Sunday, August 24, 2008

Clear Channel pulls anti-nuke ads

What happens when most of America's advertising venues are concentrated in the hands of one greedy corporation with right-wing leanings?

You get bullshit excuses, that's what.

A few days ago, Clear Channel removed an ad from a billboard it owns at the Minneapolis airport. The ad was placed by the Union of Concerned Scientists and urged McCain to rethink the country's policy on nuclear weapons.

Crap Channel pulled the ad because of complaints by Northwest Airlines, the official airline of the Republican National Convention. (So much for corporations' alleged nonpartisanship, huh?) The airline called the ad "scary."

Now Clear Channel has pulled the UCS's billboard at the Denver airport that made the same plea of Obama that the Minneapolis billboard made of McCain. This time, Clumpy Channel appears to have yanked the ad on its own, instead of following airline complaints.

Clear Channel's rejection of advocacy ads on the basis of the ads' stance is more proof of how media monopolies are antithetical to democracy. The free flow of ideas is stifled when so much of the media is concentrated in one corporation.

Clear Channel and Northwest Airlines think the billboard is "scary", but nuclear propagation isn't? This is like when Jim Inhofe talked about being more "outraged by the outrage" over Abu Ghraib than by the scandal itself.

(Source: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7299)

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