Public Interest,the Airwaves and immigration
01/02/2007
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Brad Krantz recently opined:
Mr. Brimelow was not CENSORED, in any sense of the word. As a well-educated man, I'm sure you realize that censorship has to do with the First Amendment, which refers to the government preventing speech. As a talk show host on a radio station privately owned, I am under absolutely no obligation to allow anyone I don't want on my show, nor any ideas if I decide I don't want them.

Actually, Mr. Krantz appears confused here. First off, not just anyone can get access to the "megaphone" he has in the way of access to radio spectrum. In the process of allocating spectrum, very real decisions about how political discourse will take place are being made. The radio station he works for thus has very real obligations. They don't "own" the radio spectrum they use, but are granted the use of that spectrum with the expectation they serve the public interest.

The notion of "public interest" is explained here

Federal oversight of all broadcasting has had two general goals: to foster the commercial development of the industry and to ensure that broadcasting serves the educational and informational needs of the American people

Although the present state of talk radio in the US may not reflect this, the responsibilities of folks like Mr. Krantz go much deeper than just keeping the owners of their radio station-and their advertisers- happy. For example, there are real legal issues in how a station can use its influence to support a particular political candidate or ideology.

Personally, I think Peter Brimelow is just too dang "nice" here. He seems to mainly want VDARE.COM to be treated like other news sources of similar editorial stature and quality(and unlike myself has avoided advocating expropriation of concentrations of wealth accumulated with the aid of illegal immigration). I tend to think that the tendency of American media to grossly distort the range of public opinion and debate on issues like immigration is evidence of an enormous need for media reform—and reason for fundamentally changing the way commercial radio and television is regulated. These changes need to significantly increase the entre of the average American to the media —and limit the autonomy of the owners of networks and stations to arbitarily choose programming.

How, this might be done is likely to be complex-but I think a Citizens' Assembly appointed for the task of starting investigation on how to democratize media access and control would be very worthwhile. I fully expect the owners of the radio station Mr. Krantz works for wouldn't be entirely happy with the results of such a process—and I expect many VDARE.COM readers would be pleasantly surprised the new management such a process might give folks like Mr. Krantz.

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