Democracies need MORE “Progressive Voices”

Excerpting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

A new and dangerous phase of the class war begins, the editors of Between the Lines Radio Magazine wrote this week.

The bitter irony, they say, is this. “Super-rich corporations and individuals bankrolling the [‘conservative’] machine are the same forces who — in their ardent advocacy of reckless financial deregulation and billion-dollars tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens — caused the global economic meltdown.”

The manipulation of the public, of eligible voters “often succeeds because the U.S. commercial media system, particularly radio, is dominated by right-wing extremist voices who use the public airwaves as an echo chamber to spread lies and distortions in support of the agenda of powerful corporations and the super rich.… Countless ‘ditto-heads’ dominate the radio airwaves, broadcasting hours of back-to-back right-wing programming.”

Every day of the week, “2,570 hours of conservative talk are broadcast” — 10 times the amount of progressive talk. Every day of the week, “254 hours of progressive voices are broadcast.”

Will Progressive Voices increase

next year, the years after that?

Will existing Progressive Radio Voices

survive?

Healthy Democracies in global community cannot survive without them.

Sources and notes
The weekly (progressive-voiced) radio magazine Between the Lines is a production of Squeaky Wheel Productions, Inc., http://www.btlonline.org/2010/101126-btl.html(P.O. Box 110176, Trumbull, CT 0 6611), fiscal sponsor: The International Center for Global Communications Foundation Inc., http://www.firstgiving.com/betweenthelinesappeal

Squeaky Wheel Productions, Inc., is a nonprofit community media organization whose mission is to promote and foster public awareness of points of view, news and information — generally ignored or marginalized in [mass] media — in order to encourage a more just and democratic global community. http://www.squeakywheel.net/ [info@squeakywheel.net]

International Center for Global Communications Foundation Inc works “to promote and foster public awareness of the peoples, cultures and current affairs of nations throughout the world and to encourage peace and understanding through various forms of media and other methods of information exchange.

“To develop television and radio programming with an international and educational perspective that is socially responsible, informative and entertaining, dealing with such topics as worldwide human rights, earth rights and environmental issues.

“To assist in the development of a new type of international and educational journalism in which the reporting of international events and conditions are reported in conjunction with people from those countries who are most affected by those events.

“To sponsor and promote television programming, symposia, lectures, conferences and workshops which foster communications between the peoples of all nations and the United States…” http://www.firstgiving.com/17751

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