Posted on 11/16/2008 11:57:23 PM PST by ebiskit
Barack Obama sought to silence his critics during his 2008 campaign. Now, with the ink barely dry on this November's ballots, Obama has begun a war against conservative talk radio. Obama is on record as saying he does not plan an exhumation of the now-dead "Fairness Doctrine". Instead, Obama's attack on free speech will be far less understood by the general public and accordingly, far more dangerous. The late community organizer Saul Alinsky taught his followers to strike hard from an unexpected direction, an approach known asAlinsky jujitsu. Obama himself not only worked as an organizer for an Alinsky offshoot organization, Chicago's Developing Communities Project, but would go on to teach classes in Alinsky's beliefs and methods.
"Alinsky jujitsu" as applied to conservative talk radio means using vague rules already on the books to threaten any station which dares to air conservative programs with the loss of its valuable broadcast license.
Team Obama and the "localism" weapon
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule in question is called "localism." Radio and television stations are required to serve the interests of their local community as a condition of keeping their broadcast licenses.
Obama needs only three votes from the five-member FCC to define localism in such a way that no radio station would dare air any syndicated conservative programming.
Localism is one of the rare issues on which Obama himself has been outspoken.
On September 20, 2007, Obama submitted a pro-localism written statement to an FCC hearing held at the Chicago headquarters of Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.'s Operation Push.
Furthermore, the Obama transition team knows all about the potential of localism as a means of silencing conservative dissent. The head of the Obama transition team is John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress.
In 2007, the Center for American Progress issued a report, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio. This report complained that there was too much conservative talk on the radio because of "the absence of localism in American radio markets" and urged the FCC to "[e]nsure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
Podesta's choice as head of the Federal Communications Commission's transition team is Henry Rivera.
Since 1994, Rivera has been chairman of the Minority Media Telecommunications Council. This organization has specific ideas about localism:
In other words, it would not do for broadcasters to meet with the business leaders whose companies advertise on their station. Broadcasters must reach beyond the business sector and look for leaders in the civic, religious, and non-profit sectors that regularly serve the needs of the community, particularly the needs of minority groups that are typically poorly served by the broadcasting industry as a whole.
Rivera's law firm is also the former home of Kevin Martin, the current FCC chairman. Martin is himself an advocate of more stringent localism requirements.
It was on Martin's watch that on January 24, 2008, the FCC released its proposed localism regulations. According to TVNewsday: "At the NAB radio show two weeks ago, Martin said that he wanted to take action on localism this year and invited broadcasters to negotiate requirements with him."
FCC complaints as politics by other means
Remember that an FCC license is required for any radio or television station to legally operate in the United States. A single complaint from anyone can significantly hinder a station's license renewal process or even cost the station its FCC license entirely.
There have been some attempts to utilize the FCC complaint process for partisan political ends, most memorably in 2004, when Sinclair Broadcasting agreed to air a documentary questioning Senator John Kerry's war record:
Poised to pre-empt programming on its 62 television stations to run a negative documentary about Sen. John Kerry, Sinclair Broadcast Group has come under fire from critics calling it partisan and questioning whether it is failing federal broadcast requirements to reflect local interests.
Members of Congress and independent media groups have questioned the company's willingness to respect "localism," a section of federal law that requires media companies to cover local issues and provide an outlet for local voices.
One group, The Leftcoaster, went further:
But what isn't done a lot which requires the broadcaster to rack up expensive legal fees, is to challenge every one of their affiliates' FCC license renewals as they come up this year and next. ... [T]here still is time to organize and file Petitions or objections by November 1, 2004 for Sinclair stations in North Carolina and South Carolina, and for Florida by January 1, 2005.
More recently, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium issued a "fill in the blanks" official FCC complaint form which begins "Anything that you feel is offensive is worth reporting."
Community advisory boards as permanent complaint departments
These random efforts could be far more effective at silencing conservatives if they could only be systematized and institutionalized. That is exactly what the FCC proposed on January 24th. Every radio and television station would be required to create:
[P]ermanent advisory boards comprised of local officials and other community leaders, to periodically advise them of local needs and issues, and seek comment on the matter. ...
To ensure that these discussions include representatives of all community elements, these boards would be made up of leaders of various segments of the community, including underserved groups.
The "community advisory board as permanent complaint department" model may well be based upon the 1995 revisions of the Community Reinvestment Act, as described by Howard Husock in City Journal:
[T]the new CRA regulations also instructed bank examiners to take into account how well banks responded to complaints. ... [F]or advocacy groups that were in the complaint business, the Clinton administration regulations offered a formal invitation. ...
By intervening-even just threatening to intervene-in the CRA review process, left-wing nonprofit groups have been able to gain control over eye-popping pools of bank capital, which they in turn parcel out to individual low-income mortgage seekers. A radical group called ACORN Housing has a $760 million commitment from the Bank of New York...[emphasis in original].
Understand that even allowing conservatives to be radio talk show guests may provoke a FCC licensing complaint. Just ask "right wing hatchet man" Stanley Kurtz.
For Obama, when it comes to radio talk, silence is golden, at least when it comes to conservatives.
Can localism be stopped?
FCC observers agree that the outpouring of complaints from groups like the National Religious Broadcasters during the original comment period helped delay matters.
However, Kevin Martin's determination to enact a localism regulation has led him to ask the broadcast industry to accept a voluntary standard that the FCC would then enact. If industry failed to agree now, Martin warned, "a future FCC may be less willing to compromise than the current one."
This scare tactic -- agree to our demands today or suffer dire consequences tomorrow -- is having an impact.
What broadcasters need to do: speak up now
Radio and television station owners need to become engaged in the localism issue and then take the time to educate their own Congressman and Senators about the dangers of the FCC's proposals.
If broadcasters get involved, it just may be possible to block implementation of any localism rules during the few months remaining of the Bush Administration.
This delay is critical, since once it is the Obama Administration leading the fight for rules which would shut down conservative talk radio, Republican Congressmen and Senators will find it easier to fight back.
The Senate needs to draw a line in the sand: free speech, not localism
While President Obama will have the authority to name Commissioners as their terms end, these nominations must be confirmed by the Senate.
A few pointed questions on localism to FCC nominees during their confirmation hearings would be useful. A filibuster of any and all pro-localism FCC nominees would be even better.
Any Senator leading such a filibuster would earn the gratitude of millions of fans of talk radio as well as everyone who believes in free speech..
Jim Boulet, Jr. is the founder of the anti-localism web site, KeepRushontheAir.com. Research assistance for this article was provided by Richard Falknor of Blue Ridge Forum.
Localism is a WONDERFUL thing! Look at the election map when it is broken down by county. Red everywhere.
We can fight this law and we should, because it violates the First Amendment. But if we lose that fight, we have not lost the war, not at all. It may actually put us in a terrific position to dominate in nearly every local market in the nation.
In fact, I think we should start right now by supporting local conservatives on our local stations. Don’t just listen to the big national talkers. Listen to your local talkers. Let the station know how much you like them and appreciate them. Remember, too, local talkers can network. I’m sure most of them read plenty of conservative websites and blogs and can get information from them.
Look for some of them to move from radio to politics. They will have sharpened their debating skills from their radio experience debating on the air. They will have heard it all, the kooks of every stripe, the liars, the spinners, everything.
.... and hopefully we can have Obama declared ineligible to serve as President. Have you seen this citizenship petition against Obama:
http://www.rallycongress.com/constitutional-qualification/1244
bookmark for later read
I agree. Conservatives may not have loved McCain but they do love Rush!
Attempting to go after Rush and get him off the AM airwaves will only send him to XM/Sirius/Internet and explode his popularity.
I have a feeling all the left TV shows will not fair well.
All left leaning things will not fair well.
I’m tired of being pushed into a corner.
I’m tired of the talentless political pushing agenda programs on TV.
I’ll return to the good old days and do something more productive. It won’t hurt a bit.
The Mexican government has shut down border blasters in the past, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t do it today, especially after Calderon gets that call from El Presidentissimo Obama.
Don’t forget-Mexico wants rid itself of its restive underclass, and Obama wants to import them to solidify his permanent DemocRat majority.
Good grief. I never thought I’d see the day when we’d need a Radio Free America.
Wasn’t there another thread here on Free Republic that claimed Henry Rivera was removed from Obama transition team?
I predict a run on ipods and sat radio receivers.
Podcasts and satellite radio will be the medium.
Yes. The great difficulty is the still-dominant noise from monopolistic Associated Press journalism propaganda machine. There is a lot, but only so much, to be said for getting our information from sources which smell right to us rather than from the take-it-or-leave-it propaganda from the one-way media.That allows us to retain our sanity while others are losing their heads. But it does only so much when the mind-numbed robots of the left head to the polls. Even if every self-consciously conservative American were given satellite radio for free, that overarching problem would remain. I do not propose that leftists should be ghettoized any more than I think we should be. I recognize that there are tens of millions of those people, some of them close kin - and they should have a voice. But as Chuck Schumer's comment comparing Talk Radio to pornography makes chillingly clear, leftists simply will not be content with having a voice, they are determined that theirs shall be the voice - the Establishment.
Their claims sound perfectly reasonable once you make the absurd assumption that journalism is objective. But that assumption is ridiculous because journalism has obviously adheres slavishly to its own business interests while claiming to speak in the public interest. Journalism claims to be "the press," and yet journalism as we know it (and especially as it makes its fatuous claims of objectivity) is essentially a product of the Associated Press (founded 1848) and did not even exist in the founding era when the First Amendment was written and ratified. For leftism to be the Establishment, the Associated Press must be the Establishment. They are joined at the hip by mutual interest.
Some say that talk radio will simply go to Sat Radio. Is that not governed by the FCC also?
Just remember, tyrants will do ANYTHING to gain power and control over the "little people".
From Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals":
“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity.”
L
“This intense refusal to show his true birth certif. must bring him down.”
Rush said that even if it’s proven that Hussein isn’t a citizen, and was obviously not qualified to run, nothing will happen re the results of the election; he’ll still be Pres. on 1/20.
I’m in the “pray without ceasing” mode, begging that he will not be sworn in. I don’t care if it’s via the phony birth certificate or alien abduction.
Should “localism” prevail, it will simply mean that talk radio will move to satellite and Internet radio outlets and many AM stations will go bankrupt as no one will listen to “localism” correct drivel. I think Rush, Hannity, Laura Ingraham and other top talk radio should already be staking out overseas shortwave stations as well as powerful AM stations in Canada and Mexico in anticipation of the day when the only source of truthful reporting will come from beyond the Obama curtain.
Bingo.
Satellite radio still has not taken off due to the power of local radio stations. If Obama kills local radio stations (and and it looks like that is his plan), satellite will become very big and much cheaper. Why isn't there commercial satellite? You know, with advertising? I had SAT in my car for awhile, but the talk shows were lame and the religious broadcasting looked like it was designed by a Hollywood atheist.
A yep!
Network TV stations do very little “local programming.” Maybe an hour a day of local news. It seems like they would all suffer greatly under this burden.
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