Episode 85: The Unfairwaves

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(This episode is part of the series The Powell Movement.)

It's bad enough that most radio is so chock filled with commercial interruptions that folks, like myself, find it unlistenable. Thanks to a late-80s rule change, however, one has to watch out for more than just paid crap between the featured show sneaking its influence into one's brain case via the hearing holes. That's the theme of today's Episode 85: The Unfairwaves.

In this episode, I read from: Mitchell Stephens' book Beyond News: The Future of Journalism; a Wikipedia article on the Fairness Doctrine; Eric Altermann's book What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News; Robert McChesney and John Nichols' book Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America; McKay Coppins' book The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House; Politico articles "Who is Dave Brat?", "How Big Money failed Cantor", "Right-wing radio's win", and "The tea party radio network"; the Atlantic Magazine's article "Six Theories for Eric Cantor's Loss"; and the DailyKos article "Who is John Ga-er-David Brat".

Musically, I play three from Jahzarr; "Cavern," "Dip," and (quite appropriately) "Gloom." I open with KMFDM's "Attak" backing Henry Giroux, and close once again with Mistle Thrush.

I'm releasing this and all my episodes under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution, share-alike, and non-commercial license.