Mike Baker Member since: Contacting Mike Baker: Details Single Grad/Professional School Weather Guy/Webmaster Tags | My Blog Posts: About me: Hear The RantIT'S TIME FOR US TO STAND-UP TALL, and to let the establishment know that we're not going to let them cram us into their rat maze anymore. We will no longer submit to their agenda of dehumanization and disenfranchisement. I want freedom, and more of it -- not tyranny, and that's what you should want too.It's up to each and everyone of us to turn-loose just some of the fear, because that is their most effective method of controlling us -- make us feel pathetic and small so we'll willingly give-up our sovereignty, our liberty and our destiny. Let's stand-up together and start challenging this corporate slave state that rules over us all. Let's get fired-up and use our creativity, our energy, and our burning desire for freedom to show Slavery Incorporated that the dynamic human spirit of the Twenty-first Century refuses to submit. See The SitesSINCE 1995: My Weather by akweb.comHome | News | Weather | Comics | Radio | Games | Live Cams http://akweb.com I'm a climatologist, and I've been providing quality weather information on the Web for more than 13 years. At akweb.com, you'll get a detailed local weather forecast which includes live Emergency Alert System (EAS) warnings, Doppler radar, satellite images, dynamic weather maps, and a comprehensive selection of local information products covering your town and more than 64,000 others nationwide.
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On Nightline, during April of 2004, Ted Koppel read the names of dead American soldiers and showed their photographs on air. But their faces and names were blacked out on ABC stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting. Sinclair accused Koppel of "...doing nothing more than making a political statement."
But what about Sinclair's own political agenda? With 62 stations, the company is the biggest of its kind in the country and has lobbied successfully in Washington for permission to grow even bigger. Its executives are generous contributors to neo-conservatives who currently dominate the Republican Party.
In fact, following 9/11, there were reports that their on-air talent had been required to read statements affirming a station's 100% support for the President. And the company's Vice President for Corporate Communications, Mark Hyman, doubles as the on-air commentator on The Point, a daily commentary segment that airs in cities across the country via Sinclair's News Central channel. Hyman is known to regularly "stimulate public discourse" with statements like, "Clinton was too busy chasing skirts to chase terrorists." While I am certainly no fan of Clinton, it's this sort of hyperbole that renders any serious discussion or analyses of the "prior knowledge" issue difficult, if not impossible.
Later in 2004, Hyman was sent to Iraq to editorialize on the good things happening there.
That's Sinclair's prerogative, of course. Every news organization has First Amendment rights, just as I'm exercising mine right now. But speaking out is one thing, keeping others from being heard is another. Sinclair censored Koppel.
And when the Democratic National Committee wanted to buy time for a spot critical of the President, Sinclair's station in Madison, Wisconsin, said no.
Sinclair's not alone with cozy ties to Washington. Clear Channel, the biggest radio conglomerate in the country (with over twelve hundred stations), was a big winner in the deregulation frenzy triggered by Congress in 1996. In 2003, Clear Channel was (and still is) a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq.
Rupert Murdoch's a big Washington winner, too. Congress and the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission let him off the hook even though his News Corp. owned more stations than the rules allowed.
Murdoch also controls Fox News, another big cheerleader for American policy in Iraq, as well as the New York Post. For a week, the Post refused to publish photographs of those tortured Iraqi prisoners saying the pictures would "reflect poorly" on the troops risking their lives there.
Again, it's their right. Freedom of the press, it has been famously said, is guaranteed only to those who own one.
That's just the point. These media giants can be within their rights even while doing wrong. It's the system, dear Brutus, the system...a cartel, in effect, of big companies and big government scratching each other's back.
It wasn't supposed to be that way. The founders of our government didn't think it a good idea for the press and state to gang up on public opinion. So they added to the Constitution a Bill of Rights whose First Amendment was to be a kind of firewall between the politicians who hold power and the press that should hold power accountable. The very first American newspaper was a little three-page affair whose editor said he wanted to "cure the spirit of lying..." The government promptly shut him down on grounds he didn't have the required state license.
Nowadays, these mega-media conglomerates relieve government of the need for censorship by doing it themselves. So we're reminded once again that journalism's best moments have come not when journalists make common cause with the state but stand fearlessly independent of it. A free press remains essential to a free society.
Semper Libertas!
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