Ever since the fairness doctrine went down for good in 1986, hate and misinformation have taken over the airwaves, beginning with Rush Limbaugh on the radio and spreading to TV. As Rep. Louise Slaughter said in a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers, after fairness was defeated,

AM radio rose. It wasn’t even gradual, Bill. I mean, almost immediately. And I should point out to you that when we tried to reinstate [the fairness doctrine] again in ‘93, one of the reasons we couldn’t was that Rush Limbaugh had organized this massive uprising against it, calling it “The Hush Rush Law.”

Slaughter goes on to explain that the law wouldn’t have hushed Rush-that would take more than an act of Congress, I’m afraid-but it would have mandated that time be given to people who represent other sides of any issue discussed by Limbaugh. The same is true for Hannity, O’Reilly, and even Imus. They just wouldn’t have the airwaves all to themselves the way they do now.

The defeat of the fairness doctrine was followed in 2000 by the defeat of two corollary FCC guidelines: the political editorial rule, which required stations that editorialized against a political candidate to notify the candidate within 24 hours and allow him or her to respond; and the personal attack rule, which required a station to notify someone within a week of a personal attack made on the air and offer them time to respond.

Ask yourself, would Orrin Hatch have lied about fired US Attorney Carol Lam-he falsely claimed she was the southern California campaign manager for the Clinton campaign and had no previous prosecutorial experience-if he knew she would be offered a comparable Sunday morning time slot to rebut his claims? Doubtful.

The roll-back of fairness tilted the broadcasting playing field heavily to the right and led directly to the rise of Fox News and hate radio. Without constraints on how to present an issue, propaganda replaced real reporting-and became wildly popular. News suddenly became revenue stream responsible for generating ratings and earnings, and the race to the bottom in network news reporting began.

Then in 1999 Karl Rove reached out to GE Chairman and CEO Jack Welch, promising radical deregulation for the broadcast industry (GE is the parent company of NBC). This fit right in with some of Welch’s thoughts and ambitions. He had long felt that the news division at NBC wasn’t living up to its full profit potential. According to a a must-read article, “The Media Cover-up of the Gore Victory Part Four: Democracy, General Electric Style,” by David Podvin and Carolyn Kay, that conversation led to some important changes:

Toward that end, Welch said that he would finally deal with a longstanding grievance of his: the ludicrous idea that news organizations should be allowed to operate in conflict with the best interests of the corporations that own them.

…The new dimension that Welch introduced was the concept that mainstream media should aggressively advance the political agenda of the corporations that own it. He did not see any difference between corporate journalism and corporate manufacturing or corporate service industries…

In general, he saw corporate news organizations as untapped political resources that should be freed from the burden of objectivity…

He began to aggressively, but very discreetly, evangelize the gospel of corporate media as a corporate lobbying tool…

Welch told associates that he enlisted two members of the GE board to assist him in shaping the coverage of the election by other news organizations… They quietly encouraged the executives of the mainstream media organizations to rethink the relationship between news divisions and business organizations.

And a cartel is born. A cartel can be a group of corporations within one industry who meet to set prices. In the case of oil and rubber companies early in the last century, a cartel ran light rail lines out of business and lobbied aggressively for the building of an interstate highway system-a manipulation that led to what the documentary “The End of Suburbia” modestly refers to as “the single greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And yet the asset being manipulated to the public detriment by the corporate media-information-is arguably even more basic and precious than oil.

The five media companies that control the television airwaves-Time/Warner (CNN), GE (NBC), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), and Fox-operate as an information cartel with the power to “create reality” in exactly the way a White House official described it to journalist Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality-judiciously, as you will-we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

In such an environment, hate and misinformation feed on each other, and reality is flipped on and off like… well, like a TV.

Right now there are a good half a dozen threats to the Constitution, including the wars on Iraq and Iran, the White House firing of US attorneys in an effort to shore up the 2008 election, and deleted White House emails showing just how those firings came about.

In a reality-based universe, these issues would be all-consuming, receiving the kind of saturation coverage given to the late lamented Anna Nicole. Those deleted White House/RNC emails, in particular, seem like the perfect media scandal, since they could easily lead straight to impeachment-particularly if people got as worked up about it as they are about Don Imus.

We certainly need to study the media information cartel-judiciously, of course-but right now it’s more important that we join “history’s actors.” This is not an optional fight. We can’t hope to take back reality by targeting individual media personalities or even by targeting their sponsors. We can’t do without government regulation of corporate media giants, any more than we can just give up on proper regulation of our food and drug supply.

If you’re still in doubt, please tune in to PBS on April 25 to see Bill Moyers lay out the Record of Iraq War Lies. David Swanson, who saw an advance copy of the program, writes, “Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you’ll never watch television news again-not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.”

We can use that time instead to work on breaking up the media information cartel that’s destroying our freedom. We can start by writing to our congressmembers, senators, and local papers. Tell them that in order to prevent the abuse of our public airwaves you support Dennis Kucinich’s plan to restore the fairness doctrine.

The author of this article is Patricia Goldsmith, a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at: . She writes for The Smirking Chimp, and various other groups. You should read more of her articles.

Path to 9/11, a largely fictional account which is being portrayed as a dramatized documentary(docudrama), is nothing more than an lame attempt by one of the largest corporations in the United States to sway public opinion and voters, in favor of a one political party, to the detriment of another, all to influence the outcome of an election. It’s a more ambitious attempt, to do what the so called “Swift boat Veterans for Truth”, and Sinclair Broadcasting, did to John Kerry in 2004.

What’s this all about?

ABC/Disney plans to memorialize the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with a fictional docudrama called “The Path to 9/11″. Written by an avowed right-wing activist, this work of fiction directly contradicts the accepted record of the 9/11 Commission Report. President Clinton and former administration officials were denied an advance copy; Rush Limbaugh and obscure right-wing bloggers saw it last week. ABC plans to distribute this docudrama to 100,000 educators across the country. We’ve set up this site to encourage ABC to change its strategy.

One key scene shows Bill Clinton’s National Security advisor Sandy Berger supposedly refusing to order the CIA to take out bin Laden, a purely fictional event that has been repeatedly discredited, most recently by terrorism expert Richard Clarke.

Some of the interesting things which were unsurprisingly left out or glossed over, President Bush and the pet goat (often mistakenly called my pet goat) situation for one:

The official story is that Bush was meeting with a group of pre-schoolers when he was informed of the attack on the World Trade Center and quickly left the room. Not quite right, says Moore. [The official story has changed since the footage of Bush reading to the children has been published.] Bush learned of the first attack before entering the school, ‘decided to go ahead with his photo op,’ and began to read My Pet Goat to the students. Informed of the second attack, he incredibly remained with the students for another seven minutes, reading from the book, until a staff member suggested that he leave. The look on his face as he reads the book, knowing what he knows, is disquieting.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lets not forget the August 6th 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing…

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.”

Watch it for yourself….

Click here to view the embedded video.

ABC is promoting this exclusively to the “Mainstream” media and right wing bloggers. This should be a red flagged warning sign to everyone. If this was an accurate and truthful version of events, they would not be trying to prevent a review by both sides, before it’s broadcast.

On September 1 2006, it became evident that ABC had offered previews of “The Path to 9/11″ to right-wing bloggers and media personalities, like Rush Limbaugh, and to mainstream media outlets. When it was confirmed that no advance information had been sent to progressive and liberal bloggers and media, an effort was launched to discover how and why this had happened.

John from America Blog did a video blog on this subject you can watch it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a letter from Tom McMahon, The Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee:

Does a major national broadcast network want to stain itself by presenting an irresponsible, slanderous, fraudulent, “docu-drama” to the American public?

Not if you and I have the last word — but either way, we’re about to find out.

The ABC television network — a cog in the Walt Disney empire — unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11″. ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, “based on the 9/11 Commission Report”.

That’s false. “The Path to 9/11″ is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.

The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. “The Path to 9/11″ mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.

ABC/Disney executives need to hear from the public and understand that their abuse of the public trust comes with a cost. Tell Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this right-wing propaganda off the air — we’ll deliver your message:

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

This story is breaking quickly. The bias of the “docudrama” only became known when ABC began circulating previews recently. Less than two weeks ago, 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste confronted a lead writer of “The Path to 9/11″ after watching the first half of the miniseries at a screening, but most of what we know amounts to bits and pieces because ABC chose to screen the miniseries to conservative bloggers and right-wing media outlets exclusively. Almost none of the Democrats portrayed in the film have even been asked for their thoughts.

But we still know enough, thanks to news accounts and crack research, to fact check “The Path to 9/11″ as a biased, irresponsible mess. Here’s what you need to know:

Richard Clarke — the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News — describes a key scene in “The Path to 9/11″ as “180 degrees from what happened.” In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone. Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, called the same scene “a total fabrication. It did not happen.” And Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was “something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It’s factually wrong. And that’s shameful.”

Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder — contrary to “The Path to 9/11″ — rests with none other than the arch-conservative Washington Times.

The former National Security Council head of counterterrorism says that President Clinton “approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda,” and the 9/11 report says the CIA had full authority from President Clinton to strike Bin Laden. Yet chief “Path to 9/11″ scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, says the miniseries shows how President Clinton had “frequent opportunities in the ’90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks — but lacked the will to do so.”
ABC asked only the Republican co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean, Sr., to advise the makers of “The Path to 9/11″. The producers optioned two books, one written by a Bush administration political appointee, as the basis of the screenplay — yet bill the miniseries as “based on the 9/11 Commission Report.”

This is a picture of bias — a conservative attempt to rewrite the history of September 11 to blame Democrats, just in time for the election.

Tell Walt Disney president Robert Iger that you hold his company responsible — and that this community demands that ABC tell the truth:

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

ABC is trying to use of the airwaves — airwaves owned by you and me, and loaned to broadcasters as a public trust — to slander Democrats and sell a slanderous, irresponsible fraud to the American people, and they’re shamefully doing it just weeks away from Election Day.

The Walt Disney Corporation could have given Americans an honest look at September 11. Instead, the company abandoned its duty to the truth — and embraced the fiction known as “The Path to 9/11.”

But ABC isn’t the only company pushing this gross revision of history. ABC has enlisted the reputable education and children’s entertainment company Scholastic, Inc. to send 100,000 letters to high school teachers, urging them to show students “The Path to 9/11″. Scholastic has also created a discussion guide for teachers to use to encourage students and their families to watch this irresponsible fraud and then discuss it in school. The discussion guide does not in any way point out the concerns and criticisms that have been raised about the validity and accuracy of the film.

We’ve got to stop this now.

ABC/Disney must face an accountability moment. You can ratchet up the pressure on ABC by sending your own letter to Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger — tell him to keep this propaganda off their air.

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

We’ll keep you up to date as this story evolves.

Thank you,
Tom

Tom McMahon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee

This is a perfect example of why media consolidation is bad for America.

1. We need to reverse these failed FCC policies and retroactively reinstate the former media ownership requirements.
2. We need to re-establish the fairness doctrine which required that broadcast licensees had to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in an honest, equal and balanced manner, and we need to enforce this with penalties under criminal and civil laws.
3. Create a statutory right of equal time so that politicians from all sides can present their arguments.
4. Bar all corporate money from politics in the United States. Money does not, and should not equal speech, no matter how many court rulings have suggested otherwise in the past. I can say whatever I like to anyone I like, the same as ABC. When money as political speech enters the picture, the individual citizen’s voices are drowned out.

Tell ABC exactly what you think about it, heck tell Disney too while you are at it!