http://www.motherjones.com/...
http://www.politico.com/...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
A player in Christian and talk radio stations is buying up popular conservative websites — moves that could make Salem Communications the next big thing in right-wing media.
The California-based company has recently gobbled up sites that reach millions of readers, like Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy.com, the Eagle Publishing group which is home to RedState.com, HumanEvents.com and the conservative publishing house Regnery. The Salem empire already includes more than 100 Christian and conservative talk-radio stations and several Christian-themed websites, as well as HotAir.com and TownHall.com.
According to
Talking Points Memo (linked above) the recent acquisitions by Salem could make it the "next news empire of the right."
The founders of Salem Communications are CEO Ed Atsinger, III and his brother-in-law and Chairman of the Board Stuart Epperson. Salem is the nerve center of "Christian" and rightwing talk-radio that has supported, inspired and provided ready-made media fodder for the grass-roots conservative Republicans who call themselves the Tea Party. A significant number of those who self-characterize as 'Tea Party" Republicans are listening to one of Salem's stations at about the same time you are reading this. The Salem acquisitions are described here as part of a larger overall strategy to expand the conglomerate's reach beyond its hard-core Christian audience and to "the sister or cousin" of the Tea Party listener already tuned in to one of its various stations. For example, a promotional release from Salem's web site describing the expansion of disgraced former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh's radio show on a Salem-owned affiliate, praises him as a "'leading voice in the Tea Party movement" (Walsh's reluctance to pay child support is not mentioned). When Reince Priebus of the RNC preemptively threatened to boycott CNN and NBC for their purported positive coverage of Hillary Clinton earlier this year, one of his suggested alternatives was Salem Communications.
The Mother Jones article, linked above, was written in 2005, when Salem Communications controlled 103 radio stations in the nation's largest markets, serving over 1900 affiliates. In several cities it owns multiple stations, with its programming (at that time) available to one-third of the US population. In 2005 it owned 62 websites. It has grown since:
In addition to its radio properties, the company owns Salem Radio Network, which syndicates talk, news and music programing to approximately 2,400 affiliates; Salem Radio Representatives, a radio advertising company; Salem Web Network, an Internet provider of Christian content and online streaming with over 100 Christian content and conservative opinion websites; and Salem Publishing, a publisher of Christian themed magazines.
As the
Mother Jones article notes, Salem's web of organizations allows the religious right "to share information, mobilize allies, and galvanize public opinion." Their
target demographic for AM radio is the 35-64 year old driving to work each day.
Like many right-wing backers, Salem's founders prefer to remain largely anonymous, although the Mother Jones article cites specific instances of their personal activism, including donating $780,000 together with wealthy savings and loan heir and evangelical right-wing activist Howard Ahmanson in opposition to California's Equality of Marriage initiative. The brothers-in-law have also orchestrated get-out the vote campaigns through their "religious" radio stations and have backed so-called Christian candidates in local races. In the mid 2000's they heavily backed current Senator John Thune's bid to unseat Tom Daschle in South Dakota. The Salem "PAC" is a major contributer to Republican politicians and Atsinger was a former "Bush Pioneer."
According to Sourcewatch, five or more of Salem Communication Company's Officers are or have been members of the secretive "Council for National Policy," [interestingly, Sourcewatch credits DailyKos with dubbing this organization as the"'Sith Lords of the Ultra-Right."]:
The Council for National Policy is a shadowy group comprising leaders in the family values, national defense and ''decency'' movements, dubbed "Sith Lords of the Ultra-Right" by the liberal blog DailyKos.
Members are told not to discuss the group, reveal the topics discussed in the closed-door meetings, or even say whether or not they are members of the organization.
A New York Times profile
described the CNP as the most powerful group of conservatives in the Republican Party. The group has been solicited by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and in 2007 then Presidential-candidate Mitt Romney. Cheney and Rumsfeld attended one of the group's meetings shortly after the invasion of Iraq. The group's secrecy has been noted by others:
"The real crux of this is that these are the genuine leaders of the Republican Party, but they certainly aren't going to be visible on television next week," Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said.
* * *
"The C.N.P. members are not going to be visible next week," he said. "But they are very much on the minds of George W. Bush and Karl Rove every week of the year, because these are the real powers in the party."
The new Masters of the likes of Erick Erickson and Michelle Malkin have a strong track record of mixing their religious convictions with right-wing fiscal and social policy:
Salem remains focused on deregulation. Between 1998 and 2004, Salem Communications and its executives contributed $423,000 to federal candidates—making it the sixth-largest industry donor today—96 percent of which went to Republicans. Salem also has a PAC, which contributes only to Republicans—about $54,000 to Republican congressional candidates in the last election cycle.
In 2007 John McCain
courted the support of Epperson and Atsinger, along with Jerry Falwell and John Hagee.
The goals of Epperson and Atsinger seem to be fairly straitforward--the establishment of a theocratic society in the U.S. via the Republican Party and its bastard child, the Tea Party movement.
Salem’s founders, Stuart Epperson and Edward Atsinger III, have a far grander goal: spreading the word of the Lord and offering an alternative to the creeping secularism that they see as responsible for America’s moral decay. “When you secularize a culture,” says Epperson, “you lose your moral compass.” A mission statement in Salem’s 2003 annual report reads: “One mended marriage. One regained childhood. One restored faith. One broadcast at a time.”
Atsinger and Epperson's commitment to conservative activism extends to their local community involvement. While Atsinger's
political donations at the state and local level reveal his priorities, Epperson is also
founder of the Salem Pregnancy Center, a "women's resource center" in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Their website is billed on the web as an alternative to abortion and contains a full page of warnings about
"post-abortion syndrome." His
son, Stuart Epperson Jr., a board member for the Center (and amazingly a radio station general manager and talk-show host in his own right) penned a
bizarre Christmas piece for the Winston-Salem Journal two weeks ago that begins as follows:
The night was dark. The times were desperate. An oppressive government was calling for a universal tax and a young teenage girl was well advanced in her “crisis” pregnancy. Under these desperate conditions, Joseph and Mary traveled by foot and donkey over 100 miles south to Bethlehem, but found no room at the inn. The only place to lodge and deliver this child was a dark, dank stable, a disheveled pen for animals and beasts of burden.
As bizarre as this formulation of the traditional Christmas story might be, it serves as a good illustration of the way the right views the extrapolation of its "faith" to other issues like regulation, taxation and abortion given puzzlingly short shrift in the actual Bible. The goal here is not only to spread Christianity, but to implement right-wing policies under the guise of Christianity, as by their engagement with
Sean Hannity, William Bennett, and other assorted
Limbaugh wannabees. That is a potent mix, especially in rural areas and in the South where (not coincidentally) the "Tea Party" has its most virulent adherents. Meanwhile the radio spectrum for alternative programming continues to shrink:
Carol Pierson, president and CEO of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, says the growth of religious broadcasting behemoths has come at the expense of locally produced public-interest and independent radio stations. In some areas, stations that once played jazz or broadcast NPR now feature religious programming. “.... In the for-profit market, cash-rich companies like Salem are “pricing everybody out of the market,” Pierson says. “I think this is a major issue, and its impact on democracy is incredible.”
The corporate media credit the Tea Party as a "grassroots movement" of disaffected Republicans eager to "get Uncle Sam off their backs" and supposedly committed to reducing Federal spending, cutting "entitlements" and shaving the deficit, all working towards the goal of more "limited" government. As the media interests that support them begin to consolidate and expand beyond radio to the Web, the right's pretension to "limiting government" increasingly appears to include the imposition of a Theocracy in its place.