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Connie Wilson - Sat 23 Aug 2008 06:31 PM CDT 
altheakims - Tue 19 Aug 2008 04:28 AM CDT 
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View Article  This Week in Media
 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 Senate confirmed 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.”

Click here to read the entire editorial.

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.


View Article  Raising the Issue of Impeachment
   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.

To read the rest of the article, click here:
 

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Rapid Response Network - Iowa

First responders to biased, imbalanced or factually inaccurate media coverage


Iowans for Better Local TV

*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.


Air America

*How to Bring Air America Radio to Your Local Community


The Counterpoint

*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


National

FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

*FAIR is a national media watch group that offers well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship


Media Matters for America

*Media Matters for America is an information center dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media