This should be shocking, but it’s not. There’s nothing these liars won’t do. Laws? They don’t need to abide by our laws!

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying “Thank you Bush. Thank you USA” in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

Full article at the Independent

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From YahooNews:

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission has no intention of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine imposing a requirement of balanced coverage of issues on public airwaves, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said.

Martin, in a letter written this week to Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and made public Thursday, said the agency found no compelling reason to revisit its 1987 decision that enforcing the federal rule was not in the public interest.

Several Democratic lawmakers suggested that Congress take another look at the doctrine after conservative radio talk show hosts aggressively attacked an immigration reform bill when it was on the Senate floor, contributing to its defeat.

Pence and other Republicans in both the House and Senate countered by introducing legislation to bar the FCC from reinstating the rule.

Under the doctrine, first instituted in the late 1940s, broadcasters could lose their licenses if they failed to give free airtime to opposing sides on controversial issues.

Martin, in his letter, said government regulation was not needed to ensure public access to a wide range of opinion. “Indeed, with the continued proliferation of additional sources of information and programming, including satellite broadcasting and the Internet, the need for the Fairness Doctrine has lessened even further since 1987,” he wrote.

Pence, in a joint statement with Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., welcomed Martin’s position but said Congress should still pass his legislation so that no future administration or FCC chairman could revive the doctrine without an act of Congress.

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By Jeffrey Yorke
from Radio and Records

Six dozen members of Congress signed a letter to FCC chairman Kevin Martin, U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales and Federal Trade Commission chairman Deborah Platt Majoras today (June 18) asking that they reject the proposed $13.6 billion merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio because the marriage “would create a monopoly which would be devastating to consumers.”

The two-page letter, accompanied by another five pages of congressional signatures from such luminaries as former speaker of the house Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), former broadcaster Greg Walden (R-Wash.), House minority whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Albert Wynn (D-Md.), reminded regulators that when the FCC awarded the two satellite licenses more than a decade ago, the agency stressed that “licensing at least two providers will help ensure that subscription rates are competitive as well as provide for a diversity of voices.”

The letter reminds the regulators that when the licenses were granted, the FCC stated, “Even after [digital audio radio service] licenses are granted, one licensee will not be permitted to acquire control of the other remaining satellite DARS licenses.”

The letter contends that “there is scant evidence that a merger would produce any cost savings that a combined Sirius/XM potentially might pass on to subscribers” and notes that both companies are “locked into numerous long-term expensive arrangements with their most prized talent and programming.” It also says the satcasters face “protracted obstacles” to combining their platforms “because they use different radio encoding technologies.”

The verbiage in the letter, signed first by James Sensenbrenner (R-Ohio) and Gene Green (D-Texas), in many ways resembles the NAB-contracted reports and advertising that have been placed in Capitol Hill publications since Feb. 19, when the merger was first proposed. Green is a sponsor of an NAB-inspired but yet-to-pass bill that aims to prevent satellite radio broadcasters from providing local programming on their repeater networks. A number of the signers, including Sensenbrenner and Wynn, have appeared on panel sessions at NAB’sponsored events in Las Vegas and other cities.

The letter calls on all three regulators to deny the merger and adds, “The FCC has never before allowed the only two competitors in a given market to combine, and we would seriously question an FCC decision to start now.”

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