For much of the past year, Fox News squawking heads have bitterly complained that President Obama and his secret Muslim socialists have been plotting to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Never mind that no one in the administration has advocated this, no one in the Congress has drafted legislation or even held hearings on the subject, and the President himself is on record opposing it. Nevertheless, the panic on the part of the right-wing mouth brigades is threatening to cause a Prozac shortage.
The fear expressed by these mongers is that free speech would be obliterated and the Constitution rendered moot. And we all know that the right has been a stalwart proponent of free expression, just ask the Dixie Chicks and Bill Maher – and Jon, the YouTube news junkie who has posted hundreds of Fox News clips under the name of News1news.
While Jon’s clips contained no added commentary, they were often segments in which Fox News personnel looked foolish. This was not Jon’s doing. He just posted the unadulterated video and the FoxPods acted naturally. Fox News has filed numerous complaints against Jon for copyright infringement, and now, YouTube has suspended Jon’s account and removed his videos.
Why would Fox do this? It certainly wasn’t because they were upset that their content was being recorded and distributed without their permission. They have not bothered to remove other Fox-owned content posted by sycophantic fans like TheRightScoop, BuckFarack, GlennBeckDailyClips and ConservativeNewMedia. But the liberally-inclined News1news has been shut down.
Granted, News Corp has been making noises lately about securing their content by charging Internet users and barring Google indexing (although to date it has been all talk and no action). But clearly this is not a case of protecting intellectual property. The selective nature of Fox’s legal actions prove that they are only interested in squelching liberals. Well, that and erasing the record of their dubious broadcasts, replete with lies and embarrassing behavior that reeks of anger, racism and ignorance.
Recently, Glenn Beck lost his bid to shut down a satirical web site with the name: glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. The argument was that the public might confuse it with an official Beck site because the URL had the name Glenn Beck in it, along with 32 other characters. I wonder why they haven’t come after me. My URL has the name News Corp in it with only two additional letters. If they think the public is so stupid they would mistake the Beck parody site as official, what’s to stop those morons from thinking that I represent Rupert Murdoch?
What Fox is doing here is an unabashed curtailing of speech – THEIR OWN! They are prohibiting the dissemination of information and ideas based solely on political criteria. I wonder if the First Amendment advocates at Fox will now mount a campaign exposing Fox as anti-speech. What is it about their own broadcasts that they are seeking to hide from the public? Will Rush Limbaugh take to the air and lambaste Fox for destroying the American values of open dialogue and expression? If these hyper-alarmists are afraid of a Fairness Doctrine that exists only in their delusional imaginations, then shouldn’t they be doubly ascared of a cable news network that strongarms harmless citizens who are merely passing on the broadcasts of the very same cable news network?
Jon has created a new YouTube account under the name NewsPoliticsAmerica. Let’s see how long this one lasts.
