This Week in Media The
biggest news this week was all but ignored by the media. The
grassroots group Iowans for Better Local TV filed a formal Petition to
Deny with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), challenging the
renewal of a broadcast license to KGAN Channel 2 in Cedar Rapids, a
station owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The petition is
available online and the supporting affidavits and exhibits (close to
400 pages) will soon be available for reading at the Iowa City Public
Library.
Free Press was also active this week, filing a Formal Complaint with the FCC protesting “payola punditry.”
The
Senateconfirmed two members to the FCC, Michael Copps (returning) and
Deborah Tate (new), on Wednesday. The confirmations fill four of
the five seats with a nomination for the fifth expected early next year.
A great editorial by Marie Cocco details the terrible track record of the press in 2005.
“This has been an annus horribilis for the American press.
Other
years have produced more spectacular scandals — the serial fabrications
of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair come to mind. But
nothing resembles the depressing mixture of press failure,
brass-knuckled administration enforcement of secrecy, and blatant,
taxpayer-funded promotion of government propaganda we suffer now.
Add to
this the corporate slashing of newsroom budgets that decimates staffs
and diminishes what the remaining, overworked journalists can produce,
and you have a poisonous stew.”
And Free Press Minutes Media Minutes are here. Please
consider becoming more active in Media Reform as one of your
resolutions for the New Year. Sign up to be an Free Press
E-Activist here or join Iowans for Better Local TV by sending an email
to feedback@IBLTV.ORG.
Raising the Issue
of Impeachment By John Nichols
thenation.com
All I can say is, it's about time
someone on the Hill demands accountability from the crooks who have
hi-jacked our country! Thank you John Conyers! I can't believe the
Downing Street Memo wasn't enough to reveal their nefarious intentions
early on... to top that, it's now completely obvious (to me) that Bush,
Rove, Cheney and Libby all had a hand in the outing of the CIA
operative, Valerie Plame. When will it end?. The corporate media is
just as culpable for letting them get away with anything and
everything.
At a time when we are seeing an
attack on our civil liberties like never before and cuts are being made
to social programs who help the most vulnerable in our society, I find
it ironic that the radical right has been so concerned with keeping
"under God" in the pledge of allegiance and yet they conveniently
ignore the last sentence; "with liberty and justice for all." What an
oxymoran... Even Orwell would be amazed!
As
President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations
regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone
calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the
censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice
president.
U.S.
Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical
player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into
presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that
would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a
select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes
and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.
The
Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how
to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become
increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S.
Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saiying Monday, "Americans have
been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an
overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration
has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against
our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution." Even
Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter,
R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about mounting
potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the
president.
But
Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing,
or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use
all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and
vice president to account – up to and including the power to impeach
the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them
from office.
The
first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, H.Res.635, asks
that the Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether
members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before
receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war
intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and
used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.
The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
*IBLTV is a group of citizens from the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area who are concerned about the decline in the quality of local television. Fight local media consolidation, as it leads to an unaccountable medium that enriches itself while disregarding the need to serve the public good.
*The rational counter to 'The Point,' 'The Counterpoint' critiques and corrects the daily editorial by Sinclair Broadcasting's corporate vice president, Mark Hyman, that is broadcast on all Sinclair-owned television stations across the country
This Week in Media
Raising the Issue