This is somewhat a "repeat" of
another diary this AM. This story deserves some facetime.
Those of us who pay attention to the corporate media, a.k.a. the Right-Wing Noise Machine, understand who ClearChannel is, politically and economically. ClearChannel is the dominant player in radio and in outdoor advertising in the United States, and ClearChannel uses its position not simply to profit but to advance a right-wing Republican agenda.
Salon has compiled an expose on ClearChannel as the face of corporate media. Common Cause traces the relationship between Tom Hicks, Clear Channel's visionary, and George Bush.
Lots more below:
Tom Hicks, who built Clear Channel, bought the Texas Rangers from an invesment group including Bush for an elevated price, a sweetheart deal concocted so Bush could have the money, and the free time, to run for Governor of Texas. How was Hicks repaid? With so much money and power it made his investment in the Rangers seem like chicken feed. Hicks was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of Texas system, the most powerful patronage plum afforded a Texas governor. Hicks, ruthless and not content with the usual perks of the office, set up an investment management company and steered billions of dollars in the UT invesment pool, among the largest in the world, to his management firm, collecting millions of dollars in usurious fees.
We're talking big-time Republican corruption here.
This is important, in the geopolitical sense. Clear Channel, as has been documented many times on kos, censors progressive ads and subsidizes right-wing ones.
CC even put up billboards in black neighborhoods saying "Don't Vote."
To understand the depravity of Clear Channel, you might have read this morning's paper:
A popular radio personality was fired yesterday after making a series of shockingly ugly, racist and violent on-air remarks - including a threat to sexually molest the young daughter of a rival deejay.
...
Torain offered listeners $500 to tell him where the daughter of nemesis DJ Envy, of Hot 97, went to school.
"Yes, I disrespect your seed," Torain ranted. "If you didn't hear me, I said I would like to do an R. Kelly on your seed. On your little baby girl."
Torain, 42, described in graphic detail what he meant by the reference to the R&B singer Kelly, who allegedly committed an unnatural act on an underage girl, a stunt captured on a widely circulated video.
Torain, who warned in his diatribe that he carries a gun, also called the wife of DJ Envy, whose real name is Rashawn Casey, a "whore," a "lo mein eater" and far worse anti-Asian slurs.
Casey could not be reached for comment. But his wife, Gia Casey, who appeared at a news conference with several City Council members yesterday, said she's now afraid that her kids could fall prey, if not to Torain, then to a crazed listener.
"I want his job to be yanked from him, and I want Clear Channel to have to be responsible on some level for allowing this to happen," she said. "Because not only have they condoned it, but by condoning it they have promoted it."
...
The FCC did not return calls for comment, but Liu said he was told by FCC investigators that it appears Torain's comments could affect his station's broadcasting license.