Sinclair is Pravda: TPM Sinclair is BC"04

this was my first post about Sinclair Broadcating. (The first one I put in a thread and not a diary.)

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/10/9/21740/1289/98#98

The point I tried to make at 3AM Friday night was that this is incredibly dangerous for democratic societies.  This is a dangerous precedent when corporate owner(s) of media dictate(s) coverage. We won't need government control of the media a la Pravda when corporate control acts in the same way.

Below Josh Marshall points out that this is a Swift Boat ad.  Sinclair Broadcasting making a massive illegal corporate campaign contribution for which they may under the Bush administration get no more than a slap if that.

Sinclair is, in essence, a de facto arm of the Bush campaign and the Bush administration.  In what way  can such thuggish control over local media in any way jibe with free speech? Only if you acept the premise that free speech only belongs to the speaker, in this case Sinclair.

This horrendous outcome is a result of the synergistic feedback loop in which corporate media lobbying and contributions create an environment which allows even more corporate control over more and more of the means of the dissemination of the public's right to know.  (Bill Clinton and the Democrats were derelict when they passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which lifted some of the limits on media consolidation)

A BYWAY WHICH LEADS BACK TO THE MAIN ROAD

Buckley v. Valeo, one of the first campaign finance decisions limits contributions but not spending, is a decision which equates the right to free speech with the right to spend money.  Money and speech are equivalent in this decision. This bad decision underpins not only campaign finance law but also other speech issues.

This decision and the metaphor underlying it are one sided.  It is about the right of the propagator of speech to speak.  It is not about the right of an audience or a community such as the American people to hear all that they need to hear in order to be good citizens.

The metaphor underlying all discussions around speech is the market based metaphor.  Speech is to be bought and sold in a marketplace. The correct metaphor is the public square. In old New England town greens, like the town I grew up in, there was a town square, that from its founding belonged to the community as a whole, over time evolving from a communal sheep pasture  to public events.  In a town square not only do you have a right to talk, but there is a right to hear.  In our present analysis only the speakers have rights not the hearers.  

Marshall's piece follows. Unlike Josh I do think it is fundamentally a free speech issue.  I recognize that this is not how it is exactly defined in statute or case law at present.  I acknowledge that under present legal parameters it probably could not be litigated in that way.  The most immediate avenue is probably to treat it as a massive illegal donation.  However in terms of its potential impact upon our democratic society, it is a massively dangerous asssault on the underlying reasons the Constitution protects  free speech and the press.  The Constitution values this because without free unfettered access to information and not just the right to propagate information (a la Sinclair)a real democratic society is not a viable long term proposition.    

(October 11, 2004 -- 05:19 PM EDT / link / print)

 http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Too generous ...

I had been thinking about a post that would put in stark terms what is going on with this Sinclair Broadcasting stunt, noting how it amounts to a massive in-kind contribution from Sinclair to the Bush-Cheney campaign to pay for the broadcast of an hourlong Swift Boat ad ("Stolen Honor") smack down in the middle of primetime broadcasting on local network television channels across the country. After all, it's the same basic material and it even includes several of the same aggrieved veterans.

But like I said, too generous. It isn't like a Swift Boat ad. It actually is a Swift Boat ad.

A perspicacious TPM reader (JJG) notes that a September 29th press release on the 'Stolen Honor' website announced that 'POWs for Truth', the sponsor of the 'documentary', was merging with 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' to form the new consolidated group 'Swift Vets and POWs For Truth.'

Unlike cable programming, local broadcast licenses aren't 'owned' -- courts have always been clear on this. The right to broadcast over a given slice of spectrum is public property on loan to the broadcaster in exchange for providing programming in the public interest. This move is but a paler version of the de-democratization we're now seeing in Russia as the standing government asserts increasing control over a nominally independent media.

It's not a 'fairness' or a free speech issue. It's a massive and quite public case of election and campaign finance fraud.

It's the sort of thing that, if it happens, will put the legitimacy of the entire election into doubt.

Welcome to the world of Rove.