Are Iowans Being Brainwashed by Fox News?
Brainwash: subject (a person) to a process by which ideas are implanted in the mindWell, it does feel like torture, listening to Fox or right-wing talk radio for any length of time at all. To listen, you either have to allow yourself to be indoctrinated, or go crazy, or laugh (but it's hard to do that because it really isn't funny), or turn it off and then pretend it isn't there. And it seems progressives and the unindoctrinated are mostly dealing with it by pretending it just isn't there. You hear this all the time: “Where do people get these ideas?”
We really hope Michael Moore's next movie will be about the right wing media.
BFIA found this at AlterNet.org, one of our favorite alternative media sites. It gives eight reasons why FOX News is NOT a news organization. Glenn Beck is just one of those reasons. Below, BFIA has included some factoids for readers about Glenn Beck's on-the-air, totally unnecessary, saturation of Iowa's publicly owned airwaves.
~Glenn Beck, the community organizer – No other news operation in memory has ever hired its own community organizer, at least not one tasked with the mission of organizing paranoid people to march through the streets of the nation's capital with signs depicting the president of the United States as a mass murderer.
Through his 9-12 Project, which he promotes on his Fox News Channel program, that's exactly what Beck did, organizing with other right-wing organizations the 9-12/Tea Party march on Washington – where marchers sported signs comparing Obama to Hitler and Stalin.
Beck was also instrumental in turning out angry mobs to disrupt this summer's town hall meetings, where members of Congress attempted to discuss health care reform with their constituents. After participants in a scuffle at a Tampa, Fla., town hall named their local 9-12 Project site as their inspiration, the national 9-12 Project site stopped accepting comments.
Despite the loss of some 80 advertisers from The Glenn Beck Show, thanks to a campaign by Color of Change, which targeted the show's sponsors after Beck claimed the president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture,” Beck remains on the air at Fox. Could that be because he's more valuable to his boss-daddy as an organizer than as a conduit for advertising dollars?
After all, defeating government regulation of any kind could assure billions for [Rupert] Murdoch the investor, while advertising profits for a show with 3 million viewers would at most bring in millions. It's all about the zeros – how many. (Read the entire article here)
Glenn Beck's toxicity pretty much covers our entire state. It's no wonder we have such schizophrenic politics in Iowa. In one week alone, Glenn Beck is on the air in Iowa for a full 76 hours. Two stations, Waterloo's KXEL-AM 1540, and Des Moines' KWQW-FM 98.3, carry Beck 18 hours a week each.
You can see why central and western Iowa denizens have a greater tendency to go around saying strange things, like “Obama is like Hitler! Obama is a socialist! Government is the enemy!” They not only get 18 hours a week of Glenn Beck, they also get a full dose of right-wing crazy on WHO AM 1420 with Mickelson, Limbaugh, Deace and Medved, all lying on the publicly owned airwaves for a combined total of 11.5 hours per DAY. Not to mention the fact that many can probably also pick it up on the Sioux City, Spencer, Fort Dodge and Burlington stations. How much right-wing talk does one state need? Or want? The public is not demanding this. We are being force-fed. We can only lament again, what an incredible waste of a public resource.
For a discouraging glimpse of the lack of sophistication and intelligent discourse on this issue, check out three letters in the Des Moines Register today, defending talk radio. The letters are from Pella (central), Ames (central) and Manning, Iowa (western). Under large Register-supplied portraits of their heroes Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (taking up precious news space – but I guess if you've laid off most of your reporters, there's room), and a red-letter headline, “First Amendment Applies to All,” the complexity of this problem and its political and regulatory history is entirely missed.
What you can do here in Iowa about Glenn Beck: Write – call – e-mail – go visit – your local Glenn Beck-carrying station. If they won't listen, complain to the new, Obama-appointed, public interest-friendly FCC
These Iowa stations all carry Glenn Beck:
Burlington KCPS-AM 1150 Ph (319)754-6698/email kcps@aol.com
Des Moines KWQW-FM 98.3 Ph (515)331-9200/email webform
Fort Dodge KVFD-AM 1400 Ph (515)955-5656/email pkolar@kiaq.threeeagles.com
Sioux City KSCJ-AM 1360 Ph (712)239-2100/email sarthur@powelliowa.com
Spencer KICD-AM 1240 Ph (712)262-1240/email dputnam@ncn.net
Waterloo KXEL-AM 1540 Ph (800)584-7024/email tim@radiogroup.net
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