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December 01, 2003

Party-Controlled Radio Network: Hasn’t Anybody Noticed What An Affront This Is To The Tradition Of A Free Press?

This is some kind of a first for America:

Liberal Radio Group Says It Is Close to Acquiring 5 Stations

A Democratic investment group planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh says it is close to buying radio stations in five major cities.

Party-controlled media. Let’s think about that for a minute. The only difference between this and the state-controlled media of a dictatorship, is that the party controlling this media isn’t always in power.

If you work for one of these radio stations, you must have the opinions they order you to have. That’s the whole stated purpose of the network: to support the political views of the party. Free press? Ha! This press is specifically designed not to be free. This is the closest thing to state-controlled media in the history of this country.

There can be no free speech on these stations. This is media where it is explicit that if you express an opinion different from that of the party, you’ll get fired.

Radio isn’t a near-monopoly like broadcast TV and local newspapers. Every city has many radio stations. If the people wanted to hear more liberal pundits on the radio, they’d already be there. And the last thing people are going to want to listen to are hosts slavishly parroting opinions they’ve been told to have. My guess is these party-controlled radio stations are doomed.