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Recent
Stories
June
6, 2003
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
June
4, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Federal Judge Blinks; Rosenthal
Walks
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
The Isaiah Crowd: The Threat of Neo-Christianity
Jason
Leopold
Manufacturing the Iraq War
John Chuckman
Blackmail as Policy
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Summit: Peace or Pretense?
Issam Nashashibi
Sharon's Sword of Damocles
Steve
Perry
Wolfowitz of Arabia: the VF interview transcript
June
3, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Copycat Killers: Bush, Jakarta and
the Slaughter in Aceh
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Tells All
Elaine
Cassel
We Interrupt Your Normal Show to Bring You an Important Message
from Michael Powell: "Go to Hell, Americans!"
Tom
Crumpacker
The Politics of US Cuba Policy
William
S. Lind
Fourth Generation Warfare in Iraq
Sam
Hamod
The Final Brick in the Wall
Uri
Avnery
The Altalena Affair
Hammond
Guthrie
Stepping into Some Deep DARPA
Steve
Perry
The WashTimes'
al-Qaeda nuke "exclusive"
June
2, 2003
Arundhati
Roy
Day of the Jackals
Norman
Madarasz
Behind the Neo-Con Curtain: Plato,
Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom
Alain
Frachon and Daniel Vernet
The Strategist and the Philosopher: Strauss and Wohlstetter
Anthony
Gancarski
Anti-Imperialism, Then & Now
Standard
Schaefer
Wasted at the Pentagon
Jason
Leopold
Rocky's Advice to the Dems
Guthrie
& Albert
HUAC 58 Years Letter
Steve
Perry
The Politics of Terror Alerts
May
31, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
A Whiner Called Horowitz
Gary Leupp
The Frauds of War
Dave
Lindorff
Clinton, Bush, Lies and Impeachment
Tom Stephens
Does It Matter that the Bush Administration Lied?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Who Is Next?
Joanne
Mariner
Trivializing Terrorism
Wayne
Madsen
Ayatollah Ashcroft's Busy Week
Larry Magnuson
Is a Television a Radio or a Billboard?
Elaine
Cassel
Wake Up, America!
Gila Svirsky
Waiting for the Lament to End
Susan
Davis
Kitchen Dreams
Chris Clarke
Barbra Streisand: Environmental Hypocrite
Chris
Floyd
Bush Locates Source of World Evil: God
Adam Engel
Gravity's End Zone
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Orloski, Albert
May
30, 2003
Ben
Tripp
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda
Neve
Gordon
The Bad Fence
Todd
Steiner
Endangered Ocean
Robert
Freeman
Bush's Tax Cuts: a Form of National Insanity
Sean
Carter
Utah Gets Fired Up for Executions
Daniel
Bacher
How Bush's War Violated International Laws
Tariq
Ali
Re-Colonizing Iraq
Steve
Perry
Bush Wars
Web Log
May
29, 2003
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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June
7, 2003
The "Red Lion"
Rises...to Nothing
Another
Powell, Another Capitulation, Another Trap
By SHELTON HULL
On Monday, June 2, the last major rules standing
athwart the phenomenon of "media concentration" were
erased from law by a 3-2 party-line vote of the Federal Communications
Commission. Local limits on ownership of radio and blocks on
certain cross-media mergers were removed, yet the ban on low-power
"pirate" broadcasting remained, even though the FCC
contends that the radio spectrum is basically obsolete. Chairman
Michael Powell has now earned his own nickname from the press:
"Red Lion." He is so called, I guess, for his zeal
and vigilance in forcing through a deregulatory agenda that represents
the literal will of today's major media monoliths. No better
time that now to note that the FCC has done more to wreck the
moral, intellectual and social infrastructure of this country
than any other government agency of the past decade. Not all
of it is Powell's fault, but much of it is. The rest is ours.
I'm trying to be as delicate about this
as possible, because I know very well that media concentration
is not a subject worth writing about if getting paid is the fundamental
goal. In three years of trying, I have uniformly failed to get
anything about the subject through to the readers, which is unfortunate
because it's one of the few political issues that regular citizens
can dig quickly and substantively affect through group action.
That's true even now, when the game is almost over, when the
Dollar's become a third-rate currency in the eyes of domestic
speculators, when our youth has been sold out wholesale by their
own guardians, when our nation's primary source of income is
the self-destructive behavior of its citizens. Even now, but
not much longer.
Jacksonville is a great example of what
media concentration can do to a population. One of the best,
in fact, because although our culture has not been utterly obliterated
as it has in smaller, more vulnerable cities, the process has
occurred so rapidly here that its effect is undeniable. The city
has regressed in most social and economic indicators since the
Telecommuncations Act of 1996 was passed. Test scores are down,
literacy is down, per-capita income is stagnant, real income
is way down, but drug use, rape, teen pregnancy and abortion
rates, STD rates, obesity and recidivism are up. Of course, these
trends are not solely the result of media concentration in Jacksonville
and beyond, but the fact that these held through the all-time
peak of American economic growth suggests that something has
had a hugely mitigating effect on all that well-hyped progress.
My money says Clear Channel and Viacom.
After the first two of many wars, after
9/11, in the midst of economic weirdness so profound that I will
not even speak of it, with all the serious issues this city is
facing over the next decade (dealing with staggering, unserviceable
debt is but one of them), barely a third of registered voters
turned out for what may have been their last chance to make a
decision about our future. That's a slap in the face for everyone,
especially all those women and black folk who laid down their
lives for the ideal of Democracy. The citizens of Jacksonville
simply do not care about their future in the short-, medium-
or long-term. Given that so much of our perceptions are intuited
from various media, what does that say about the media's performance
in this crucial function of informing the people? What does that
say about our priorities as a city?
Anything that turns so many away from
such a basic and fundamental obligation should not be regarded
as benign or merely coincidental. The American radio industry
has been crippled by deregulation, and the audience it serves-mostly
children, increasingly so as those who can afford it have turned
away from radio to other media-has been crippled in turn, in
that they are now essentially forced to live in a world of lies,
propaganda and deliberately applied methods of mind-control.
Apparently the idea that media could be used for mass psychological
manipulation never occurred to advocates of deregulation, nor
the idea that media conglomerates could be front-companies for
God-knows-what. The deregulatory agenda enforced by the FCC has
created weaknesses that will be exploited by this country's enemies,
sooner or later, and we know it. You cannot feed your children
garbage and expect them to grow up strong, certainly not strong
enough to defend the homeland. In that, Michael Powell's "triumph"
is a humiliation for the rest of America.
Shelton Hull
has written for many alternative publications, and writes the
"Money Jungle" column for Jacksonville's Folio Weekly.
Comments encouraged: sdh666@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
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