Billboards are for conservatives

March 17, 2006

Clear Channel Communications doesn’t put any real effort in hiding its ideological bias. It’s a Republican company, run by Republican executives, which contributes mostly to Republican campaigns. What’s more, it also uses its ownership of a huge national billboard company, called Clear Channel Outdoor, to advance partisan ends.

It’s hard to forget examples like this one, in which Clear Channel used one of its billboards to celebrate, in a style reminiscent of North Korea, “Our Leader: George W. Bush” in Orlando shortly before the presidential election.

Of course, in addition to using its billboards to venerate the candidates it likes, Clear Channel also uses its media power to squelch the voices it doesn’t like. The latest is Democratic congressional candidate Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania, who is engaged in one of the most competitive House races in the country.

According to the Murphy campaign, it tried to rent a Clear Channel billboard in Montgomery County to run an ad demanding that incumbent U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.) return $30,000 in contributions from the political action committee of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R., Texas).

DeLay is facing trial in Texas on charges of money laundering, and Democrats are making congressional ethics and fund-raising a major issue in this year’s campaigns.

Murphy’s campaign claims Clear Channel backed out of the billboard deal only after it saw the text: “Congressman Jim Gerlach, you are part of the problem in Washington. Return Tom DeLay’s money.”

Murphy’s campaign spokesman, Mark Nevins, said that George Kauker, general manager of the company’s Philadelphia division, told Murphy’s campaign the ad was rejected because “it would make Jim Gerlach mad if he saw it.”

I realize that this isn’t literally censorship. Clear Channel is a private company. It can contribute to candidates as it pleases and can reject contracts with customers it doesn’t like. Fine.

But Clear Channel’s Republican-protection plan nevertheless seems like an abuse.

For one thing, incidents like these keep happening. Clear Channel also recently rejected a billboard contract with a union criticizing Wal-Mart. Last year, a Clear Channel television station rejected an ad criticizing the war in Iraq.

We’re talking about a company that has enormous power over what the public is able to see and hear, and which has frequently chosen to use that power to help Republicans.

Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said Clear Channel’s business practices are “not unconstitutional,” but is closer to “an abuse of public trust.” Given the circumstances, that sounds about right.

I’m curious if the Murphy campaign can still get the billboard up using another company. If it can’t, wouldn’t that constitute an illegal monopoly on the part of Clear Channel? If that’s the case, I would certainly encourage Murphy to file suit about it.

  • I’d be curious to understand how the relationship between ClearChannel and its local stations works. Since I thought it was kind of odd when I found out that our AirAmerica station in Portland, KPOJ 620 AM, is owned by ClearChannel. Anyone have any insight into this? How does this reconcile with CC’s blatantly GOP bias? Is CC practicing censorship on the broadcasters at AirAmerica? I’ve heard things like, for some reason, AirAmerica won’t talk about Israel.

  • What is it going to take for Democrats to realize that Media Consolidation made all Media, corporate right-wing media? The core of the Republican Party are corporate executives, who regularly make campaign contributions. The core of the Republican Party’s economic agenda is to redistribute income from the middle class to CEOs, a task in which they succeed mightily — more than half the economic gains of the last thirty years have gone to 1/4 of 1% of the population, mostly in the form of skyrocketing, under-taxed executive compensation.

    All newspapers, all radio stations, all television networks, all cable networks are now owned by very large corporations, many of them with active, right-wing agendas. Fox News is openly Republican, Chris Matthews cannot understand why everyone does not love Bush, Sinclair Broadcasting, CNN, Meet the Press, the Washington Post ombudsman, . . . PBS and National Public Radio have been turned.

    The last Democratic President was dogged by Whitewater, a completely bogus scandal kept alive by the Washington Post and the New York Times for 7 long years; when Abramoff is shown funnelling millions into Republican hands, though, the Post’s major concern is justifying giving the impression that it is, somehow, someway, a “bi-partisan” scandal. Gore was subjected to continuous slander by the media, and Kerry was swift-boated, with Media connivance.

    Really, what is it going to take, for Democrats to wake up and realize that this is not a matter of raising professional standards among journalists, or something which can be remedied by “working the refs”? The last newspaper chain in America investing in quality journalism, the last newspaper chain with the taint of Democratic papers in its fold, has just been sold.

    Democrats are going to have to commit to reversing Media consolidation thoroughly and rapidly, during their next sojurn in power, or accept permanent minority status in a fascist State.

  • Of corse Clear Channel can sell or not sell to whoever it wants but it seems increasingly to be acting like an unregulated arm of the GOP.

    Interesting. The GOP has issues with blogs and 527 (at least those that lean toward the left) acting as arms of the Democratic party establishment.

  • The Repugni-con ploy is this. Consolidate media and make it all so Right-wing that right-wing slant becomes the “norm”, the mid-point on the scale of extremism in reporting. But all the while keep claiming and loudly complaining that there is a “liberal bias” in the media. Then, once they have virtually ALL the media in their back pockets, they point to any small hint of fairness, accuracy, or actual balance in reporting as “another example of left-wing media bias”.

  • I’m coming to the conviction that we can’t do anything to reverse the Republican tide, fueled by greed for a tiny few and fear for the many. No one reads papers any more. No one thinks any more. People come home from their corporate jobs and turn on the corporate TV and go to bed. No one even gives a damn about Bush breaking the law (note the pathetic number of Dem senators who back Feingold).

    I’m beginning to think it will take a complete economic collapse — under the Republicans, as it did in the Great Depression — for anyone to sit up and take notice. If Bush keeps ratcheting up the national debt, and if the world makes the switch from petro-dollars to petro-euros (so that dollars world-wide will have to be dumped cheaply), that collapse should occur fairly soon. Think Enron (it’ll never be on corporate TV, but try to see the DVD “Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room”).

    Without a shake-up like that happening, the Democratic Party is beginning to look more and more like an irrelevant game of tiddlywinks, of utterly no interest to anyone but insiders. I’ve spent almost an entire lifetime with an active interest in politcs at all levels. I’m beginning to think it’s not worth the effort. There’s got to be a better use of what time I’ve got left.

  • Ed, Don’t give up now. No fascist government ever lasts. Every greedy, corporatist eventually chops off the head of it’s own golden goose. Stay with us, we need people like you, people with your level of experience. Join the heart of the resistance, the American freedon fighters who believe in justice, peace, equality and opportunity for all. What they want is for you, and me, and anyone who cares to just give up, lay down and die. Don’t give them the pleasure.

  • Let’s imagine for a moment that Democrats behaved like Republicans. If that were true, once Dems returned to power they would restart Lady Bird Johnson’s beautify America campaign, which, in part, aimed to rid American highways of billboards.

  • rege, Unfortunately, as long as Diebold, ES&S & Sequoia are “counting” the votes, you will be holding your breath for a long, long time waiting for the Dems to reclaim power. The reason the Re-pukes are acting as if they’ll be in power forever, is because that is exactly their intention! Waiting for the next fraudulent election won’t help, sad as it is to say. The only possible way to restore a semblance of democracy is to GET RID OF THE MACHINES. Now how? Critical mass is the only way. (Try the Blackbox and Votetrust web sites. The info there is UFB!)

  • why don’t all the good dem’s cancel their subscritpions to this cable company to protest their views.

  • So, would you like a law that requires that people sell their goods, regardless? Maybe a law the sets the price too? A few years back, a friend of mine who owned a gun shop had a customer who came in to look for a shotgun. He started “testing” ’em to see if he could put the barrel(s) on his forehad and still reach the trigger. Upon questioning, the fellow freely admitted that he was looking to commit suicide. My friend refused to sell him _any_ gun, and called around to other dealers in the city, along with a call to the police. Unfortunately they weren’t able to intervene – the fellow walked into interstate traffic. But should my friend have been _required_ to sell that fellow the gun? I don’t think so.

    Regarding the voting machines, I think it is interesting that one of the activists in the forefront is one of our dreaded gun nuts…

  • Bogieville is suffering from “George Bush syndrome” –see “a president who has arguments with non-existent people”.

    Dude, there are a thousand reasons not to sell a gun to someone. Selling advertising, believe it or not, has a different set of criteria. The point being made is that public advertising is a privately-controlled form of mass media, and while there may be good reasons to reject an ad that is in some way offensive, slanderous, or inciting violence, the fact that some people or corporate entities disagree with the message being presented does NOT necessarily put it into that category. The principle is called “fair comment”, but you wouldn’t have heard of that.

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