Keith Olbermann Calls For Media Reform In Special Comment

As regular readers know, BFIA is committed to doing our part to help reform the media, currently on life support due in part to the same deregulation practices that have ruined the banks and the U.S. economy.  This week, Keith Olbermann called for media reform in one of his legendary Special Comments on

Enough!

Have the IRS take these companies, immediately, to the tax courts to which the rest of us are liable. And strip those ancient, outdated laws of corporation, so that the officers of the corporation are personally liable for their companies' debts, just as you or I would be. And if the monopolies of radio or television rear up to support the corporate structure, to say a contract is a contract, even though that isn't true for a union these days, only for an AIG Trader. Take the invisible, unused Sword of Damocles they still fatuously insist hangs over their heads, and make it real.

Enough!

Make sure both sides are heard. Re-regulate the radio and television industries to limit station ownership and demand diversity of management and product. Re-instate the old rules that denied one man all the voices in a public square. End all waivers of multiple ownership of television stations and networks and newspapers in the same market.

And, yes, if a voice of the privileged classes unfairly uses his cable platform to call our neighbors who are the victims of this, “losers” to insist he alone speaks for the real people.

Or if another, indicts without equal time for defense a particular elected official, and then offers himself as a candidate for that very official's seat, in violation of all canons of good or even fair broadcasting then tell the cable industry that the free ride is over and it is time that it too be regulated by the FCC.

Enough!