Reply #213: Fox News was trying to protect their trademark?

[mac1000a]

Please. There's a reason they got laughed out of court when they tried to use that excuse. The phrase "fair and balanced" is about as old in journalism as you can get. Fox News has no more legitimate claim to that then anyone else. And even if they did, you might want to look up a little law called the Fair Use Doctrine. It states that citizens have the right to use copyrighted material in small portions for the purposes of education, comment, analysis, criticism, or satire. Franken's book definitely fell under that.

As for Moveon.org attempting to silence right wing groups from advertising, ah I'm sure not aware of anything like that. The only right wing groups that I've heard complain about being silenced are the ones like the NRA or Operation Rescue, and they're afraid that it's the Republican campaign against Moveon that's going to do it for them. The whole Republican complaint against Moveon is that they can't advertise because they're endorsing a political candidate, which isn't true. Moveon has never endorsed a candidate, which is why what they're doing is perfectly legal. They criticize the president, but they have never endorsed John Kerry. It's groups like the NRA that are afraid that if the Republicans succeed against Moveon, then they're going to be silenced too because they do the same thing. And they actually do endorse candidates. They send lists on who to vote for to all of their members.

As for the man putting them on the air being a Republican stooge, I don't know all the details about how Air America got on. That's known only to Air America and everyone else involved. The situation now is that Air America is said to have $30 million in funds to carry them over for the next few years. They didn't expect to make a profit for a long time, and they have plenty of money to support them while they didn't. So suddenly, the owner comes out saying that Air America bounced a check? This just sounds like such bullshit for so many reasons. Air America has plenty of money for one. And they also know that there are a lot of Republicans who love to see them fail just so they can go, "See, no one wants to listen to liberal radio." So they'd have to be pretty stupid to do something to give them ammo like that. And then, they get taken off the day after Bush's speech, by a man with known ties to the Republican Party. As I said, I don't know all the details that went on behind closed doors, but there's the pieces to the puzzle, make of them what you will.