Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Chairman to host Lansing-based WGOP

In case you missed my post over at MichiganLiberal, you maybe shocked to find out that a Lansing-based radio station has flushed it's journalistic ethics right down the toliet.

WJIM 1240 AM and it's morning show host, Michael Patrick Shiels has offered the host's chair to none other than MI Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis himself. According to Anuzis' so-called blog (it's the Republican version, so no one's allowed to comment besides The Chairman himself) he'll be hosting the show which runs from 5:30 am to 10 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. He also brags about his featured guests, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, and yes you read that correctly, the evil dark overlord of dirty republican tactics himself will be on. In my circles, we call that noise pollution.

Radio stations are licensed and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which are paid for with our tax dollars. As a wise commenter posted this thought -
Unless an elected official, there's no reason why publicly-owned airwaves should be used to the advantage of a single political party. Licensees should be serving the greater public good, not just a narrow band of consumers. It's not as if the publicly-owned airwaves aren't already overwhelmingly controlled by a single political ideology, but a single political party?

One might even think that a station's licensing should be evaluated for this kind of behavior.

They're right. It shouldn't matter if this was a Democratic party official or Republican like The Chairman. Public airwaves are just that, and last time I checked, we don't have to be force-fed any kind of propaganda.

If you'd like to protect Lansing's airwaves from blatant ethical and regulatory violations, file a complaint with the FCC here, and tell WJIM to stop their switch to WGOP here.

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