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.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to forget examples like this one<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>. The latest is Democratic congressional candidate Lois Murphy in Pennsylvania, who is engaged in one of the most competitive House races in the country.<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n But Clear Channel’s Republican-protection plan nevertheless seems like an abuse. 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nFor one thing, incidents like these keep happening. Clear Channel also recently rejected a billboard contract with a union criticizing Wal-Mart<\/a>. Last year, a Clear Channel television station rejected an ad criticizing the war in Iraq<\/a>.<\/p>\n