Radley didn’t say he was a good choice, just better than the others.

This ruling does not limit personal freedom except in the most trivial roundabout way. Corporations are chartered by the government; their freedom is not equivalent to our freedom as human beings. There is no such thing as “corporate personal freedom”. Corporations have many privileges already, and there is no public need whatsoever served by giving them new protections.

As for your larger point, you’re dead on. I find it hilarious that the left (which dominates TV, print, and a large portion of online media) is so threatened by the ONE source (talk radio) that they don’t dominate and is constantly saying that the sources they DO dominate are right-wing even though it’s been proven by every ‘test for bias’ ever done. I’m glad I have the internet to get every possible position on subjects. I pity people who still can only get their news from TV and/or radio.

As for media ownership, I’d just point out that I respectfully disagree with Radley(please don’t downrate me). One of the things on 9/11 that I found most fascinating is that it revealed on the cable and radio dials just who owned what. If you turned to almost any cable station that day, you would have only received the Viacom feed(CBS), the GE feed(NBC), the News Corp feed(Fox), the Disney feed(ABC) or the Time-Warner/Turner feed(CNN). That was it; 100 channels, and only the same 5 stations that day. Same went for the radio too–Viacom/Disney/Clear Channel, and not much else.

What limited thinking on this issue. This is the era of the intertubes, and you can get news from around the world. As Radley points out there is the BBC as well as NPR. You can get news from other sources as well from other countries to get that perspective. The idea that you are limited to just television/radio is nonsense, particularly since people can not have cable, listen mostly to music on the radio and still stay quite informed. Sounds to me what you want is a limited number of news sources that are somehow deemed balanced. If this is the case, and I’m just speculating here, but who deems that 5 or 6 news orgs are “balanced”?

Sorry Salvo, try again.

Nothing frustrated me more than when the ACLU of Washington State decided to sponsor a big protest against Guantanamo a few months ago just a few scant blocks away from the King County Jail just after that jail had been found to be violating the constitutional rights of it’s prisoners by denying them medical care to the point where some pre-trial detainees were dying slow deaths due to infection… just a few damn blocks away from their headquarters.

They never spoke out or took any cases against that jail still to this day. But they sure don’t have a problem spending their resources protesting about prisoner treatment thousands of miles away when so many other organizations are doing the same thing already.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of your readers have similar experiences on a weekly basis.

First, several stations shared feeds because not everyone could access Ground Zero right away. By day three or four, every cable news station was doing its own broadcast from NYC. You also left out the BBC and NPR.

Second, I think the perception was probably exacerbated by the fact that the more entertainment-oriented channels also picked up feeds from news stations. Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, and ran the CBS feed. But Viacom owning Comedy Central hasn’t stopped the Daily Show and the Colbert Report from becoming a subversive, biting source of news for much of the country.

Finally, I guess I’m still wondering what “good ol’ days” you’re pining for. Just 25 years ago, most of the country had three TV stations and 5-6 radio stations. We have exponentially more options, now. If smaller, less locally owned media outlets are either drying up or being bought up, perhaps that’s an indication that the economics of the media industry says we can either have all of these options, and have some of the same companies own many of them, or we can just have fewer options.

Yes, we have far fewer daily newspapers than we used to, but I’m not ready to trade having a second or third daily in my city for the Internet, are you? Because that’s what killed them.

It’s a similar argument with people who support federally mandated a la carte cable programming. What they don’t understand is that some of their favorite more niche-oriented channels only exist because the giant conglomerates that own them worked out deals that force the cable companies to carry the smaller channels if they want to carry the bigger ones.

Of course, this gets us into the state-sanctioned cable monopolies, which is a whole other debate. But let’s just say I have no love for Comcast.

You can avoid Clear Channel if you don’t care for it. But you have to be disciplined enough to limit yourself to college radio, NPR, Rhapsody, iTunes, and the scant few thousand radio stations streaming on the internet…

McCain is not much better, but even he won’t go that far.

Question for Radley: if the media is so free, then why is the drug war or police militarization covered so little and uncritically such that the best coverage of these topics is a blog?

How can you say that?

But you got me on 3rd Amendment issues. C’mon ACLU! Where is your support for my 3rd amendment rights??!!

As for media ownership, I’d just point out that I respectfully disagree with Radley(please don’t downrate me). One of the things on 9/11 that I found most fascinating is that it revealed on the cable and radio dials just who owned what. If you turned to almost any cable station that day, you would have only received the Viacom feed(CBS), the GE feed(NBC), the News Corp feed(Fox), the Disney feed(ABC) or the Time-Warner/Turner feed(CNN). That was it; 100 channels, and only the same 5 stations that day. Same went for the radio too–Viacom/Disney/Clear Channel, and not much else.

I would argue that the point is that while there seem to be many viewpoints on TV and radio, in actuality, it’s really down to a handful of major companies that aren’t really giving different viewpoints at all. The limitations set up by the FCC on who can actually use a band prevents anybody from even attempting to compete. Locally owned stations don’t exist anymore. Local news now consists of “You won’t believe what’s hurting your kids now–tune in at 11!” and salacious scandal stories, instead of real stories of local interest. Satellite radio looks like it might finally be giving Clear Channel a run for it’s money–unless the broadcast lobby pressures Congress to force the FCC standards on it(and they are certainly trying).

I cede the point about the Internet though. The great thing about it is even though traditional media has been consolidated to a few outlets, it truly does offer a tremendous amount of views, springing up as a reaction to consolidation. Which is why Net Neutrality is such an important issue–to prevent the same consolidation from happening here.

the aclu does absolutely nothing to protect the 2nd amendment aspect of civil liberties

Neither does Law Enforcement Against Prohibition or the Institute for Justice or NORML. That’s not really the point.

Bah, the ACLU.

They’ll never see a dollar of my money until they decide to support all 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights.

The ACLU used to be in favor of gun control, but that changed a long time ago. President Nadine Strossen has hinted that she personally supports the right to bear arms. Here in Chicago, the ACLU and the NRA teamed up to stop the housing authority from conducting warrantless gun sweeps of the housing projects.

I’m not saying you should join the ACLU, but don’t let the lack of support for the Second Amendment stop you. The ACLU supports a lot more amendments than most of our Senators and Congressmen.