America’s airwaves have been damaged by a series of rule changes the past two decades that have ushered in an era of bland commercial radio and television.
— The Seattle Times, 7/8/2007
Working for 710-KIRO, the commercial news/talk station with Seattle’s best local news coverage, the most live and local programming, and the most only balanced lineup of talkers in the market, I can agree with the thesis of today’s Seattle Times editorial entirely guilt-free. (You know, except for the part about agreeing with a Seattle Times editorial — it just makes me feel so dirty.)
But as long as we’re talking about “homogenized,” “formula[ic]” and “bland” commercial media, I’m wondering if the Times’ editors have bothered reading their own front page recently?
Saturday’s front page consisted of two soft features and two news stories, both lifted from the Los Angeles Times. Today’s front page is dominated by an infomercial for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, a bleak assessment of our military and political failures in Iraq (courtesy of the Washington Post,) and the first installment of a serial novella.
Two days. Two front pages. No hard, local news.
By comparison, every article on the front page of today’s New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer was written by staff reporters. I’m just sayin’.
To be fair, the Seattle P-I isn’t much better in this regard, and the kind of homogenized, formulaic and bland fare we tend to see in Seattle’s dailies is pretty typical of broadsheets nationwide. While I don’t mean to diminish the Times’ defensible thesis that lax ownership rules and media consolidation have damaged the broadcast industry’s ability (and willingness) to serve local interests, the steady decline in both quality and readership of our nation’s daily newspapers suggests that there are broader forces at work.
This isn’t the first time the Times has editorialized on media ownership rules, and I urge the editorial board to flog this issue with the same sort of zeal they reserve for estate tax repeal. But I would also encourage a little introspection into how staff cuts and a slavish devotion to style-book-over-substance has led to a steady decline in the quality and utility of their own product.
No doubt, local media ownership tends to better serve local community interests. But as the Times has proven by example, it is no panacea on its own.
This exchange between me and Proud Leftist is so good, I am going to post it in every thread on HA from now on. It destroys the Publicans’ stupid talking points – period.
“I’m working really hard to understand how President Bill Clinton’s actions act as justifcation for the righties. Read this fuckwads.
If your lame ass argument is that Bill Clinton was a bad President – which is what you say – and if your argument now is that the AWOL coward GW Bush is in someway comparable to Bill Clinton, what you are actually saying is that GW Bush is NO BETTER THAN CLINTON.
Does it hurt to be that stupid? I really want to know.
proud leftist says:
RES @ 18
You’ve hit it on the nose. The rightwing fringefucks consider Clinton to be the personification of evil–indeed, he is the devil incarnate in their twisted little minds. Nonetheless, their justification for all of the Bushites’ sins is, always, “well, Clinton did it, too.” Methinks they never studied logic.”
I’ve mostly given up on terrestial radio. Wall to wall ads and except for KVI, mostly idiotic blather. Think about it… if a fucking loser like goldy can get a radio gig, does that tell ya what a wasteland it is?
Satellite radio is the only way to go. Pay a few bucks a month, and get to listen to good programming instead of filler crap.
What the fuck is the times talking about with minority and women owned microstations? Who the fuck would listen to a radio station based on who owns it?
Just a reminder for you moonbats, especially RES and PL…
Bill Clinton was impeached and disbarred because he lied to a grand jury in a failed attempt to conceal a pattern of predatory behavior in connection with an assault case that he settled for $800k.
Can you imagine being too fucking dishonest to be a lawyer? How low can you go?
don’t you guys ever get tired of virtual circle jerking? is it because you JUST CAN’T GET LAID?
sheesh.
How low can you go?
YOU CAN WELSH ON A BET YOU LOST. PAY YOUR FUCKING GAMBLING DEBT.
LOSER!
THANKS BILL CLINTON FOR REMOVING THE WHITE HOUSE SILVERWARE.IM SURE THAT LAURA BUSH DIDNT LIKE THE PATTEN ANYWAY.ALSO ENJOY THE HOUSEWARMING GIFTS YOUVE RECEIVED FROM YOUR FRIENDS
Thomas Jefferson says:
Innuendo and supposition, thy name is Leftist.
By chance, were these “minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn.” brought forth by Dan Rather and/or Mary Maples? I’m sure they’re just as credible, because no left-wing organization would *ever* stoop to trying to sabotage a Republican. Right? Never happen!
Ah, hell no… never. I am typing in the right subscript, aint I?
YOS HELL YOUR NOT IN CUBA OR CANADA WITH THE FAMILY WHERE THEY HAVE BETTER HEALTH CARE THEN THE US FUCKIN IDIOT.
MY WINGNUT BRO YO @ 8,
I PREFER CANADA TO CUBA INDEED. TOO HOT AND STICKY DOWN THERE IN THE CARRIBEAN AND I DON’T AGREE WITH THE GOVERNMENT.
THE QUESTION DOOFUS @ 7 CAN’T ANSWER.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ACVR?
No better way to increase awareness of global warming than a concert by Hoobastank. hehehehehehe Liberals are so hilarious. hehehehehehe
I don’t even bother with the local paper here in Reno, it’d only be worth something to me if I had a bird cage or litterbox to line. I read the local edition of the News & Review, use eBay and Craigslist to replace the want-ads, and (shockingly) like MTR, have abandoned the crapfest that is terrestrial radio for satellite radio or the occasional internet simulcast. After KISW became a mostly-talk-radio station (let’s call it ‘dude-radio’), I flew the white flag and got XM.
One question though for MTR: XM or Sirius? Okay, moot point, now that they’re merging…..
ANYONE HERE read THE THREAD?
Goldy is right in spades. We still get the PI mainly for the Wed food ads. There is basically no daily newspaper in Seattle now.
I find it hard to believe there is not just a need but a market.
Speaking of media laziness…
http://hlrp.blogspot.com/2007/.....y-bad.html
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Marc Rich and Scooter Libby: A Bad Comparison
Let us put to rest any comparison of the commutation of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s sentence and the pardon that Marc Rich received from President Bill Clinton.
They are in no way comparable.
By the degree of the individual’s guilt and traitorous behavior, Libby’s sentence-commutation by George W. Bush could be more aptly compared to GWB’s father’s pardon of Oliver North. North could have implicated the elder Bush in the illegal arms for hostages deal, which funded the subsequent murder of hundreds of thousands of Central American peasants, at the hands of the Reagan/Bush administration. Similarly, Libby could implicate the current underdstandably secretive holders of the offices of president and vice-president, of covering up the deliberate outing of a covert CIA operative.
Bill Clinton, in his autobiography, My Life, on pp. 940-941 has this to say about his own last-minute pardon of Marc Rich:
“The most controversial pardons went to Marc Rich and his partner, Pincus Green. Rich, a wealthy businessman, had left the United States for Switzerland shortly before he was indicted on tax and other charges for allegedly falsely reporting the price of certain oil transactions to minimize his tax liability. There were several such cases in the 1980s, when some oil was under price controls and some was not, inviting the dishonest to underestimate their income or to overcharge their customers. During that time, several people and companies were charged with violating the law, but the individuals were usually charged with a civil offense. It was extremely rare for tax charges to be prosecuted under the racketeering statutes, as Rich and Green were, and after they were charged, the Justice Department ordered U.S. attorneys to stop doing it. After he was indicted, Rich stayed overseas, mostly in Israel and Switzerland.
The government had allowed Rich’s business to continue to operate after he agreed to pay $200 million in fines, more than four times the $48 million in taxes the government claimed he had evaded. Professor Marty Ginsberg, a tax expert and husband of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Harvard law professor Bernard Wolfman had reviewed the transactions in question and concluded that Rich’s companies were right in their tax computations, which meant that Rich himself had not owed any taxes on these transactions.”
I call bullshit on Republicans for using the Marc Rich pardon as an example that is in any way comparable to the commutation of Scooter Libby richly deserved sentence. Incidentally, one of Rich’s former lawyers was the ubiquitous Scooter Libby.
14
Yeah, but Oliver North and Scooter, eventhough they broke the law, are American heros. Marc Rich is not.
How are they “heros” (sic)? Any more than Willie Horton, who was released on the instructions of a Republican Governor, is a hero?
DOOFUS @ 15
WAS THE CHILD RAPIST A LIBERAL OR A CONSERVATIVE?
WHY CAN’T YOU ANSWER A SIMPLE QUESTION?
BILL CLINTON. I WANT TO THANK YOU AND YOUR STAFF IN THE WEST WING OF THE WHITE HOUSE FOR VANDALIZING AND DESTROYING GOVERMENT PROPERTY ON THE WAY OUT.I
ALSO APPRECIATE REMOVING ALL OF THAT EXCESS WEIGHT(CHINA,SILVERWARE,LINEN,TOWELS,ASH TRAYS,SOAP,PENS,MAGNETIC COMPASS,FLIGHT MANUALS,ETC)OUT OF AIR FORCE ONE.THE WEIGHT SAVINGS MEANS THAT IT WILL BURN LESS FUEL,THUS LESS TAX DOLLARS SPENT ON JET FUEL.THANK YOU!
MY GENIUS BRO YO @ 18
ANSWER MY QUESTION THEN. (DOOFUS IS CATATONIC OR SOMETHING).
WAS THE CROSS-DRESSER A LIBERAL OR A CONSERVATIVE?
By the way Roger is today what Paul Joseph Goebbels was in past the present day Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for the Socialist Democrats Party. His Nazi friends taught him the trade when he visited them in jail.
YOS I HEAR THAT THE LINES ARE SHORT GOING INTO CANADA AT THE BLAINE CROSSING NOW WOULD BE A GREAT TIME FOR YOU AND THE FAMILY TO MAKE THE MOVE GO FOR GUSTO BRO
Wow. Roger leaves town, and all the wingnuts come out of hiding. You folks must be really scared of that poor old bunnyrabbit.
I wish that I had as much time as Roger to show you wingnuts for the absurd cowards that you are, but he’s retired, and I still have to work for a living.
However, since Roger isn’t here to say it, I’ll do the honors.
klake is a Nazi.
MY WINGNUT BRO YO @ 21
I DO APPRECIATE CANADA AND WHAT THE PEOPLE THERE HAVE CREATED FOR THEMSELVES.
BUT I PREFER TO STAY HERE IN MY NATIVE COUNTRY THE USA TO FIX UP THE GODAWFUL MESS DUMBSHITS LIKE YOU HAVE MADE OF THE LAND OF MY BIRTH.
.3
Thanks for again proving my point. We need more publican wingnuts like you comparing GW Bush to Bill Clinton. It completely destroys your talking pionts and you’re just too stoooooopid to realize it. So please keep it up. Thanks.
@ 18-
Keep up those tired old lies, they’re all you’ve got.
“Speaking for the Bush administration in an April 18 letter, Phillip Larsen, the director of the White House Office of Administration, told the GAO that it could not document any damage or repairs.”
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/arti.....169709.DTL
Mark “the redneck” Goldstein bloviated:
Wall to wall ads is exactly right. KKKVI seems to run a lot of ads for various kinds of diet ripoffs and investment scams. They promoted the hell out of Wade Crook back in the day, before he was sentenced to several years in federal lockup.
I’m more interested in how losers like Kirby “meaner than catshit” Wilbur can get radio gigs. What are his qualifications? That he was a crooked real estate salesman at some point? Wait, I forgot, that qualifies him to be governor if Dino “cheap and mean” Rossi is to be believed.
Amen, brother! Hours of commercial-free radio of substance. CBC Radio One comes to mind immediately. It’s so nice to get a perspective other than “why do President Bush’s detractors hate America and want the terrorists to win?” Other good bets include BBC, PRI and Air America.
BJ @ 12 – I got xm because they used boeing satellites, didn NOT carry librual propaganda NPR, and DID carry nascar.
But really, ya can’t go wrong with either XM or sirius… you don’t hafta torture yourself with “robin and maynard” ever agin…
Yass – So tell me… how is air murka doing in the free market? How are their ratings?
Oh yeah… and are they still stealing money from poor chirrens in NYC to pay the bills?
Thought so…
Here’s the deal… the free market solves all problems. If there’s REALLY money to be made, you can bet your ass somebody will provide the product or service. What you guys REFUSE to admit is that murka is fundamentally a Conservative place, and your european socialist shit is NEVER gonna be mainstream here. NEVER. Not gonna happen. EVER. Even if The Smartest Woman In The World is POTUS or Empty Skirt Obama or The Inventor of The Internet.
Not gonna happen.
Get it?
Hooooo! That thar’s a good ‘un! Har har har har har!
Hoooooooo! That’n’s even better! Har har har har har har!
Thanks for the chuckle.
Diversity in Seattle means from left to farther left, from dumb to dumber, from the Times to the P-I. Bland homogeneity? Read our stupid evil-twin “news”papers, if you can gag them down, then go gag.
Maybe Goldy’s too young to remember (it’s difficult to discuss the age & inexperience of someone like Goldy who was the unfortunate victim of post-birth abortion) when all of America’s Big Media, BM, were like Seattle’s Big Media. They wallowed almost obliviously in fashionable leftwing fascist enthusiasms while throwing in, for comic relief, the equivalent of a goofy Blethen endorsement or a goofy Randy Hearst editorial. Media were as monochrome as Mayberry was then or Seattle is now. NBC ABC CBS told us what they thought we needed to know for our own good, dammit, and then they told us “that’s the way it is.”
Rush, wrong about almost everything since 1994, was right-on right that we were being twisted and manipulated by the Goldycrat media monopoly. Thanks, Rush, for trying to give us some doctrinal fairness, and thanks for diversity. AM radio rules, so of course you uncloseted tyrants want to change the rules.
You still have NBC ABC CBS. You have CNN MSNBC NPR, the Post and the P-I and the Times (Seattle) and the Times (LA) and the Times (New York). You even have Michael Savage’s wife, Dan, and you have Stephanie Miller. Isn’t that more than enough?
Amazing, isn’t it? The worse the publicans look, the more shrieking trolls we get here insisting that their fantasies are real.
It’s called “denial”.
Shrieking, wailing, FLAMING denial. They will prevail. The world will recognize the holiness of their position and they will triumph.
Watch for pork passing overhead.
Mark The Redneck Goldstein again bloviated:
Does it now?
Has the free market provided us with a quality operating system to run most of the world’s computers? It has, has it? You’re talking about the execrable, bug-laden, security-hole-infested monstrosity that is Windows?
How has the free market done with health care? Number one in the world in spending but 37th in outcomes. Every civilized country on this planet, including every country on the list above us, has a fully funded national health care system. It is precisely because the “free market” has not been given control of health care in those places that they spend less and and have better outcomes. Now, say again please, all after “free market solves everything”?
And that is precisely why high culture is reserved for places like PBS and NPR. America is a fatuous, ignorant, culturally and intellectually bankrupt backwater whose citizens only care about who Paris Hilton isn’t fucking this week. Anything that involves, you know, critical thinking or rational thought causes the average American’s atrophied brain to freeze up.
That explains why you (I’m assuming) voted against your economic self-interest and elected Bush. Since you’re not of the top 0.01 percent of wage earners, you had no business voting for him. Because of him and his buddies, you have lost ground under this administration. You are not getting ahead, but are working harder and harder just to slow the pace of the ground you’re losing.
You’re absolutely right, “murka” is a fundamentally conservative (read: hide-bound, closed-minded, unable to accept new ideas) place. Hell, half of my countrymen think the Earth is 6,000 years old. See above re: ignorant. Also see above re: countries with national health care do better. But don’t let me confuse you with the facts. You just go right on listening to Rush Limbaugh and his OxyContin-induced rantings.
You’re absolutely right. And that’s why the smart money is looking outside of the U.S. for innovation. That’s why I’m moving to a new country at the first opportunity. I’d be only too happy to accept your inevitable offer to help me pack.
Incidentally, at least you’re honest in admitting that you’re a redneck. Your views lay bare your ignorance and lack of education or acculturation.
Mark The Redneck Goldstein scrawled with a crayon on a piece of tobacco juice-stained onion skin paper:
So you’re one of those rednecks who drools all over himself while watching rolling billboards drive 500 miles in a circle? What a corporate tool you are. You must get a chubby for the virile young men who drive the cars. It’s okay, we understand. Stop torturing yourself. It is not true that there exists a god that is going to send you to hell for all eternity. That’s a myth.
For fuck’s sake, though, learn to spell and capitalize. NASCAR is an acronym. And I think you meant “liberal” not “libural.” This is what happens when you go to the public schools the GOP defunded to give the money to their rich friends, the religious schools run by pederastic sadists.
I don’t hate you. I pity you. I see that you now represent the mainstream of the country of my birth. And it is for that reason that I want no further part of it and that I must leave.
“I want no further part of it and that I must leave …”
Not a moment too soon, don’t let Ellis Island hit you in the ass on your way out, and I’ll join you if thick Hillary gets elected.
(Don’t forget to take a fistful of Steinbrueck t-shirts for foreign exchange …)