Robert McChesney and the Obama Administration

Professor Robert McChesney

Like many other conservatives, I routinely read the New York Times, the Washington Post and watch many of the far left pundits on cable television. Doing so provides you with an idea of what the left in this country is up to and I was interested in seeing what the progressive left would gear up for next after their recent health care reform victory.

Lst week I was watching MSNBC host Ed Schultz having a “meltdown” complaining about the fact that our nation’s talk radio is “unfairly” dominated by conservative hosts. Schultz stated that “…the fact is it does not make for a level playing field…ownership has its privileges…Maybe we have reached the point where the Congress needs to equal it out…equal out the audience…Just keep in mind there are no poor people with microphones…Hell, if we’re going to be socialists, let’s be socialists across the board.”

Basically Mr. Schultz is calling for our liberal democrat controlled congress to legislate what the progressive left refers to as the “Fairness Doctrine” which would have the federal government assume control of radio stations and mandate the extent and content of talk radio.

Now if it were just Ed Schultz ranting about ths topic I would afford it much less concern, although I still find it very scary, but what you probably are not aware of is that the chief proponent of this thinking – which amounts to an unprecedented government intrusion into our own country’s media -- is Professor Robert McChesney, founder of the Orwellian-named Free Press, one of the most influential organizations in the growing “media reform” movement on the far-left.

Free Press’ curious stance on media reform can best be summed up by McChesney who suggests that, “Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself."

McChesney has employed his stance repeatedly to argue that his version of media reform is the first step in the struggle to remake American society in a socialistic fashion. In his attack on the existing media “power structure” in the U.S., he calls for a “class struggle from below…In the end there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”

As hard as it may be to believe, McChesney and his indefatigable band of media revolutionaries are being taken seriously by some policymakers in Washington. They are granted regular audiences with those overseeing our nation’s media policy at the FCC and FTC, and meeting regularly with members of Congress.
One of his bigest supporters is President Obama's "Diversity Czar" at the FCC, Mark Llloyd.

Their latest plan to defacto nationalize the media calls for the federal government to bail out newspapers with $60 billion in new government subsidies. As anyone familiar with Washington knows, money does not come free. Such subsidies will virtually invite the government into the fourth estate as overseers.

All of this begs the question: If the federal government starts subsidizing our own free press, how long until the feds start revoking broadcast licenses of government opponents and bringing pesky reporters up on charges of say, “corruption” or “subversion”? According to McChesney and the Free Press folks, it apparently can’t happen soon enough.

Remember November 2010 and the general elections are just a few months away. If we don't all pull together to stop this nonsense now, we will ultimately wake up in an America we no longer recognize.

Peter J. Mahon