Ann Compton might have a sliver of backbone, but the rest of the networks maintain their groveling posture/jellyfish mein when forced to even consider upseting dear leader:
NBC won't run ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary because, in the words of the NBC's commercial clearance department, "they are disparaging to President Bush."
Glenn Greenwald has more.
And, while ABC isn't technically in on this one, Greenwald points out they've done similar things on other occasions. Hence, I added them to the mix.
As for the Faux network, well...shit. To be honest, I forgot about their sorry asses. Try to imagine their banner/logo in the mix.
What's galling about this is that I'll bet a lot of people STILL don't realize that networks do this ALL THE TIME. Free speech issues aside, even PAID speech is subject to all sorts of limits. Limits that rarely get exposed, much less debated...in no small part because the very media that should air such a debate is busily clamping down on who's worthy enough to spend what most people think is equally green money to run something on, ahem, the PUBLIC airwaves.
Oh--and as most of y'all probably already know, quaint notions like the Fairness Doctrine were gutted/done away with during the Reagan era (you know, I almost added a disparging remark about Reagan and Alzheimers, but I thought better of it, lest I be compared to a certain impotent, pill popping wretch).
Free speech without ACCESS to outlets like the networks is, well, about as effective as my humble little blog (still getting QUALITY as opposed to QUANTITY of readers, I'd like to think).
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