The Hugo Chavez method comes to the US

I wrote yesterday about Think Progress’ new report on the Right’s domination of the airwaves, at the same time Michele Malkin was writing about the Center for American Progress’ report that came out on the same day – oddly enough. Now the news services are announcing that Hillary and gal pal Barbara Boxer were overheard trying to strategize to legislate the Right’s dominance on radio away. 

I’ve always wondered why the Left, who claim to be “liberal” and “progressive” “human rights” and “defenders of the First Amendment” weren’t more vocal about what Chavez, Correa and Moreno were doing down in Latin America – and now I know. In fact, there was even a piece on the DailyKos defending Chavez’ shut down of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) – all because that’s what the Left here in the US intend to accomplish as well.

From CNSNews;

Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, said “the potential one-sidedness on the radio dial in terms of political programming is strongly and directly related to ownership and market structure.”

Turner argued that “increasing diversity and localism in ownership will produce more diverse speech [and] more choice for listeners.”

Mark Lloyd, another CAP senior fellow, attributed the “imbalance” to “the breakdown in the Federal Communications Commission regulatory system during the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the elimination of caps on ownership in telecommunications during the 1990s.”

It’s a “structural imbalance” – see a structural imbalance means that it can corrected – if it were a market imbalance, no amount of legislation could MAKE people listen to Moonbattery. The imbalance can’t be because of market forces, it’s because the evil Republican white guys have been plotting nearly thirty years to take over AM radio. Nevermind that AM radio was almost dead before Rush Limbaugh came along. But that doesn’t matter – the Republicans have an advantage, so to “level the playing field” Democrats want to legislate away that advantage. The solution to fairness and equality, you see, is legislation – not hardwork.

Blake Dvorak of RealClearPolitics quotes an American Spectator interview with a Pelosi aide last month;

The report would be easy to dismiss if not for the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she will “aggressively pursue” reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, according to two House Democrats who spoke to the American Spectator last month.

A senior adviser to Pelosi explained the Speaker’s reasons to the Spectator:

First, [Democrats] failed on the radio airwaves with Air America, no one wanted to listen … Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don’t want, so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008.

Again, it’s blind adherence to what the nutroots want (whenever the media says “Democrat base” – they mean that Leftist vocal minority that spends every minute of every day on the internet).

So now we know why there was hardly a peep from the Congressional Democrats when Chavez started censoring his opposition - Venezuela was a guinea pig test case to see if Americans were paying attention. They weren’t, with the exception of a few, so now the Clinton/Boxer team figures it’s time to strike.

Monica Crowley calls Clinton “Putin in Drag“;

The former head of the KGB and current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, recently made it illegal to engage in so-called “extremist” talk and activity.  In Russia today, you can get arrested and silenced—and often, killed—for publicly criticizing the government.  Over 1000 Russian journalists have been murdered since last year—all for speaking out against the corruption, cronyism, and tyrannical oppression of the Putin regime.

I’m reminded that Brigette Bardot was arrested and fined in France for “hate speech” – hate speech that warned about Arab/Muslim immigration diluting the french culture in her book. So can ridiculous laws like that be far behind this latest Orwellian plot to silence conservatism?

What’s next? Blogs?

Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perpective provides a lot of Spanish language press on goings-on in Latin America in reference to Chavez and our policy towards him. Apparently the Senate Foreign Relations Committe is finally discussing Chavez’ authoritarian tendencies and the House has authorized more radio frequencies to be directed at Venezuela.  But that doesn’t solve our own problems with Chavez-wannabes, the fugly girls of the Senate.

Kara Rowland in today’s Washington Times talks to local DC radio programming directors about the Center for American Progress report;

“Nothing in this report addresses the tremendous impact that public radio has,” said Chris Berry, general manager of D.C. conservative talk station WMAL-AM (630). “The fact is, many people, even NPR listeners, consider public radio if not liberal, then certainly in the category of ‘progressive.’ “

In the Arbitron winter ratings, D.C. public radio outlet WETA-FM (90.9) scored a 4.9 share — although it changed to classical music in the middle of the ratings period — and WAMU-FM (88.5) had a 4.3 share. Together, the public stations top the most-listened-to commercial station, urban WHUR-FM (96.3), which had a 6.9 share.

Moreover, Mr. Berry noted, the report does not include morning FM radio shows that are topical or cover political issues, especially programs targeted at black listeners.

WMAL is owned by Citadel Broadcasting, one of the five major broadcasters examined in the Center for Progress study, whose results argue that Clear Channel Communications has the most liberal talk content in absolute terms — 229 hours a week, or 14 percent of its programming. As a percentage, CBS devotes the most time to liberal talk at 26 percent; followed by Clear Channel at 14 percent and Citadel, Cumulus and Salem all at zero percent liberal (and 100 percent conservative).

“I think that it basically is saying that conservative talk radio is dominated by conservatives,” said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers magazine. “I don’t know what it means. If it’s an attempt to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, that’s unconstitutional. If it’s to try to end consolidation, it’ll create a bunch of independent radio stations that will go out of business because of the economics of 2007.”

Which is exactly what the Left wants – no private broadcasts. In the Chavez model, they want everyone listening to the Democrat-approved drivel on NPR. They want radio stations that plug I-Pods into their transmitter and hit “shuffle” – all music, no comments. That’s basically what would result from a new Fairness Doctrine.

In typical, Democrat hypocrit-fashion the sponsor of the new legislation says there’s not enough “choices”;

“The American people should have a wide array of news sources available to them. The more opinions they can hear, the more news sources they can learn from, the better able they will be to make decisions,” said Jeff Lieberson, spokesman for Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Democrat.

Mr. Hinchey is preparing to reintroduce his Media Ownership Reform Act, which among other proposals calls for a return to the “Fairness Doctrine,” a long-held requirement that broadcasters give equal time to opposing views when covering political issues. The doctrine was repealed in 1987 because it violated the First Amendment.

“…a wide array of news sources…”, huh? I wonder what Hinchey thought of Fox News being frozen out of Democrat Presidential debates.

Update: Hillary and Boxer claim Inhofe didn’t hear them saying what he said they said;

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer say Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe “needs to have his hearing checked” if he thinks he heard them talking about a “legislative fix” to curb conservative talk radio.

I tend to believe the worst.

And, almost completely unnoticed is Amanda of Think Progress explaining how they don’t advocate bringing back the Fairness Doctrine – just take private property away from people to redistribute it;

The report argues instead that we should address the more significant problem of concentrated ownership and ineffective regulation in order to push the market structure to better meet local needs. As report co-author John Halpin stated, “If we break up concentrated ownership, and encourage greater local accountability over radio licensing, and still end up with lots of conservative talk, then so be it. We don’t think this will happen but at least the playing field would have been made more level.”

The CAP/Free Press report argues for more speech, not less. Conservatives should get their facts straight before blindly attacking others.

Yeah, we should have noticed that their intentions were much more socialistic. A report entitled “Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It” should have been more readily accepted by the Right. The basis of the Right’s argument remains that the Left is looking for ways to get and keep their people on the air on talk radio even though no one is listening. That’s even closer to Hugo Chavez’ method than we originally thought.

It all boils down the fact that they want a new fairness doctrine enforced by the FCC or the SEC or some government agency who will seize private property and redistribute it to the Left.

I wonder if they feel just as strongly about breaking up concentrated union power in our schools and encouraging local accountability in the education system.

Category: Economy, Hugo Chavez, Media, Politics