Corporate Censorship is nothing new. Corporations have been working on shaping the publics view on a myriad of issues throughout history. Creating patriotism in WW2 and after 9/11, to starting wars in the end of the 19th century with the Spanish-American War to the most recent Iraq War, influencing public opinion for profit and personal gain is nothing new. During the leadup, and several years following the Iraq War, Clear Channel, the owner of numerous radio stations across the nation took a deliberate and clear action to censor opinions that went against the Presidents Agenda.
Last week, Cablevision made a bold political statement, or so it appears.
Last week, Cablevision made a bold political statement, or so it appears. For the past year or so, those who do not have a digital cable box, but pay for cable, and connect the cable wire directly to a TV, have been loosing channels, due to the transition from analog to digital signals. First CSPAN 2 (along with other channels, E! and other irrelevant dribble), but this past week, Cablevision appears to have made a very strong political statement. While clearly cutting a wide selection of channels (MTV being the most notable), Cablevision decided to cut back 1 of the 4 cable news channels. Fox News is still being broadcast, CNN is still being broadcasted, CNBC is still on, yet MSNBC, no longer available without a digital cablebox.
This appears to be clear political censorship, no matter what the official corporate answer is. Perhaps they will say it was only part of the analog to digital switch. Perhaps they will claim it was only a business decision, they had an exclusive right to broadcast MSNBC on Long Island, so if someone wants to watch it, they cannot switch to Verizon FIOS, so it was most profitable for them to discontinue that channel first...
(http://insidecable.blogsome.com/2007/02/22/cablevision-has-exclusive-fios-deal-with-msnbc-in-nyc/)
Perhaps they will say it was the lowest rated channel of the news channels, perhaps they will say we picked one at random, who knows...
In my mind, it doesn’t matter what justification they have for taking this action, it is clearly a political statement meant to censor a viewpoint that is detrimental to the corporation and the family who owns Cablevision, The Dolans. The Dolans, and specifically the chairman, Charles Dolan, has giving hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to the Republican National Committee and Republican Candidates (sure he gave some money to Hilliary, but its easy to see how the Clintons began the deregulation of media ownership).
Cablevision currently has an illegal monopoly on Long Island, but with its political influence, has been able to avoid this issue from getting much traction. Cablevision owns the only island wide newspaper, Newsday, which they purchased last year. They own the only Cable company, Optimum, and they have the most popular internet service, Optimum Online. This amount of ownership on a single location is what should be deemed illegal by the Government, but due to their purchased political power, they are able to function as they wish.
This MSNBC issue might be a small example of their censorship, but it sheds light on a bigger issue. A Company with a clear political agenda given unfettered power over what the people see and read can be a great detriment to society. It is due time we broke up these media conglomerates and enforced diverse ownership of media companies, newspapers, cable companies, radio stations, etc...
Our Democracy is only as strong as we let it be... we should not allow corporations to corrode our already fragile democracy anymore.
Update
A commenter (http://www.dailykos.com/...) pointed out that MSNBC remains on Analog Cable in Indiana.