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CENSORS, THE

Columbia Journalism Review, Jul/Aug 2004 by Cooper, Gloria

New patterns in opinion control

When the Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of sixty-two television stations in thirty-nine media markets around the country, ordered its eight ABC affiliates not to air "The Fallen," the April 30 Nightline special in which Ted Koppel read aloud the names of the 721 U.S. military members killed up to that point in Iraq, it was hardly an isolated incident. Rather, it was but the latest in a series of political purgings by media behemoths that began seventeen months before, at the onset of the war. Let us connect the dots.

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* March 2003. Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, tells fans during a London concert, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," the group's home state. Cumulus Media, owner of 262 radio stations around the country, stops all of its forty-two country outlets from playing Dixie Chicks music. At a Cumulussponsored war rally in Shreveport, Louisiana, a bulldozer symbolicly demolishes a pile of Dixie Chicks CDs. Many of the 1,225 radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications also ban the Dixie Chicks; some also sponsor and promote rallies for the war.

* April 2003. At Clear Channel's WMYI in Greenville, South Carolina, Roxanne Walker, representing the liberal view on a political talk show, argues that the war in Iraq is not justified; on April 7, she is fired. At Clear Channel's KFYI in Phoenix, Charles Goyette, host of a drivetime talk show, welcomes to the discussions critics of the war; his contract is not renewed.

* February 2004. Shock jock Howard Stern, who appears in six Clear Channel markets, touts Al Fraiiken's anti-Bush book and confides to his eight-and-a-half million listeners, "I think this guy is a religious fanatic and a Jesus freak - I think I'm one of those 'anybody but Bush' guys now." Three days later, Clear Channel suspends Stern. On April 8, Clear Channel permanently drops his program from those markets.

* May 2004. A documentary by Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, which has been financed by Miramax and was to have been distributed by Disney, Miramax's parent, is ready for release. The film is critical of Bush and the war. Disney refuses to distribute it.

In the wake of the Sinclair squall, several members of Congress called for the FCC to investigate; the Disney debacle prompted Frank Lautenberg, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, to call for a Commerce Committee hearing on "the disturbing pattern of politically based corporate censorship of the news media and the entertainment industry." But these amounted to little more than rhetorical tranquilizers for the anxious; the chance of an official inquiry under the present administration is not one to hold your breath for. Meanwhile, Sinclair stands, unbowed, on its constitutional right to choose the messages it wishes to send. Certain in the rectitude of all things Bush, the company dismissed "The Fallen" as an unmitigated antiwar effort that it wanted nothing to do with.

The motives of the others are more ambiguous. Did Clear Channel dump Stern because it found his anti-Bush views distasteful - the timing looks suspicious - or because of the astronomical fines against his obscenities that loomed in the FCC's post-Super Bowl purification crusade? And did its squelching of the Dixie Chicks have anything to do with the FCC's pending decision on how many radio stations a company would be allowed to own? Did Disney dump Fahrenheit 9/11 because the company was affronted by its anti-Bush stance, or because being associated with the film might have jeopardized the tax breaks Disney enjoys on its various ventures in Florida, where a Bush brother reigns? Were the actions of Cumulus Media the constitutionally protected expression of the company's political sympathies or, as the company's CEO was quoted as saying about its Dixie Chicks decision, had it "pulled the plug out of deference to our listeners"? And anyway, weren't those listeners only exercising their constitutionally protected right to make their feelings heard? Clear Channel's line was much the same: the demands of grass-roots outrage simply could not be ignored. Disney sounded a similar theme, suggesting that its dissociation from the Michael Moore film was prompted by the need to avoid alienating any of the politically diverse families that are Disney's bread and butter. What it all came down to then, if the corporations are to be believed, was not politics so much as profits; not ideology so much as greed (though of course the two are far from mutually exclusive, as some of the companies' political contributions may suggest).

Whatever the cause, the effect was the same: the stifling of dissent. Granted, the Dixie Chicks' music was still available on non-Clear Channel airwaves; "The Fallen" was picked up and seen on non-Sinclair stations in all but a couple of cities; Fahrenheit 9/11 is being shown all over the world through other, non-Disney arrangements; the voice of Howard Stern can still be heard in the land. But only the most Panglossian among us can doubt that in this fevered political climate more silencings will come - or that, as the giants continue to merge and acquire, merge and acquire, and merge and acquire again, alternate routes of equivalent reach will grow harder and harder to come by.

CENSORS, THE

Columbia Journalism Review, Jul/Aug 2004 by Cooper, Gloria

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