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As a well-known author I am often asked to do radio talk interviews. I began doing this about eight years ago with the publication of my first book dealing with politics and 20th century history The Satori and the New Mandarins. From 1997 to about 2003 I averaged 20 shows a month, an effort that greatly helped sell my book. To date I have done well over 300 shows often as repeat performances with talk show hosts that liked my commentaries. I am sure that all of you remember Hillary Clinton's diatribe about "the vast right wing conspiracy against my husband". At Hillary suggestion Bill had some people look at this talk show phenomenon and make recommendations as to how the political left might be successful in shutting this annoyance down. Out of these deliberations at cabinet level came a law called The American Communications Act. This law has performed so well for the political left that they have considered expanding it into other venues. The Communications Act allows media conglomerates to buy up independent radio stations in any market venue up to the point of total radio monopoly within certain market segments. In other word buy up all your local radio stations. Since 2005 this has resulted in diminished discourse, elimination of local content, and the buy-out of over 1000 independent radio stations in America. AM radio for all intent and purpose has been killed by this legislation. To make you understand the terrible outcome of this law let me explain that I had developed a list of just over 130 radio talk show hosts by 1993. As I came out with a new book in 2004 Our Political Systems I did a mailing, just a few months after passage of the new law, to all those hosts asking them to consider me for their show relating to my new book. Of the over 130 letters that went out 55 came back as unable to locate, letters from 22 others indicated that their stations were no longer on the air, 15 had retired, 0nly 38 were left on the air and in business. The Communications Act had done its job amicably. Local station still in business had their mundane programming piped in from NYC, LA, or Chicago; local content was eliminated, as was a social or political commentary not in tune with the mega-networks, which belong almost exclusively to political leftists. It has become downright difficult to get on radio for most authors unless they repeat the pabulum of accepted norms. That the entire media is out of tune with the greater part of the American public is a well-known fact. Our leading TV networks have been losing market shares for decades to the point where today they are a mere shadow of what they represented in the 60's and 70's. Just like voting, the average American has come to the conclusion that the media and elections are "fixed" issue upon which they have little or no genuine impute. The second issues of radio is the concerted effort by Ozone Al Gore to develop a radio talk network of the political left (progressive Democrats, i.e. socialists) and out of this came Radio America. Promoted by the NY Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and other fish-wrap. The planned network should have been a smashing success- it has flopped miserably. But as the famous columnist and commentator said, "Now Here's the rest of the Story!" Like all proposals of the political left they could not find sufficient sponsors, or for that matter talented people who would speak out of personal conviction on issues. Furthermore the American listener having been inundated with all the same leftist crap from dawn to dusk by the major networks was less than interested in hearing more of the same. In order to gain listeners they needed money, for advertising and to pay the outrageous salaries of the promoters, and staff. You must understand that in the real world businessmen must convince a loaning agency (bank) that they have a viable business plan that will lead to success and profit for the business. Socialists don't work that way; they borrow money that in most cases they have no intention of repaying. It seems that Air America (which just by chance happens also to be the name of the CIA air wing) those liberal compassionate, supportive people went to a children's charity and borrowed $ 875,000. They have not paid any of it back. Seems that an Air America executive was also a director of the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club from which they borrowed the money. Their chances of re-paying the loan are very small, considering that their entire syndicated network only consists of six radio stations. This scandal, and that is exactly what it is, has been totally ignored by the mainstream media the very same people who propagated the new network a year before as front-page news. When we compare that with their handling of the Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reily incidences on their front covers, and with TV news segments of over 5 minutes I am left amazed. But then it is fair to say that this author in no longer astonished at anything done by our media. Yesterday I viewed a program on the History Channel on TV that was touted as the beginning to the 20th century history of Iraq that completely omitted the Iran Iraq war, which had lasted for many years. To make matters worse another channel had a program about Iraq in which they pictured American troops armed with AK 47 and using Russian RPG's. NPR's Nina Totenberg from the very far left reported that the levies break in New Orleans was the fault of Republican budget cuts, when in actual fact it had been opposed by the black Democrat mayor and endlessly litigated by the Sierra Club. She then went on in a frenzied diatribe about the need for a special Katrina tax. Diane Sawyer of ABC's Good Morning America then picked up the ball asking Dubeu if he was going to levy a new Katrina tax. Eleanor Clift another leftist curmudgeon from Newsweek then spoke of the "upside of Katrina", which in her screwed up imagination was the end of Republican tax cuts, and talk of Social Security privatizations. It goes on... Jonathon Alter of Newsweek in a TV appearance suggested that America required another New Deal, and I thought communism and socialism were dead issues. CBS not wanting to be left out of the picture, especially after the forced retirement of their major news anchor, brought on Nancy Giles who introduced the race issue into the New Orleans catastrophe. Lets just face it people who behave like animals should be treated as animals. Pictures of individuals with the wrong name are commonplace the list is endless. Every day the situation in the media becomes worse. My local fish wrap has so many factual errors, misquotes, and false propaganda that it cannot even be considered a realistic news source. When I have returned copies of the paper with over 20 corrections just in section one I did not get a response. We are here not speaking of English, and punctuation but of misstated, misreported and false items as published. TV newsreaders display a lack of understanding on issues and language that reflect a media that is more interested in political correctness gender and racial balance than in their job-ability to report news. Yesterday a friend in Tampa sent me an 1896 ninth grade exam from Kansas it covered math, English, science, algebra, and geography, I would bet my bottom dollar that not one journalist could pass the test. What can we expect from news sources if the product they work with is woefully uneducated? Page URL: http://www.kriegbooks.com/radio_talk.html Author hereby grants permission to e-mail this commentary, in its entirety and including the Web page URL, to those interested in receiving the information. Please e-mail for Adrian's PERMISSION in advance, to post, reprint, or reproduce this article for any other format of publication, electronic or otherwise. |
