From: Bob Davis (earthjuice_at_prodigy.net)
Date: 2003-05-15 08:11:05
This might just be the best thing yet that I have read concerning Clear Channel!
I realize that for some of you this falls into the category known as "white folks binnis".
However always keep in mind that Clear Channel is the owner of most of the "so called" Black
radio stations in the United Stares....
They represent in my mind a "Clear and Present Danger"
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http://www.counterpunch.org/landau05132003.html
CounterPunch
May 13, 2003
Censors and Ideological Pitbulls:
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
By Saul Landau
Swiss novelist Max Frisch described technology as "the knack
of so arranging a world that we need not experience it."
Since Frisch died in 1991, just before the "information age"
reached its commercial maturity, he missed some zany
interpretations of his wisdom. Greg Collins, a senior vice
president of Reynolds and Reynolds Company, offers his
understanding of Frisch in Ward's Dealer Business, Feb 1,
2003.
"Unfortunately," Collins laments, "many businesses still
approach technology from the 'Industrial Age' mentality of
days past." Collins' future orientation refers to
businessmen using technology to improve business processes,
not just to reduce their labor force. "Once the truth is
known, it's remarkable how effective people, processes and
technology can be" at enhancing corporate profits. Frisch
turns uneasily in his grave. Truth and corporate profits go
together like Tabasco sauce on vanilla ice cream. Indeed,
modern corporations profit from massive fabrication about
the products they peddle just as media giants make money
from lying in the hourly "news" reports they scream at us.
Indeed, we have become accustomed to listening to lies
masquerading as truth. Each day we receive thousands of
commercial, political and religious "messages" designed to
make us do or buy something we don't need to do or buy.
I shake my head in confusion just from living in this Mother
of all Information ages. If I turn my radio dial from
classical music to "all news when it happens," I receive
machine gun blasts of mis and dis-information. From the TV,
radio, newspapers, billboards and computer emerge
manipulative words, pictures, (spam) sounds and symbols
aimed at converting my organism into an advanced purchasing
instrument. No one has yet invented the equivalent of the
bullet proof vest for the brain, to protect against the
cartridges of blather fired at our cerebral cortex.
I assume advertisers and news fabricators (those who invent
the lies and those who report them) count on rapid temporal
atrophy among the receivers of false information. While the
US military still zealously searches Iraq for even a faint
trace of a weapon of mass destruction or the scantiest Al
Qaeda connection to Saddam Hussein, I can actually feel my
brain filter growing overtaxed with bullpucky. Terrorism,
orange alerts, snipers, SARS! Who said what, when, where?
Huh? How much of my pension did I lose in the market today?
Will I still have my job when I get to work? The messages of
anxiety penetrate beyond any "facts."
The pushers of commodities, services and ideology have
certainly used technology to arrange the world -- not
satisfactorily mind you -- into commercially designed
messages. Digital media beams them by radio and TV waves to
your living room, bedroom, bathroom, as well as to your
favorite restaurant, bar and car.
The highway designers must factor billboards into their
master environmental plans. Who notices if the messages
clash violently with the trees and sky? Gaudy poster art,
duplicated by advanced modern copying techniques, distracts
the driver with prurient sales offers of products ranging
from "gentlemen's clubs" to lite beer. These unsightly
sights merge with the car radio reverberations of ultra
right wing political and religious patter.
A man with a baritone voice claims to know Jesus Christ
personally. "Give Jesus Christ a chance," he exhorts his
listeners. He wants all of us to experience the born-again
Christian rapture like the Republican who occupies the White
House. The radio missionary sounds serious. The radio
station owners are very serious -- about undertaking the
Lord's work and seeking ever greater profits (market
shares). Take the Clear Channel radio stations. On the air,
they offer super dumbed-down religiously tinged versions of
reality. Off the air, in their corporate boardrooms, the
media executives engage in very sophisticated business
practices. The hard-rock material foundations for
broadcasting church sermons come replete with off-the-air
business conspiracies. On the air: Simplify life for the
listeners. Turn to Jesus! Vote Republican! Wave the flag!
Clear Channel literally fogs the airwaves with ultra right
slogans that appeal to the fundamentalist white, Christian
soldiers of God. Now, shudder, Clear Channel plans to
capture the Spanish speaking radio audience as well. They
await only a tiny change of rules by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC). Clear Channel expects the
FCC to approve its nearly $2.5 billion deal that would,
according to Eric Boehlert in the April 24, 2003Salon, "link
the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, the leader in
Spanish-language radio stations in the U.S., and Univision
Communications -- already the market leader in
Spanish-language TV, cable and music." This new entity
"would create a new company that controls nearly 70 percent
of Spanish-language advertising revenue in the United
States." Currently, Clear Channel owns 26 percent of
Hispanic Broadcasting.
Univision uses formula programming, flag-waving news and
public affairs shows, stale music templates remixed with
electronic technology and very loud commercials. Put
together two financial powerhouses in their world of
programming mediocrity and you have an ideal vehicle for
Messianic Republican propaganda.
Boehlart recalls that "President Bush even gave Univision
his first national television interview following his
inauguration. More recently, congressional Democrats have
grumbled over Univision's fawning coverage of Miguel
Estrada, the conservative -- and controversial -- judge
recently nominated by Bush to serve on the U.S. Court of
Appeals." Clear Channel stations openly advocate for
Republican causes. Indeed, one Democratic member of Congress
recently accused Clear Channel of blatantly skewing its war
coverage to favor the administration. Like the bombastic
Rush Limbaugh of the EIB media conglomerate, Clear Channel
has no apologies. Its executives proudly stand for the
values of George W. Bush.
But while Clear Channel talk show hosts and preachers pound
away at "family values," the corporate executives practice
their shark-like business plans. Family values in business
means that they expect FCC chair Michael Powell will behave
with the same servile values as his father, the servile
Secretary of State. They observed how the once dignified
Colin Powell bowed and scraped before the calumnies of his
imperial masters in foreign policy; so they expect his son
to cater to the needs of the right wing media oligopoly who
helped finance Bush's campaigns. Under Michael Powell's
tutelage, the FCC has already proposed new rules to
"deregulate" the dangerous near monopoly of TV and radio
ownership. If adopted, the new rules would tighten the
already strong hold that the five monster conglomerates have
over TV and radio networks.
Clear Channel executives expect the FCC to reinterpret the
"public interest" to mean a near monopoly over TV and radio
for their stations along with their ideological pal Rupert
Murdoch's Fox network, the electronic and defense titan
General Electric and the CNN patriots. Imagine these sources
as the "information" providers for the majority of
Americans. According to Boehlart, Clear Channel "took
advantage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996" to grow
from "40 stations then to approximately 1,200 stations
today, or roughly 970 more than its closest competitor."
If you're frightened by these figures, you've reacted
correctly. While liberals and progressives debate morality
and justice, the extreme right wing media moguls muscularly
push their simplistic nativism on the TV and radio waves and
seek ever more space to reach out with their revealed word
sandwiched of course between commercial messages so that
ever more Americans will get the messianic virus.
Politically, Clear Channel and Univision represent the
neo-conservative-fundamentalist Christian world view in both
the ideological and business sense.
Their power extends beyond politics, however. In Latin
music, Univision or Clear Channel can promote "their hits"on
"their stations." According to Boehlart, Clear Channel also
owns "37 television stations, 770,000 billboards and
unmatched lists of venues, promoters and tours to exert
control over the concert industry. Last year the company
sold 30 million concert tickets, or 26 million more than its
closest competitor."
With this kind of material power, Clear Channel can unleash
its ideological pit bulls on the air. Talk show host Glenn
Beck sponsored "Rallies for America" as Bush sought signs of
public backing for his impending war to counter antiwar
rallies that had successfully received some news coverage.
Clear Channel not only acted as impresario for the pro war
demonstrations, but heavily promoted these boring events on
its radio stations.
Boehlart reports that with Clear Channel approval one Denver
disc jockey "suggested that then antiwar Vermont Governor
Dean should be shot. Musicians got the political message
Clear Channel was sending. During a speech at the National
Press Club last week, actor and outspoken antiwar activist
Tim Robbins told reporters, 'A famous middle-aged
rock-and-roller called me last week to thank me for speaking
out against the war, only to go on to tell me that he could
not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear
Channel.' 'They promote our concert appearances,' he said.
'They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't
come out against this war.'"
Can watching TV produced by such intimidators lead to
creativity? Watching for a few hours, I concluded that my
undergraduate students make more interesting telenovelas
than the Spanish language soaps on Univision. The
programming that Latinos receive and what they will get in
the near future as Clear Channel and Univision perform their
kinky business marriage may make the "Jerry Springer Show"
and "Cheaters" seem highly intellectual.
Highbrows may sneer at TV in general or claim that they
watch only PBS yawn but this will not defeat the tasteless
and "friendly fascism" (as Bertram Gross called it in his
1982 book by that name) of our age. Media moguls have used
technology to arrange values to suit their commercial
proclivities: want what you don't need; need what you don't
want; salute and wave the flag and give what's left of your
mind to Jesus and George W. Bush. Yes, Max Frisch died
before technology had rearranged the media world so as to
completely vitiate experience.
--- Saul Landau's film IRAQ: VOICES FROM THE STREETS is distributed by Cinema Guild, 800-723-5522. He teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He can be reached at: landau_at_counterpunch.org Copyright (c) 2003 CounterPunch. All Rights Reserved.