The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Media control freaks
: John Kerry speaks to minority journalists and sucks up on the topic of media control, saying he wants the government to keep controlling it:
…Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said he would reimpose the ban on same-city ownership of broadcast stations by daily newspapers.
speaking of control freaks, how about the Dems trying to intimidate and censor Fox News???
“Shove it”
or how about the letter to stations threatening them if they air the swift boat vets ad?
Is it a pattern yet?
Jeff,
Perhaps someone could tug at Kerry’s sleeve and remind him what cable penetration is in America. Then remind him that CSPAN and CNN and Fox carried his old lady’s speech. And Obama’s. Not that THK’s speech contributed one damn thing to democracy.
I didn’t watch those speeches and it had nothing to do with CBS not airing them. It’s because the conventions are crap. Hell, I’m surprised the broadcast networks actually could recognize crap when they saw it.
Is he going to complain when the same thing is done to the RNC? I doubt it. And I’ll be skipping most of those speeches as well and, again, not because CBS didn’t broadcast them.
What Kerry is complaining about is that the liberal establishment no longer has a stranglehold on information. Stories unfavorable to Democratic interests are leaking out beyond the ability of his party to control it, and dammit that’s un-American!
His solution? Government control…of course.
And people call Republicans the fascists?
Someone needs to look up the definition of the word….
And people call Republicans the fascists?
We also call you retards and what you wrote above is the reason why.
vote libertarian michael badnarik for president……
http://badnarik.org/blog/
So Jeff, care to opine about:
1) Democrats trying to censor Fox News Channel (one assumes Howard Stern would be overjoyed by the news)
2) Democrats trying to censor the SwiftVets commercial?
By the way- Robert McCelland did a good job of showcasing the typical liberal debating style. Excellent grasp of facts and usage of logic to make your point, f**ktard!
a good job of showcasing the typical liberal debating style.
I responded in the only sensible way to the typical right whinge debating style which is to make up some nonsense and then claim that is your opponents motives or what your opponent said.
2) Democrats trying to censor the SwiftVets commercial?
I think it’s a move by the Dem campaigners to draw attention to it in order to provoke a backlash against Bush. If it really is that, it’s working brilliantly since McCain has already spoken out against it and Bush’s team has been forced to dance around it.
The Dems have played this whole hero thing brilliantly. Consider that it has traditionally been the Republicans who played up the war hero notion and has attacked anyone who ever spoke an ill word against vets as being unpatriotic. So now the Dems have used that to their advantage by turning the tables and duping people like these Swift Vets into playing the villain.
This is a quicksand issue. The more the Repubs thrash and kick, the deeper they’ll sink.
Jeff, now why are you supporting Kerry again?
Robert –
Since you evidently didn’t read Jeff’s post, I’ll elaborate:
Kerry starts off his riff with “I don’t know how many of you have seen ‘Outfoxed’” – an obvious complaint about perceived anti-Democratic bias at Fox News…
Then he proceeds to complain that the networks didn’t cover his wife’s speech (meaning obviously the Big 3 since the cable network did)…
Fox News is *not* one of those networks…So unless there is an over-arching theme, the starting point and the ending point do not meet in the middle.
The thread that ties those two thoughts together was his complaint that his message isn’t being transmitted with universal adoration and love that the Democrats have been used to for years…
His solution to this perceived problem is re-imposition of government controls on media ownership, etc. that have led to this current situation which he finds completely unacceptable.
Government controls of media to ensure that only a single political viewpoint can be heard by the public is associated with what type of government? Anyone? Anyone? How about fascism?
…which is precisely the point I made…
Now, that might make me ‘retarded’ in your eyes…but if a ‘retard’ can see the point he is making, where does that leave those who can’t?
If you have a point, make it…otherwise, save the ad hominem for someone who actually regards that sort of ignorance as a legitimate form of debate…
RE: Swift Boat Vets
The Bush campaign hasn’t been forced to ‘dance’ – they have said since Day 1 that they would not question his service in Vietnam and haven’t.
When Kerry takes responsibility for every hateful thing that MoveOn and Michael Moore and every other enterprise that George Soros has backed in an attempt to defeat the president, then you can hold Bush’s feet to the fire about the Swift Boat Vets…I won’t hold my breath…
The evident anger (and corresponding blast fax of legal threats) in the Democratic circles about this is the legitimate fear that someone, somewhere might take these vets seriously and listen to what they have to say.
I agree that the RNC and Bush campaign are well-advised to stay far away from this issue as I don’t think that voters really care – just as I don’t think that thinking voters really care that he *did* serve in Vietnam. They didn’t care about McGovern’s service. They didn’t care about George H.W. Bush’s service. They didn’t care about Clinton’s draft dodging. They didn’t care about Dole’s service. They didn’t care about Gore’s service….and they won’t care now…
The only ones ‘swayed’ are those who were going to vote for him anyway. So I don’t think the Bush campaign would be well served to associate itself with this effort…It’s ultimately a non-issue, so why bother challenging it?
That said, the Kerry campaign, because of the weakness of Kerry’s senatorial career, has had to build a mythology around his 4-month tour of duty. It was always a house of cards because the back story is more “nuanced” than the myth they created as anyone with Google and about 30 minutes of spare time could have figured out on their own. A wise campaign strategist would have advised them to make it a smaller part of the campaign.
But they didn’t. And if they pay the price for it, they have no one to blame but themselves…
It’s called reaping the whirlwind…
Jeff,
Excellent observation re dead tree guys serving as America’s assignment desk. You should add USA Today to the list.
When Mr Kerry or any other politician speaks of media they are usually talking about the big three (or four) broadcast tv nets. The issue in Mr Kerry’s response was not about the wall to wall cable (which he dismissed) or the all prime PBS coverage, it was about the failure of his wife and others to be featured in broadcast tv prime time (and prime access).
“Media” is an easy and often times fun target.
The FCC is a complaint driven system and without complaints they would have little to do but spectrum management. Lucky for the regulators, we American’s love to complain especially about the free over the air services of radio and TV.
When you examine what people are watching and where the majority of political ad spend is invested the agenda becomes clear. No amount of wall to wall coverage by cable or by PBS will ever be able to excite or satisfy a politician more than being on Sixty Minutes for the entire hour. An entire day with Brian Lambs’ gang gladly traded for a single well promoted hour of prime with Katy or Barbara.
The number of voices is not the issue, the unprecedented depth of coverage is not the issue. It is the right to dominate the far smaller share of outlets which lead tv audience share.
“But when media becomes truly deconsolidated and deconstructed — when media is everybody and everybody is media — then a very dangerous precedent will have been set: The government will be controlling media. It will say that you can’t say. It will say what you can’t own. And that is dangerous.”
Good Lord, what unmitigated fearmongering. First of all, there is no way that “everybody” will become media since only a very small amount of people are interested producing content. Most people are not. Second of all, people in favor of busting up the media trusts are liberals, which Jeff himself claims to be. He’s starting to sound more and more like a right-wing libertarian type, especially since almost everything he says in this post could apply equally to environmental protection laws, OSHA regulations, the minimum wage, etc.
Thirdly, anti-consolidation people are in favor of wider-spread ownership and greater localization, something which Jeff ostensibly believes in. In the future, most of the big media television stations will operate similar to what big media radio stations do: little (if any) local news, no promotion of local groups or talkers, no responsiveness to the community, and run via computer from some centralized bank somewhere in LA or NYC. That’s not a desirable situation.
Fourth, Jeff clearly has a conflict of interest talking about this subject which he almost never discloses. He is an employee of a big media company and as such, it is in his interest to defend them from being broken up. As a test, I ask: Were you in favor of breaking up AT&T? What about the oil companies around the turn of the last century? Is it OK for a media company to grow to any size but not a non-media company?
In a world were a few companies own most media and have gentlemen’s agreements not to criticize each other, who will hold their feet to the fire? Man cannot live by blog alone. Decentralized, localized independent radio, television, and print media are the answer. And we don’t need to chop up the big media companies to get that, just restore some of the old regulations that worked just fine before and were not considered “dangerous” by anyone. Being in favor of such action does not mean one “hates” the media any more than being in favor of laws regulating workplace safety or air pollution means “hating” manufacturers.
Becoming media is a rational response to the fact that political speech by not-media is heavily restricted. (Media types like restrictions on political speech by others.)
Did you really think that special access to common resources (airwaves) and special privs wrt political speech was a stable situation?
Did you actually think that folks without such privs would defend them for you?
I’ll start caring about media speech restrictions when media starts caring about restrictions on my speech.
If the REAL issue is media HATRED. Then we near that point. Media have sold out, corrupted themselves and proven they cannot be trusted.
Media concentration cannot be relevant issue when people are finding competitive sources and outlets.
You are right. The issue is the loss of confidence and support that historical outlets have enjoyed.
HOWCOME nobody ever asks Kerry HOW he is gonna get his promises thru a Republican Congress? He has been a member of the Senate that has set the bar at the 66 vote level for passage of any and all measures. Does he really expect to see a shift of control in both Houses as well as the WH?
Are his coattails really THAT big? That would appear to be a major league story if true.
they have said since Day 1 that they would not question his service in Vietnam and haven’t.
It doesn’t matter. Just like the right holds Kerry responsible for everything that the left says about Bush, so too does the left hold Bush responsible for everything the right says about Kerry. Turnabout is fair play and the Dems have outplayed the Repubs on this issue.
I thought one of the prohibitions was that there could be no contact or co-ordination between candidate/party and the 527’s.
I like the way the WH has called upon the Democrats to join them in opposing ALL 527 fund raising and campaign ads. Will the Demo’s do it?
I thought the Demo’s had dumped all their Kerry-cash to the DNC so that the 527’s could carry the ad campaign thru the month of August? How can you depend on your own 527;s and disparage the opposition w/o out looking hypocritical? Hire lawyers-!!!