Which should shed some light on conservative's pious renting of shirt over Canada's decision to allow Al Jazeera into Canadian airspace, while consistently refusing Fox News.

Of course, these self-same conveniently ignore such oddities in our own house as the fact that the only talk radio our military are allowed access to is Rush Limbaugh.

So much easier to point at the other guy (s)...


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Originally posted by wong828:
Which should shed some light on conservative's pious renting of shirt over Canada's decision to allow Al Jazeera into Canadian airspace, while consistently refusing Fox News.

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If you are making reference to my posting, wong, then not really. The Federal Communications Act has been codified since 1934 with significant amendment in 1996. My own broadcasting career has spanned a political climate that has swung far left and far right several times, so I can attest that the complexities of the influence of the private sector on control of the public airwaves is significantly more complicated than can be explained along simple partisan lines.

quote:

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Originally posted by wong828:
Of course, these self-same conveniently ignore such oddities in our own house as the fact that the only talk radio our military are allowed access to is Rush Limbaugh.

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Not true. Armed Forces Radio also provides NPR programming among others.

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Sure, the media in general. Look at Hearst and the Spanish American War, the power of the Luce empire over American foreign policy in the post WWII East Asia. Listen to Clearchannel's play list.

Not surprisingly the private sector is the crux of the critique of power in American politics. Contrary to some here who might like to imagine “anarchists” hiding under every bed and entertainment center in America, the threat to democracy has always been one of concentration. How power is concentrated: private ownership in the forms of “robber barons,” the sway of Rockefellers and Mellons, the military-industrial complex, today’s massive corporate concentration of media and finance, all conducive to rule by a “power elite” or a ruling political class.

Elsewhere, pre-WWII Germany and Japan, sundry dictatorships in S America, we call them for what they are, oligarchies. Just private ownership is no necessary prescription for a democratic politics by itself.

The failure of campaign financing laws legislation is one area where this reality has undermined a critical part of the democratic process – how political leadership is selected and chosen.

Re Rush Limbaugh: I stand corrected. You mean there IS a "left-wing" ideologue beaming sedition into Iraq?


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