Stop Big Media!

Why is this happening?

• “Women comprise 51 percent of the entire U.S. population, but own a total of only 80 stations, or 5.87 percent of all full power commercial television stations.”
  
  
• “Minorities comprise 34 percent of the entire U.S. population, but own a total of 43 stations, or 3.15 percent of all full-power commercial television stations.” That percentage decreased between Oct. 2006 and Oct. 2007.
  
  
• “Blacks or African Americans comprise 13 percent of the entire U.S. population but only own a total of 8 stations, or 0.6 percent of all stations. … From October 2006 to October 2007 the number of African American-owned full power commercial TV stations decreased by nearly 60 percent.”
  
  
• “Hispanics or Latinos comprise 15 percent of the entire U.S. population, but only own a total of 17 stations, or 1.25 percent of all stations.”

A group of filthy rich white men control the bulk of everything you see, hear and read about in the media. And they want to make it even harder to get more varied voices and opinions out there:

FCC chair Kevin Martin is currently pushing to allowing a media company to own both a television and a radio station in the same city. The plan is endorsed by billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch, but opposed by the majority of the American public. One of the most troubling consequences of lifting the ban is that it would likely crowd out local and minority voices in the media.

Yep... They would like nothing better than to shut down any real competition in the market of ideas by controlling the media message even more...

What can you do about it?

STOP BIG MEDIA!

One Blog post, and millions of petitioners, at a time...

Kevin Martin, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has been keeping a secret from the American people. He wants to push through plans to remove decades-old media ownership protections. And he's trying to do it without public scrutiny.

Petitions from the public — millions of them — stopped media consolidation in 2003. Sign the petition and tell everyone you know:

You can also get involved on
Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr
and the Free Press Action Network.

We beat them once and I suspect that, much like saving the Internet, we will have to do this over and over again until Congress finally tells them their monopolistic ideals will never get a pass. The media conglomerates already have too much of a monopoly and deserve to be downsized for the good of the nation.

The media landscape is dominated by massive corporations that, through a history of mergers and acquisitions, have concentrated too much control in too few hands. This leads to a lack of diversity of voices, programming that is out of touch with local concerns and increasingly commercial and homogenized news and entertainment. Further consolidation will produce media in which only the powerful few will be heard.

The chart below maps out the control the six most concentrated giants exert over all forms of news, entertainment and information.

Click on these links to view information on conglomerates that control:

• Television
• Radio
• Publishing and Newspapers

Take A Tour of Wasington D.C.

Courtesy of the Hartford Courant:

In Washington, Follow The Perp Walk Of Fame

Those who believe in the innate goodness of humankind have never walked the 100 block of D Street SE.

Let's start at 110 D St., the drab Hill House apartment complex; police were summoned here, to Apartment 215, when a woman complained that her lover, then-Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Pa., a married man, had tried to strangle her.

Walk a few doors down, and you arrive at a townhouse with a birdbath in front: 132 D St., the "Safe House" where, under artwork provided by clients of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, former House majority leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and his colleagues made fundraising calls and set up a lobbying business.

Many of the modern day scandals summing up the GOP's legacy pretty well. Tom DeLay, Jack Abrahmoff, Bob Ney, Larry Craig, Karl Rove, Mark Foley, Randy Duke Cunningham, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the DC Madam, David Vitter, Gonzales, John T. Doolittle... This story has almost all of them, and even some that are still in the making.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Field and a few other prominent Bloggers get some WaPo love:

Aboard the crowded D train, rumbling into Brooklyn on the Manhattan Bridge, the inevitable rant explodes. A rant courtesy of Faye Anderson, whom we'll call Ms. CJ, a.k.a. Citizen Journalist. A rant directed at us, Mr. MSM, a.k.a. Mainstream Media, for all our perceived faults.

"It's not you, the journalist, it's the institution," Ms. CJ tells Mr. MSM. "You're not telling the whole story. . . . You've lost your credibility."

We listen, take notes, check if the tape recorder's working. No telling what Anderson might do if she's misquoted.

She's saying anyone can be a journalist, at least anyone with an Internet connection. Start a blog, she says, that's easy. (Hers is called Anderson at Large, nearly three years old and one of the more prominent blogs in the growing Afrosphere, the African American online political sphere, where Field Negro, Jack and Jill Politics and African American Political Pundit also are must-go-to sites.) Learn how to record a podcast, no sweat. (A few weeks ago she attended a podcasting camp in Boston.)

I know I have read 3 of those Blogs... I guess I'll have to check out Anderson at Large.

Hastert is...

History!

After announcing his resignation on Nov. 15, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today formally handed in his letter of resignation, which goes into effect at 10:59 PM CST tonight. A special election will be held to fill his position on Feb. 5. See the full letter HERE.

Buh bye Dennis Hastert... We will always have your many scandals to remember you by!

What more can you say about a Congress critter that doesn't even know the words to the national anthem?

Would the right wing ever allow a Democratic politician off the hook for completely not knowing the words to the national anthem, the way House Speaker Dennis Hastert very obviously does not?

Will the real Trent Lott please stand up?

Via Andrew Sullivan:

I have no independent information on this, but the Trent Lott story may have a new twist. Click on the link at your own discretion. It would seem completely impossible, if it weren't for the recent past. A reader posits an alternative theory:

Through my journalism work, I hear Lott is actually resigning in order to try and head off a really bad scandal. Somebody was threatening to air photos of him being polite to a black person.

What's he talking about?

"The boy happens to be real, and his 'stage name' is Benjamin Nicholas. One of the politicos Big Head DC has learned he’s alleged to have been involved with is the married Sen. Trent Lott, 66, who unexpectedly announced his retirement on Monday. Lott is well-known to have been against a plethora of gay rights issues throughout his terms in Congress. He was also good friends with Sen. Larry Craig throughout his time in Congress. Nicholas told Big Head DC today via e-mail that he didn’t want to go on the record to talk about his dealings with Lott, because, said Nicholas, 'Trent is going through his fair share of scrutiny right now and I don’t want to add to it.' However, e-mail and other records confirm that the two have met on at least two occasions. 'All I can say at this point is no comment,' Nicholas told us. 'It’s the professional thing for me to do.' In a subsequent e-mail message, Nicholas confirmed that another publication is working on a story about a 'possible relationship' between Lott and himself, but Nicholas also 'politely declined' an interview for that story. 'As I said before, Lott has quite a bit on his plate right now and I don’t really want to add fuel to the embers,' Nicholas told Big Head DC."

Image via Towelroad

More Via Towelroad:

And as far as that "other" publication, Larry Flynt just told FOX he's "hoping to expose a bombshell" within the next week or two. We'll see, I guess.

Take it for what you will, but given that 2007 is the year of the hypocritical Republican, nothing would surprise me.

Nothing surprises me when it comes to the GOP anymore... And, here, Nicholas denies the claims.

Waiting for the next issue of Hustler to hit the newsstands... lol

Lott retiring from the Senate?

Maybe...

NBC News has learned that Trent Lott's in the midst of informing close allies that he plans to resign his senate seat before the end of the year. It's possible a formal announcement of his plans could take place as early as today.

Like a child that is losing a game, he'll take his ball and stomp off home in the Mississippi mud. If this rumor is true, it will make for another open Senate seat for the broke, and broken, GOP to defend in the next round of "kick the bums out!" (h/t C&L)

Left and right Bloggers will remember Lott fondly when he is gone... For his scalping:

O’Keefe’s judgment later won out. Pack judgment was wrong— in this case, extremely so. Lott became the first majority leader in Senate history to resign under pressure. How it all happened is told in the new case study from Harvard’s Kennedy School, “Big Media” Meets the “Bloggers.” (By Esther Scott, supervised by Alex Jones of the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School of Government. Available only in pdf form here.)

My favorite moment in the story is when O’Keefe’s counterpart at another network asks a more senior producer in the Washington bureau to look at what Lott said that evening at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. “No, I don’t think it’s anything” says the more experienced pro.

This gave O’Keefe some pause, causing him to second-guess his judgment. “I think there is something to the [notion] of pack journalism,” he reflects, “of individuals believing that if something is noteworthy, … everyone will get it… If they didn’t all get it, then it couldn’t possibly be a newsworthy item.”

The conservative writer David Frum would later call Lott’s words, “the most emphatic repudiation of desegregation to be heard from a national political figure since George Wallace’s first presidential campaign.” But when “everyone” didn’t get it, O’Keefe began to doubt himself. That’s how group think works.

The Harvard study has gotten notice in Blogistan, but its stingy formatting (the pdf is encrypted and won’t allow you to cut and paste) has been discussed in greater depth than the story it tells, perhaps because we think the events are well known. According to legend—partially confirmed by the report—webloggers from Left and Right were responsible for pushing the Trent Lott story into the news, after the mainstream media missed it.

“The Internet’s First Scalp” said John Podhoretz in the New York Post. That’s hyperbole, but the report makes clear that webloggers had a crucial role. It also delimits and describes that role. Now we know more precisely why—and when—the bloggers were needed.

Who will Ron Paul support?

That is, if Ron Paul, the closest thing to a real conservative - being a right tilted libertarian - in the GOP, weren't in the running?

Last month, during a Republican debate, Ron Paul was asked whether he promised to support the GOP nominee next year, no matter who emerges from the primary process. “Not right now I don’t,” Paul said, “not unless they’re willing to end the war and bring our troops home.”

Apparently, in the ensuing weeks, “not right now” has become “no.”

Paul called his Republican presidential rivals, including frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, “neo-conservatives” whom he couldn’t support in the general election should his own bid fail.

“They think we’re supposed to spread our goodness through force,” Paul said. For example, none will pledge not to wage war on Iran, he said. “How could I support something like that?”

Apparently, he can’t. But it means that of the top seven candidates in the Republican field, Paul is the only one who isn’t prepared to support the party’s eventual nominee. It’s not the kind of thing that will go over well within the party, but then again, Paul’s interest in the Republican Party appears nominal — it’s a venue for him to advance his ideas and agenda, not necessarily an opportunity for him to lead the party.

We know it isn't any republican candidate that is in the running right now. We can take a guess on whom he would support based on past statements:

The conservative Senator Chuck Hagel would be one choice, if he were running (obviously), and Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

There is a reason that both, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, enjoy a large base of support from activists on the left and right, and are both derided consistently by the corporate owned media. It is because of their commitments to saying what they stand for and believe, their constant fights against the illegal occupation of Iraq, and actually voting by the standards of their public statements.

But Paul and Kucinich are both labeled wackos and fringe candidates by the media standards.

Go figure?

This kind of populist type backlash from grassroots in the left and right sure as hell isn't because people think that the media darlings and self-fulfilling-prophesied "top tier candidates" are competent, honest, have integrity, or are even relatively sane judging by their patchwork of flip-flops, twisting of truths, and circle-jerk logic demonstrated by their votes and statements and resulting in continued failures for Democracy, and for America.

Breasts, Legs or Laughs?

A little family Thanksgiving humor for you:

An elderly man in Phoenix calls his son in New York and says, "I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough."

"Pop, what are you talking about?" the son screams.

"We can't stand the sight of each other any longer," the old man says. "We're sick of each other, and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her," and he hangs up.

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. "Like heck they're getting divorced," she shouts, "I'll take care of this."

She calls Phoenix immediately, and screams at the old man, "You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?" and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife.

"Okay," he says, "They're coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own fares."

Some end of year fun!

This Holiday Muckorama Contest seems like a really fun way to beat the Muck out of the wingnuts some more:





Maybe some of Connecticut's own video Bloggers would have some extra fun putting together their own video offerings for this?

The one problem with this contest: All these criminals should be getting mugshots, not free mugs. TPM should be sending the free mugs to readers like myself! lol