Day: 5/19/2008

Barack Obama Is Serious About Anti-Trust

Posted by on May 19, 2008 at 5:14 pm. 8 Comments :

In a statement Sunday at a campaign stop, Barack Obama made it clear that he does not want to continue the Bush policy of ignoring, or advancing, corporate collusion, consolidation, and other anti-competitive activity.

Obama: “We’re going to have an antitrust division in the Justice Department that actually believes in antitrust law. We haven’t had that for the last seven, eight years.”

Obama specifically cited the media as an example of an area that warranted scrutiny with regard to anti-trust behavior, although the scope of his comment was much broader. He has previously addressed media consolidation via his support of the Media Ownership Act of 2007, and an op-ed he co-authored with Sen. John Kerry:

“In recent years, we have witnessed unprecedented consolidation in our traditional media outlets. Large mergers and corporate deals have reduced the number of voices and viewpoints in the media marketplace.”

Taking a hard-line on matters that impact the media’s ambition to grow unrestricted has historically proven to be fraught with risk. Ask Howard Dean. If Obama intends to pursue this issue in the campaign, and in the White House, he better be prepared for the battle. Liebling’s lament that, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” has evolved in the electronic era into, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own a massive, vertically integrated, publishing, broadcasting, and Internet monopoly.”

The media can be a dangerous enemy, and any effort to take it on must be approached with an awareness of what’s at the other end of the tail you’re hanging onto.

Fox News On O’Reilly vs Olbermann: If You Stop, We’ll Stop

Posted by on May 19, 2008 at 10:17 am. NO Comments :

Howard Kurtz has a revealing backgrounder on the battle between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. O’Reilly, who has a superstitious aversion to saying Olbermann’s name, has directed his attacks at NBC, calling its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, “a “despicable human being.” He even blames Immelt for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. The sad reality is that Ailes, O’Reilly, and Fox News are far more culpable for the tragedy that is Iraq via their persistent disinformation and cheerleading for the war.

Kurtz reports on conversations between Fox News president Roger Ailes and NBC CEO, Jeff Zucker. Ailes is reported to have jumped in swinging at Zucker:

“Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

Unleash O’Reilly? Wouldn’t they need a permit from the Department of Animal Control for that? It’s interesting that Ailes openly asserts that he exercises editorial control over both O’Reilly’s program and the New York Post, for which he has no executive responsibility. NBC is to be lauded for their refusal to similarly impose such controls on Olbermann.

While Ailes is violating every tenet of journalistic independence, O’Reilly is behaving like the bully he is known to be. And worse, he is rapidly spinning into the Delusions of Grandeur Zone:

“That Immelt man answers to me. . . . That’s why I’m in this business right now, to get guys like that.”

O’Reilly’s claim to domination of GE’s CEO is both pathetic and laughable. The Factor averages about 2.5 million viewers a day. NBC Nightly News does three times that. The Today Show more than doubles O’Reilly’s numbers. The idea of Ailes and O’Reilly pushing NBC around makes no sense. But that never stopped O’Reilly before.

Now it appears that Ailes is already making good on his threats. The New York Post’s gossipy Page Six is asking whether the “notoriously odd” Olbermann is “on the verge of yet another professional meltdown?” That’s funny coming from the notoriously disreputable Post, and particularly Page Six, which has a history of publishing false items and hiring corrupt columnists.

John McCain’s All-Lobbyist Express

Posted by on May 19, 2008 at 1:04 am. 1 Comments :

The past few weeks has brought repeated announcements from the campaign of pseudo-maverick John McCain regarding the dismissal of staff members due to their lobbying activities. It’s not enough that McCain raises more money with the help of lobbyists than any other presidential candidate…

McCain Lobbyists

Nope, McCain also employs so many lobbyists that there seems to be a new one falling from the campaign tree every week. Amongst those having taken their leave so far are Doug Goodyear, Doug Davenport, Eric Burgeson, and Craig Shirley. The latest casualty is the campaign’s national finance co-chairman, Thomas Loeffler. Hanging low on the branch are super-lobbyists Charlie Black and campaign manager Rick Davis. Media Matters has compiled a superb list of even more tainted McCain staffers.

And speaking of McCain staffers with ties to lobbying, the announcement of Loeffler’s departure was made by Tucker Bounds, McCain’s deputy communications director. Bounds recently left his position with the American Insurance Association to join McCain’s campaign. The AIA is the “leading property-casualty insurance trade organization, representing 350 insurers that write more than $123 billion in premiums each year.”

This relationship raises an interesting question: Since Bounds, the McCain spokesperson, is himself bound to a major lobbying group, will he be called upon to announce his own dismissal?