FCC Pushes Ahead with ‘No Child Left Behind’ Fines
Sonshine, Sinclair Broadcast Group Fined for Airing The Right Side with Armstrong Williams, America's Black Forum, Respectively
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/18/2007 3:10:00 PM
The Federal Communications Commission issued its first fines for a station airing Armstrong Williams’ Department of Education-paid-for plugs for its “No Child Left Behind” initiative. Station-owner Sinclair Broadcast Group doesn’t plan to pay the fine and said it will take the commission to court.
The revelation of those payments caused a firestorm of criticism and a dressing-down of the DOE, and it led to payola complaints by Free Press at the FCC.
Remember the story? Armstrong Williams is a journalist, who was paid by the US government to promote their education agenda.
What does this mean? Is the US government giving up on the idea of propaganda? Have they pretty much finished their agenda, and now have no need to unduly influence journalists? Or is it that they now have enough journalists who will do it for free, so they no longer have to pay them?
No, none of that. It is that certain media moguls have found ways to profit directly from propaganda, so the need for taxpayer funding is obsolete.
Comments
We enter an interesting time, with a different sort of lame-duckism. One of the signs is the number of administration appointees who just now see the need to "move on to other things". Another is the items like this one, where federal agencies are beginning to stand up against administration policies, knowing that they are going to get away with it, because those still in power sense their reduced effectiveness, and are not going to stick their necks out.
And things will get even more interesting -- we've got a long way to go to Nov., 2008.
Posted by: Greg P | October 21, 2007 12:36 PM