Socialists Target Glenn Beck and Talk Radio

posted at 12:38 pm on September 14, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Fairness Doctrine ]    printer-friendly

Erick Erickson at RedState has filed a report noting the efforts of a “media reform group” that styles itself Free Press to silence Glenn Beck and Talk Radio. According to the piece, one Josh Silver, Executive Director of Free Press, wrote at a recent article at Huffington Post arguing that Beck had launched a smear campaign against Van Jones, whom Silver calls “one of the great, principled leaders of our time.” By a remarkable coincidence, Jones is on the board of Free Press and spoke at the organization’s 2008 media reform conference. A link to a part of his speech, in which he addresses “media justice,” appears below.

But the story gets even more interesting. It turns out that the founder of Free Press is Robert McChesney, a socialist who has argued that the media is an impediment to a socialist revolution. In an interview with The Bullet, a publication of the Canadian Socialist Project, McChesney said that “unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution.”

The ultimate goal of McChesney, Silver, and Jones is a media “final solution,” in which the capitalist-run media are simply shut down permanently. This is not merely a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, which is inadequate to Free Press’s purposes, but a state-run media in which there is a single voice — much like the situation in Cuba and Venezuela.

Cross-posted at and adpated from Zombie Contentions

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