Horowitz's center

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Wed Mar 3 09:05:45 PST 1999


Tom Frank wrote:


> The story on Horowitz's latest doings cited him as a director of the
> "Center for the Study of Popular Culture." Anybody know what this is or
> what they do?

It's a neo-McCarthyiste organization Horowitz established, funded by the usual suspects. His signature efforts all much like this one -- attempts to shut people up.

The one that really put him on the map was his attack on Globalvision's "South Africa Now", which he attacked as -- you guessed it! -- Marxist propoaganda. The Marxists in question being the ANC.

If you recall, at the time, South Africa had responded to the growing anti-Apartheid movement by effectively shutting out the global media. "South Africa Now" almost single-handedly in US TV took up the enormous slack. Thus, an attack on "South Africa Now" was an attack on the ONLY continuing TV coverage of the anti-apartheid struggles. (The South African government side was enforced silence -- and that was side that ALL the commercial media were giving their audiences.)

Calling for balance is NOT the Horowitz way. He went to KCET, the local PBS station here in LA, and DEMANDED that they take "South Africa Now" off the air -- and KCET complied.

There was a furious response, which got it returned to the air, but this action legitimized Horowitz's attack, put "South Africa Now" under a cloud, and attracted a lot of rightwing funding for Horowitz to continue such attacks.

Danny Schecter, as the object of this attack, would be your best bet to get all the gory details.

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



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