Bill Clinton is not "taking on the corporate media." Bill made the MSM what it is today!

[IndianaGreen]

Those suffering from Clinton nostalgia seem to suffer also from short-term memories. Bill Clinton is the father of media concentration!

Clear Channel radio stations organized "Support the Troops" rallies which were nothing more than propaganda to get public behind the invasion of Iraq.

One big happy channel?

The Telecommunications Reform Act handed over control of the radio airwaves to a chosen few. Will TV be next?

Editor's note: Second in a series on the consolidation of power and ownership in the media landscape.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

June 28, 2001 | Pomp and circumstance ruled at the signing into law of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Held inside the rotunda of the Library of Congress, a bill-signing first, the ceremony featured an array of bipartisan legislators praising the comprehensive package. Newly appointed Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich heralded the act as a jobs and knowledge bill. Vice President Al Gore stressed how public interest was central to the telecommunications revolution.

After speaking by videoconference with students at Calvin Coolidge High School in Washington, Gore watched as President Clinton signed the bill using the same pen President Eisenhower did in 1957 to sign the bill that created the interstate highway system, which had been written by ex-Sen. Gore, D-Tenn., the vice president's father. Clinton then used a digital pen to sign an electronic copy to be posted on the Internet.

In his remarks that day Clinton boasted that the "landmark legislation fulfills my administration's promise to reform our telecommunications laws in a manner that leads to competition and private investment, promotes universal service and provides for flexible government regulation."

Five years later nobody doubts that the law was indeed a landmark -- not only because congressional efforts to update the country's vast communications industries for the first time since the 1930s had themselves dragged on through the '80s and well into the '90s but also because the Telecom Act, as it became known, unleashed unprecedented deregulation and media consolidation, among the most pronounced in American history.

Nowhere has that consolidation been more acutely felt than in radio -- where just two companies, Clear Channel and Infinity, now dominate the nation's commercial radio stations. The result, many longtime radio industry observers feel, has been the degradation of commercial radio as a creative, independent medium.

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/28/telecom_dereg/index.html

[IndianaGreen]

1. Media and the Election

This 2004 article is still relevant today.

Published on Monday, November 22, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Media and the Election
by Jeff Cohen

We can thank Clinton's Telecommunications "Reform" Act of 1996 for the right-wing Clear Channel's dominance of radio and for the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group becoming the biggest TV chain in the country. Clear Channel owned 40 radio stations before the Telecom bill and 1200 soon after. Sinclair had 11 stations before the bill, and now has 62 TV stations.

TV news is dominated by 5 corporations.

NBC, CNBC, MSNBC are owned by GE. When I worked at MNSBC, some of the constraints imposed on the "Donahue" show were the result of GE ownership and a conservative NBC boss who'd come out of GE Financial and GE's plastics division.

Fox News is owned by the right-wing Rupert Murdoch (and News Corporation), and does Murdoch's ideological bidding.

ABC is owned by Disney. You'll remember that CEO Michael Eisner said that Disney wouldn't distribute "Fahrenheit 911" because Disney "didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year." Eisner's comment was allowed to pass only because so few people realize that Disney is one of the biggest purveyors of political opinion this election year and every recent election year -- almost all of it right-wing political opinion. Each day in major radio markets nationwide, Disney radio stations serve up hour after hour of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, etc. etc.

CBS News, owned by Viacom, got taken in by forged documents -- and then censored accurate reporting critical of Bush, apparently at the behest of Viacom's CEO, Sumner Redstone. Six weeks before the election Redstone endorsed Bush on behalf of Viacom: "From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1122-31.htm

[still_one]

3. It probably represents the greatest threat to our Republic /nt

[FreakinDJ]

2. Telecom Act partially to blame for Iraq war

If not for corporate shills disguised as media parroting Rove talking points in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq we would not be there.

[IndianaGreen]

4. and for the MSM becoming megaphones for Bush regime

No wonder many Americans think Iraq was behind 9-11 and that Iran is a terrorist state.

[FreakinDJ]

7. Exactly - well said indianagreen

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. K&R!

[mtnsnake]

6. I don't care if he pulled the media out of his hat. He took them on & now they're ganging up on him

and you're turning your back on him out of sheer spitefullness and overwhelming bitterness, but what else is new.

[IndianaGreen]

11. The Clintons are manipulating the media to destroy Obama, and the MSM is happy to go along

because they think, as their corporate owners believe, that Hillary will be easier to beat by GOP than Obama.

This is also the reason MSM has purposely ignored or marginalized Edwards. They are fearful of his message.

[flpoljunkie]

16. Remember when Sumner Redstone said Kerry would be a better prez, but Bush would be better for Viacom

-during an interview with Tina Brown, former Vanity Fair editor, on MSNBC in 2004. Tina seemed aghast Sumner would freely admit this.

[Bread and Circus]

13. You just don't understand the issues and what BC did in terms

of telecom deregulation.

[Armstead]

14. And the Clintons' silence on the issue overall

The only time they have even acknowledged the issue is when it suits their own purposes.

[robbedvoter]

8. Really? I thought it was Teagan, the think tanks, the purchase by corporations

Richard Mellon Scaife, the Arkansas project....But you guys wouldn't say anything about reagan!
And that law - voted by GOP congress.

[Armstead]

12. Regan started the job -- Bill and Bush finished it

[Bread and Circus]

15. Same with NAFTA and fast tracking our labor overseas.

People just don't understand how devastating the Clinton Presidency was because they haven't really read critically. They focus on the scandals but the real Clinton legacy is further pushing corporate power and liberty at the expense of individuals. He was part of the Conservative agenda, not opposed to it.

[IndianaGreen]

17. We are still paying for the Clinton legacy, at a very personal level

Yesterday it was announced that another Indiana factory will be closing at year's end. The jobs are going to Mexico! The company boasted of saving millions of dollars. I am sure that those aboard Hillary's Investor Class Express bus will see their portfolios increase in value, just as they did after NAFTA.

Meanwhile, the working class continues to suffer, and the capitalists continue to prosper.

[Armstead]

18. Just one of the "little problems" with corporate free trade

The unemployed workers can just get retrained for other jobs that don't exist or which will shortly be outsourced.

[Armstead]

9. God I wish this were a Big Issue in the current campaigns

IMO it is a core issue, and Bill Clinton was one of the major culprits in accelerating the mess we have today with the Totalitarian Corporate Media.

[IndianaGreen]

19. It began with the repeal of Fairness Doctrine

which I noticed none of the top two candidates are talking about, anymore than no Democrat in recent history has spoken about repealing Taft-Hartley.

Clinton's 1996 Telecom Act was the coup the grace, and accelerated media consolidation which has brought us the current mess we find ourselves in, including the morphing of news into entertainment shows.

[Bread and Circus]

10. Thank you Indiana Green. BC is the godfather of telecom deregulation