Read the Fox News memos

Wonkette has posted a huge volume of internal memos to Fox news staffers from John Moody, the network's news chief. These are the daily notes that tell the staff which stories to emphasize and how to frame them.

Wonkette apparently got them from the producers of the new documentary "Outfoxed."

Not surprisingly, Moody's "fair and balanced" memos read like the rantings of a rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth, Bush propagandist.

Take a look at this one from April. It's lays out the reporting plan for the US assault against Fallujah--a series of attacks in which US troops slaughtered 600 Iraqis as collective punishment for the killing of four American mercenaries.

It's called Operation Vigilant Resolve and it began Monday morning (NY time) with the US and Iraqi military surrounding Fallujah. We will cover this hour by hour today, explaining repeatedly why it is happening. It won't be long before some people start to decry the use of "excessive force." We won't be among that group. . . whatever happens, it is richly deserved (emphasis added).

Here's another one from a few days later:

The events in Iraq Tuesday are going to be the top story, unless and until something else (or worse) happens. Err on the side of doing too much Iraq rather than not enough. Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives and asking out loud why are we there? The US is in Iraq to help a country brutalized for 30 years protect the gains made by Operation Iraqi Freedom and set it on the path to democracy. Some people in Iraq don't want that to happen. That is why American GIs are dying. And what we should remind our viewers.

Clear Channel censors peace group's billboard ad

The San Antonio-based company, famous for owning more than 1,200 radio stations nationwide, nearly all of them programmed from company HQ rather than locally, is also a major owner of billboard advertising services.

According to the SF Chronicle, a group of prominent Bay Area women are battling with the Clear Channel's outdoor adversiting division over an anti-war ad (see image below) they wanted to unfurl in Times Square.

Project Billboard, the women's nascent nonprofit, rented prime real estate on the Marriott Marquis Hotel on Broadway and then proposed an illustration of a cartoonish bomb draped with stars and stripes, accompanied by the words "Democracy is best taught by example, not by war."

It was supposed to run from Aug. 2 to Nov. 2, well-timed to a Republican National Convention starting Aug. 30 in Manhattan and the presidential election Nov. 2 dominated by the conflict in Iraq.

The women say their group is nonpartisan and the design is "pro-democracy, pro-peace, and nothing more.'' But it was rejected last week by Clear Channel's Spectacolor division, which rents out more than 70 displays in Times Square, as well as by Marriott.

Original ad censored by Clear Channel Inc.

Initially, a Clear Channel executive said the company wasn't going to run "bomb copy" in New York City, referring to the central image on the ad and suggesting that such imagery was offensive (as if all the other ads in Times Square featured wholesome content).

The group decided to change the bomb into a dove to have a better chance of getting it displayed.

But the company also suggested that they didn't like the words "not war," which are also contained in the ad.

As a result the peace group has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against the company.

"I'm constantly shocked by how there is such an effort to really prevent people from contemplating the difficult issues of our time,'' Waters [a member of the group] said. "The message of the sign was trying to get people to think about this. And clearly, it's not what the powers-that-be want people to do."

NBC missed Saddam in Court

The peacock network's news division was apparently more engrossed in a taped interview with Robert Redford and a badmiton match featuring Today anchor Katie Couric to broadcast Saddam's appearance before an Iraqi court (albeit one created by the US and headed by a relative of Ahmad Chalabi's)

From the NY Times:

No network was more red-faced than NBC, which passed up the chance to broadcast, at the same time as every other television news outlet, the first scenes of the former dictator in the courtroom. NBC chose instead to continue a taped interview with the movie star Robert Redford, followed by a live badminton match between Katie Couric, the anchor of the network's 'Today' program, and competitors from the United States Olympic badminton team.

'We made a bad call,' said Allison Gollust, the spokeswoman for NBC News.

You think?

Copps, Adelstein hail federal court ruling

Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein cheered last week's federal appeals court ruling throwing out new FCC media ownership rules that would allow media conglomerates to own more outlets.

The two FCC commissioners, who were appearing in Portland, Oregon for a public hearing on media onwership and the public interest, had voted against the rules last June, but were outvoted 3-2 by their Republican colleagues.

From the Oregonian:

"Now the commission needs to reverse course and start protecting the people's interests and the people's airwaves," Commissioner Michael Copps said before the meeting.

[Copps and Adelstein] called on the commission to revisit the issue and meet with the public in forums like Thursday's meeting at the Oregon Convention Center.

"I just wish that all of our colleagues could go with us because they would never make the decisions that they make if they could hear from you," Adelstein told the audience. "They should have done this right in the first place. They should have made you part of the debate."

Adelstein's media advisor Johanna Shelton spoke at a public forum on media ownership that we organized here in Columbus, Ohio (home to a media company that owns the daily newspaper, #1 TV station, for which I used to work, AM/FM radio station, statewide cable TV news channel, a chain of suburban newspapers, as well as interest in the local NHL franchise and a real estate development company.) She gave us great insight into how media policy is made in Washington and told us her boss really depends on grassroots media activists to keep pressing media ownership and public interest issues as a counter-weight to big money lobbyists from corporate media, who have pretty much owned the FCC for the past two decades, if not longer. If Adelstein and Copps can point to public outrage and opposition to recent FCC actions, they have more room to maneuver in Washington to propose and implement public interest requirements, such as free broadcast airtime for political candidates, that would open up political discourse through the mainstream media.

From the looks of the court ruling, the FCC will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with new media ownership rules, or develop a better rationale for the weakened rules they approved last June. That argument was basically that the Internet and continued proliferation of cable TV means there's no need for limits on broadcast ownership. Activists who filed the suit the federal court just ruled on, provided good arguments that such a rationale was flawed -- due primarily to the fact that a small group of companies owns most of the cable TV channels and top-rated web sites -- and that the data used by the FCC to calculate "media diversity" within most markets was seriously flawed. They also argued that the entire process for adopting the new rules was basically corrupt. The FCC only held one sanctioned public hearing -- in Richmond, VA so that media lobbyists based in Washington could easily attend -- before voting on the proposed rules. On top of that, the FCC didn't even present the proposed rules to commissioners until a few weeks before they were scheduled to vote, meaning they had little time to examine the exact contents and engage in more public debate. Lastly, in the run-up to voting, the FCC held dozens of meetings (71, I think, according to the Center for Public Integrity) with media lobbyists and only one or two with consumer and public interest groups.

So, now that the court has rebuked the FCC, it looks like Copps and Adelstein have some breathing room to try and kill the rules passed last June and open up a much more democratic process for deciding how ownership of the public airwaves should be governed in the digital age.

It is important to remember, however, that the court ruling was just one arena in which the media reform battle is being fought. As the group Free Press points out: The court's decision does not affect a White House-negotiated deal to lift the national broadcast audience cap - the maximum percent of national television households that a single company can reach with its stations - from 35 percent to 39 percent. That deal, attached to a 2004 spending bill, was signed into law by President Bush in January."

Thus, Congress still has the power to fully reject, modify -- such as the 39% deal-- or approve the FCC's corrupt ownership rules, including the worst one of all: the one that eliminates the "cross-ownership" ban preventing one company from owning the daily newspaper, a TV station and/or cable TV service in most media markets (the Columbus situation exists due to an FCC exemption). The FCC was created by act of Congress and operates in accord with its legislation. So, keep your eyes on the House and Senate in the coming months. Crafty legislators who've benefited mightily from media companies could still put rules as bad as those crafted by the FCC into effect. Or, driven by public opposition to media consolidation, they could throw out the bad rules and pressure the FCC to adopt stricter public interest rules and onwership limits.

Federal Court Rebukes FCC

A federal appeals court has voted 2-1 to reject a set of media ownership rules adopted last year by the FCC that would have allowed the nation's biggest media companies to aqcuire even more media outlets.

From Bloomberg News:

The Commission falls short of its obligation to justify its decisions to retain, repeal or modify its media ownership regulations with reasoned analysis,'' the appeals court said in its ruling, which was approved on a 2-to-1 vote.

The 218-page decision affects rules that let a single media company own a daily newspaper, three TV stations, eight radio stations and a cable system in the same large city. It doesn't affect legislation passed by Congress earlier this year that allows a company to own TV stations reaching as much as 39 percent of the national audience, up from 35 percent.

The court criticized the method used by the FCC to calculate media diversity within particular markets. It also instructed the FCC to review its rules and either "justify or modify its approach to setting" limits on media ownership.

Former FCC commisioner pushes public interest proposal to Congress

In testimony before the House, former commissioner Gloria Tristani, who served during the Clinton administration, said Congress should require the FCC to adopt clear public interest guidelines for broadcasters before the transition from analog to digital TV is completed.

She specifically cited a proposal issued in April by the Public Interest, Public Airwaves coalition:

The proposal seeks to ensure that broadcasters air a minimum of three hours per week of local civic or electoral affairs programming on the most-watched channels they operate, with 50 percent of that programming airing between 5 p.m. and 11:35 p.m. Tristani cited an October 2003 Alliance for Better Campaign analysis which found that, in a typical week, only 0.4 percent of TV programming was devoted to local public affairs. Conversely, 14.4 percent of the broadcasting schedule was paid programming (home shopping and infomercials), 9.9 percent was reality or game shows and 7.9 percent was sporting events.

MTV turns down "Super Size" ads

Not wanting to offend its big spending fast food advertisers, MTV has refused to air advertisements for the new documentary "Super Size Me," in which the filmaker documents his physical and emotional deterioration while eating only at McDonald's for 30 days.