Posted on 05/25/2005 3:09:21 PM PDT by MaryInSacto
Radicals For "Media Reform"
by L. Brent Bozell III May 25, 2005
The radical left is not enjoying the 21st century, yearning instead for a perpetual rerun of the 1970s, with America whipped by Vietnam, and the planet in thrall to Third World "liberation" ideologies and theologies. Ah, the ‘70s, where the greatest enemy of all mankind was not the Soviet empire, but the Multinational Corporation.
Instead, the world is now embracing Western-style democratic capitalism. Worse yet, the national media conversation isn’t the completely one-sided left-wing nightly harangue that it was in that bygone era. Even PBS and NPR seem far too cautious and corporate for the radicals now. They sense a "creeping conservative coup" threatening public broadcasting, their own little People’s Republic.
They want a media that focuses public attention on their agenda: protest capitalism as a death trap, resist the evil military-industrial complex, lobby for massive redistribution of wealth, and You Shall Have No Gods Before Mother Earth. They aren’t liberals. They are radicals.
With those goals in mind, in mid-May, the radicals held a confab called the "National Conference for Media Reform" in St. Louis. Many of the speakers at this hard-left hootenanny had trouble containing their extreme disdain for America. Start with the shocking remarks of Linda Foley, the President of the Newspaper Guild, the union representing reporters at newspapers. She was upset that "there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq." She charged that the U.S. military "target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries" and, in the case of Al-Jazeera, "they actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity."
The guild’s switchboard was loaded with outraged calls. How dare this woman suggest our sons and daughters are assigned by their commanders to shoot journalists instead of engage the enemy. When asked by Editor & Publisher magazine whether she could have put it differently, Foley replied: "I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military." Bill Clinton would be proud of that defense. And she was hailed by the left. The blog "Daily Kos" called Foley "a courageous and, consequently, dangerous, example of what's right."
Ironically, the keynote speaker for the anti-capitalist confab was PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers, who squeezed a personal fortune out of PBS Home Video and expensive book spinoffs of his pompous TV work. Moyers devoted his Castro-length address to attacking the threatening presence of Ken Tomlinson, who has done the dastardly deed of documenting the dramatic liberal biases of the old Moyers show "Now."
Earth to PBS: when you are under attack for being a nest of left-wingers, it might not be the best strategy to let your most identifiable left-wing stars go to radical-left conferences and attack conservatives as evil. That tends to exacerbate your image problem, see.
Moyers announced that the definition of objectivity should be turned upside down for PBS: "Objectivity was not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference. I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies, as well as the big lie of people in power."
You can practically smell the gunpowder in that loaded statement. But to Moyers – it’s objectivity.
Then Moyers grew sillier. He said that under the Bush administration and the corporate media, Americans were growing into "an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda." Let the giggles flow as we ponder how Moyers ever meant to fix this spirit by making shows like "Now," where the vast majority of his segments offered no troublesome disagreements with his personal orthodoxy. Or consider his PBS documentary "Trade Secrets" bashing the chemical industry, which included only one solitary point of view: that of Moyers, the media monopoly unto himself.
Critics on the right are portrayed as evil for merely demanding that somebody in this tax-funded public broadcasting maze ensures that the system fulfills its legal mandate of objectivity and balance. The radical left arrogantly demands an "independent" news media that screams with one voice, with one mind, and with one bleeding heart, that conservatism equals war, torture, environmental poisoning, starving the poor, and squelching free speech. The radical left finds balance unacceptable, because it cannot win a fair fight for the American mind.
Most important, their licenses -- which are held mostly by left-leaning univerisities and do-gooder leftist community groups -- must be compelled to vacate their broadcast frequencies. The leftist loons would probably argue that such an act would constitute a 'taking.' Not so. There are more than a few conservative communications attorneys who agree that the enabling legislation -- the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 -- is almost certainly unconstitutional. All we need here is a little bit of good lawyering along with a creative Executive Order to make this happen.
Few things would make me happier than to see the assets of PBS and NPR turned over by Act of Congress to a consortium of conservative think tanks -- funded with an endowment built on the proceeds of liquidated pubcasting assets and surplus frequencies -- that would create and distribute programming focused on NON-politically correct lessons in US history, economics, civics, and the preeminent role of Christianity in the nation's founding.
Besides comprising an authoritative national electronic cirricula on these vital subjects I can't imagine a more effective way of silencing the daily sedition that pours forth from the leftist slimeballs who inhabit the palaces of public broadcasting (even Saddam would be wowed by the PBS and NPR digs here in Sacramento!)
This approach would also have the happy side-effect of neutering the pony-tailed Marxist "educators" who've infested our primary schools since loyalty oaths were unwisely given the heave-ho by our liberal judges.
Your plan sounds good to me.
In this country there is no need for a government owned station or news source.
There's a way to end all the conspiracy theories and stop dead the accusations of political meddling. Get the federal government out of the business of funding public television. As long as government money flows into PBS coffers, tensions will continue about what gets televised--and what doesn't--on those public airwaves.
Back in the 1960s when public television was born and first started getting federal dollars, the arrangement made sense. Viewers were stuck with three TV networks and maybe one or two independent TV stations in each market. Without public TV and the boost from the federal government, groundbreaking children's shows like "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" and "Sesame Street" and quality public affairs shows might never have made it to air. Public TV was unique--no commercials. It offered viewers something they couldn't get elsewhere.
Today 85 percent of Americans get their TV via cable or satellite subscription. Public TV must compete for viewers with cable channels including such quality offerings as A&E, National Geographic, Discovery and The History Channel. Money pressures have brought ubiquitous commercial underwriting messages to PBS.
Public TV is no longer unique. But it still gets 15 to 20 percent of its budget--$350 million to $400 million a year--from the federal government. (The rest comes from individuals, corporations, states, colleges and foundations.) That means it must put up with government meddling and comply with the mandate to air shows that are fair, balanced--and offend no one. Ask most people to describe public TV today and they won't complain about bias so much as about how boring and unimaginative it often is.
All that tax money down the drain, and a TV and Radio network with private sector potential wasted.
They should have been sold, long long ago.
Our military did all that? Gee, Linda, that's a story I missed.
I missed it too. Although, if true, I'd greatly prefer they make the most of their efforts by targeting selected members of the U.S. MSM. Of course, such an initiative needn't be limited to the confines of Iraq.
Thank you. Making those creeps UNEMPLOYABLE is my favorite part, of course.
If only they were so UNinfluential! Alas, NPR's "Morning Edition" and The PBS NewsHour are as indispensable to the ruling elite -- DemonRAT and Repubbie alike -- as reading the NYT and WAPO every morning. Walk down the hallway here at the Capitol in Sacramento most any morning and you'll hear those foggy, affected and over-educated voices emanating from radios in the offices of most legislators. It's much the same in the legislative offices buildings in DC.
My sense is that if we silence these these blatantly Marxist mouthpieces -- not simply by fiscally neglecting them, but by actively affecting their respective demises at both the local and national levels -- many of our long fought battles will start to go our way.
I've written John Doolittle on this matter a couple of times, but so far I get the sense he's a little timid about leading on this issue. My guess is that if 50 Freepers got on the Reps and Sens about this, things would start to happen.
Hmmm...Yes, you may be right concerning the influence of these brie and chardonnay bolsheviks on the Powers That Be, Mary. Of course it would be a grand thing to pull the plug on them. I like your idea for a Freeper barrage on our respective Sens. and Reps. Unfortunately, the senator for my benighted territory is the execrable traitor Chris Dodd, and we have a big enough job trying to keep the miserable sack of **** from stitching a hammer and sickle on the state flag...
From my perch in Feinstein/Boxerland, all I can say is, ahem, I feel your pain.
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