gets to speak and who doesn't, then by all means encourage your elected representatives to take no action on the report and allow present trends to continue unimpeded.  Otherwise, get your ass in gear and mobilize to turn the airwaves back to the people or at least to a broader spectrum of the people than are currently in control of them.

Turn the airwaves back to the people. That is exactly why we should oppose the government regulations of content, not beg for more of them. But you are correct in that we should not allow the present trends to continue. We should petition, lobby and call our representatives and tell them to get off our frakkin' backs, stop trying to censor the radio waves, and give the power back to the citizens. I realize that idea scares some people because it requires them to make some adult decisions about what they watch and listen to, like changing the channel or not watching/listening to something they don't like. But you know what? I don't care. Grow up and learn to overcome your fear. You can do it. Yes, you can.

[Michael Tee]

I'm not going to answer Prince point-by-point because  I think I over-stated my case and some of his post is a response to that .

So I'll back-track.  It's overstating the case to ask for government regulation of content.  To the extent that my previous posts endorsed government regulation of content, I take it back.  It wasn't recommended in the report and it's not even necessary.

The report dealt with concentration of ownership.  The study showed that concentration of ownership is the reason for the predominance of right wing views in radio.  The remedy, acording to the study,  is diversification.

From the government's point of view, it has no business endorsing the right or the left, only to ensure that a broad spectrum rather than a narrow spectrum of views is presented to the public.  Presumably a concentration of ownership that produced left-wing predominance in radio would be just as noxious as the present situation.  So the government's objective in licencing the public airwaves is not so much to ensure that the most profitable use is made of them as it is to ensure the diversity of the "marketplace of opinions."  In other words, while both are legitimate values (the profitability of the licencees and diversity of broadcast ideas) the higher value is in the preservation of the diversity of the ideas broadcast over the public airwaves.  The ideal should be:  for each frequency, one station and one owner.   

Those who own more than one station must be forced to divest - - the public's interest in maintaining an open marketplace of ideas trumps a multi-station owner's interest in making a private profit.

In a way it seems no more an invasion of freedom than the anti-trust laws which ensure freedom of economic competition.

[BT]

How would your perfect solution handle syndication?

[Michael Tee]

Less stations would carry the extreme right-wing syndicated broadcaster if the ownership were more diverse and less under the control of multi-station corporate owners.

[sirs]

Less stations would carry the extreme right-wing syndicated broadcaster if the ownership were more diverse and less under the control of multi-station corporate owners.

In other words, suppression of one's Free Speech to those privately owned stations..........Anti-1st amendment.  It's amazing how Free speech is exalted when it's coming from the left, even the rabid garbage, but if it's coming from the right, that requires mandated suppression, when not regulation.

Priceless

[Michael Tee]

It's not free speech if the rich are allowed to monopolize the debate through the power of the purse.

This is not a question of printing presses, which don't require licensing.  This is an issue of a publicly-owned format (the airwaves) which have to be regulated by government to avoid total broadcast anarchy (ten guys trying to broadcast on the same frequency) so that each frequency is assigned one broadcaster.

There's no suggestion that any broadcaster be banned from having even one frequency because of his political views.  All the government needs to do is revert to an older system:  when a guy already has one frequency assigned to him, let someone else get a crack at another frequency.  Since there aren't enough to go round, why should one guy have more than one assigned to him while somebody else gets none?

The issue of Suppression of Free Speech is totally bogus - - the report doesn't call for censorship and it doesn't even call for equal time.  It calls only for diversification of ownership.  Which would, according to the study, lead to a greater variety of opinions being expressed on the airwaves.  Which is somehow threatening to right-wing extremists like sirs here.

[Plane]

<<All right , but let it be me who determines where the exact center is .>>

It'll be a committee or a commission.  Bipartisan too, which means no Ralph Naders and no Noam Chomskys.  Republocrats only.

The certain formula for produceing boredom.

If there were an equal number of hjours devoted to Liberal programs as conservative ones in transmitting , how would you ensure an equality of time on the receveing end?

[Michael Tee]

<<If there were an equal number of hjours devoted to Liberal programs as conservative ones in transmitting , how would you ensure an equality of time on the receveing end?>>

That's up to the liberals.  I think conservatives are more appealing than liberals to listen to because they're such drama queens.  They make up stories all the time:  the Muslims are Coming to Get You, the Red Menace, Gay Marriage Will Destroy the American Family, Stem Cell Research will Create a New Holocaust, Abortion IS a New Holocaust, Black Ghetto Criminals Goin' Rape Yo' Mama, Mexicans Invade U.S.A. , Rap Music is Destroying Our Youth, etc.    Kinda like their religion, Love Jesus or Fry in Hell, Your Choice.  People will listen to this shit for the same reason they like to watch horror movies and slasher films.

Meanwhile dumb fucking liberals drone on about health care availability, single-payer systems, tolerance of ethnic diversity, eliminate tax breaks for the rich . . .

Obviously there's never going to be equality at the receiving end.  There's a lot more dumb people than smart people.