Woo hoo! That unbelievable moron Bill O Reilly called me a “lunatic,” a “fascist,” and “anti-American.” Does this mean I have now arrived as a progressive?
I just got back from the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis – an amazing event. Paraphrasing McChesney and Nichols, “media reform” describes the broad goals of a movement that holds that consolidated ownership of broadcast and cable media, chain ownership of newspapers, and telephone and cable-company colonization of the Internet are bad for our culture and for democracy.
Apparently this is “lunacy” and “far left” to O Reilly, which shows that he is is a total jackass, and more importantly, that he is completely out of touch with the actual “center” of American politics. The only people who believe that big media are beneficial to the public are the people who own them and their sock puppets like O Reilly. Word.
Hey, if you want to shut down dissent then that makes you a facist. PERIOD!!
Comment by krissmith777 — June 11, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
I agree with you, but don’t mistake the object of media reform. One goal of the media reform movement is broaden the range of discourse, not to shut down dissent. It’s absolutely about cultivating possibilities for non-corporate media institutions and open communication infrastructures so that dissent is more widely available.
If anyone is guilty of squelching dissident voices it is O Reilly and Fox News. To them, anything that isn’t pro-free market capitalism and pro-administration is anti-American. O Reilly can have his say of course, but he shouldn’t pretend to be a journalist.
Comment by crain — June 11, 2008 @ 4:37 pm