Comcast rejects antiwar ad

Diane Monaco dmonaco at pop3.utoledo.edu
Thu Jan 30 10:22:46 PST 2003


At 03:47 PM 1/29/2003 -0500, Dennis wrote:
>Comcast are pigs, and this isn't the first time that lefty ads have been
>rejected for carrying "unsubstantiated" (read: not approved by govt/corp
>media) claims. But, it is not censorship to reject someone's ad.

[...]


>In his July 20/27 column, the Cockmeister quoted Ratner as saying, "The
>First Amendment applies only to governments; it is to assure the people that
>the state will not suppress speech. It has little, in fact nothing, to do
>with private magazines.

[...]


> If the Rev. Moore wanted to make a point about his ad being
>rejected, he could talk about private ownership of broadcast media and the
>limitations that corporations place on public speech. But to say that
>Comcast is infringing on his First Amendment rights is not accurate, however
>noble it sounds to the Enlightened.

Dennis,

Why the about turn from "govt/corp" media in the first part of your post, to "corp" media ONLY in the later part of the same post? It seems to me that where the "limitations" are coming from IS the crux of the censorship/free speech/First Amendment argument. Is media "ownership" these days public or private when all relationships and connections are included?

Media corporations are part of larger conglomerates that have enormous lobbying powers and controls over news/political campaigns/issues that freely use our public airwaves with dwindling and nearly nonexistent regulation. So in a sense these conglomerates are doing the work of government...and we may take another rather sobering interpretation of John Jay's quote: "the people who own the country ought to govern it".

So if the task at hand, for a corporate controlled government, is to approve/disapprove information to be transmitted over the public airwaves -- that's censorship. If it looks like censorship, sounds like censorship, and functions like censorship, it must be censorship.

Diane



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