Special Report: The Plan To Silence Conservatives -- Part II
By Cliff Kincaid
January 17, 2007
Protecting Public Broadcasting
Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, who was just elected to Congress from Memphis, assured the audience that Democrats would protect and possibly increase funding for public broadcasting, which he noted is on the "left hand side of the dial" but has been having problems generating listeners and viewers.
One of the cries of some participants was to "put the public back into public broadcasting," apparently a plea for even more "public" money from Congress.
Public broadcasting's Bill Moyers, who spoke to the conference about the "ravenous" nature of "Big Media," was obviously not referring to public TV or radio's appetite for U.S. tax dollars, even though AIM has documented how these entities have received over $8 billion from the taxpayers since their creation. (web site) The far-left Pacifica Radio, another taxpayer-supported network, had a heavy presence at the "media reform" conference.
The appearance of Moyers, who served as White House press secretary in the Lyndon Johnson Administration before he worked for CBS News and public TV, was curious, at least at this conference in Memphis, because he had been aware at the time of his service to LBJ of secret surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr.
King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 and his birthday celebration on January 15 was mentioned by several speakers, most notably Jesse Jackson, a former King aide.
One 9/11 truth movement booth featured a poster claiming that King was murdered as the result of a U.S. Government conspiracy, even though James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime and sentenced to prison. Ray died in 1998.
Continuing this fascination with conspiracy theories about the deaths of prominent people, a book for sale at the conference bookstore, titled, American Assassination: The Strange Death of Paul Wellstone, claims that the airplane accident that took the life of the liberal Senator from Minnesota was actually deliberate murder. The book claims Wellstone's "progressive" stands made him a target.
Senator Sanders, the only open socialist in Congress, accused the media of covering up King's opposition to the Vietnam War. He did not mention that King took that approach because he had come under the influence of identified top members of the Soviet-funded Communist Party USA, who had become his close advisers. This is one of the reasons why the Johnson Administration--and then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy--approved FBI surveillance of him.
King's radical turn to the left, which detracts from the good work that he did, should not be a taboo topic but it is one of many issues that "progressives" want censored from the media. Another King controversy that is off the table for "progressives" is his well-documented plagiarism. (web site)
Socialist Urges One-Sided Coverage
Sanders, who votes with the Democrats in the Senate despite his official status as an independent socialist, claimed conservatives were 99 percent in control of talk radio and that it was time "to open the question of the fairness doctrine again" to restrict what they say and how they say it.
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