Number one, they had to air issues of public import. That's why there is a 6 o'clock news hour on the networks. Not because they wanted it--they wanted to put entertainment in that slot. The news departments were traditionally money losers, so they were forced to do that as part of the Fairness Doctrine. That is why the radio stations update you periodically on the news. It's part of the requirement under the original Fairness Doctrine that they're still doing under tradition.
Number two, if they were going to give an opinion, they had to tell both sides. You couldn't have had a Fox news under the Fairness Doctrine. You couldn't have had a Rush Limbaugh. You could have had Rush four hours a day, but then they would have had to put somebody else on--a countervailing voice for the next four hours. You couldn't have had Rush and his ditto heads for 24 hours a day on the same station. And Rush Limbaugh got started in 1988, the year that Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.
Three, the media had to avoid corporate consolidation. Congress wanted to make sure that people in Kansas could get crop reports, that people in North Dakota could get tornado warnings and that people in the South could get country music. It made sure that you wouldn't have programming and content dictated in a couple corporate epicenters in remote areas in the country.
And that part of the Fairness Doctrine incidentally was fortified in 1945 because Congress saw what Hitler had done in Europe, and what the other fascist governments had done-where they had allowed these corporate consolidations, and they had given these contracts and special favors to the media, and they had co-opted the media and gotten them on their side, so that anybody who criticized them was either muzzled or was branded as unpatriotic. And Congress said, we can't allow that to happen in this country, so they strengthened that part of the Fairness Doctrine.
Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine as a favor to the Christian Right which was already plotting the takeover of AM radio, and as a favor to the studio heads, who had helped him get elected and who were plotting the takeover of ALL media. Today, as a result of that, there are five giant multi-national corporations who control virtually all 14,000 radio stations in America, all 5,000 television stations, 80% of our newspapers, all of our billboards and most of the large internet content providers. So there are five guys who are deciding what we hear as news and information.
And the news departments have become corporate profit centers. They no longer have an obligation to promote the public interest--their only obligation is to their shareholders. And they serve that obligation not by telling us the difficult issues that we need to understand, like what happens when you privatize social security, how did the pharmaceutical companies end up controlling Medicaid and Medicare and what is global warming?
And do you know where they cut costs? They cut costs by firing all of their investigative reporters. 80% of all investigative reporters have lost their jobs over the past 15 years--the people who could connect the dots between the money that came from the corporate polluters, to the White House. Then the rollbacks that were engineered by the White House and to the asthmatic kids that you see in New York City and all over this country. Nobody's making those connections. Nobody's connecting the dots. So when you see the asthmatic kid, you're not saying the White House has something to do with that.
The fact that in 19 states you can no longer safely eat any freshwater fish caught in the state because of mercury contamination coming from coal burning power plants that were supposed to have removed 90% of that mercury five years ago, but the White House--having accepted $48 million from that industry, rolled back those rules, so that now there are 19 states where all the fresh water fish are unsafe to eat. And in 49 states, most or some of the freshwater fish, including New York-which most of the fish are unsafe to eat. The only state where all the freshwater fish are safe to eat is Wyoming--where the Republican controlled legislature has refused to appropriate the money to test the fish.
(Laughter)
But all the other states, some, most, or all of them are unsafe to eat. According to the CDC, One in every six American Women now has so much mercury in her womb, --now one out of every six, that her children are in for a grim inventory of diseases-autism, blindness, mental retardation, heart, liver, and kidney diseases. MY levels of mercury are 2.5 times what the EPA considers safe, just from eating fish. And all of this could have been stopped except that Bush abolished the mercury rule, but there's no-but Americans just don't know that.
I go and buy my fishing license for $30 a year –every year in New York state and every year I look at the fish advisories which are now this thick (holding up fingers approximating 2 inches.) That basically say there's only a few places where you can safely fish in New York State. I read through that thing and I say, 'That son of a b*tch, George Bush,' but most fishermen who buy that thing don't make that connection. The reason they don't make the connection is there are no investigative reporters out there telling them about that connection.
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