In other scary media-related news:

Clear Chan­nel to Replace Green960, San Francisco’s Only AM Pro­gres­sive Talk Sta­tion, With Glenn Beck, Other RWers as Elec­tion Year Begins
By Brad Fried­man on 12/5/2011 12:07pm

The only pro­gres­sive AM radio talk sta­tion, Green960-KKGN, in one of the nation’s most lib­eral cities, San Fran­cisco, is being taken off the AM dial by radio behe­moth Clear Chan­nel Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Inc. — a media con­glom­er­ate now owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain Cap­i­tal, LLC — at the begin­ning of the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year.

Adding insult to injury for pro­gres­sives in the Bay Area, the 960 slot on the dial is being replaced by Clear Chan­nel with the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox News Radio’s John Gib­son and other rad­i­cal Rightwing talk­ers, accord­ing to a press release [PDF] issued by the media giant last week, tout­ing, in some­what Orwellian terms, their “goal of expand­ing talk radio in San Francisco.”

“We saw the oppor­tu­nity to expand our foot­print in this cru­cial arena as we head into an elec­tion year and a pop­u­la­tion increas­ingly engaged in local, state, and national events and activism,” says Clear Channel’s San Fran­cisco Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions Don Parker in the release.

The expan­sion will amount to mov­ing Green960’s cur­rent sched­ule of pro­gres­sive talk shows off the AM band, and on to FM’s HD2 radio ghetto where it will become a largely auto­mated “robo-station,” accord­ing to sev­eral radio insid­ers famil­iar with the sta­tion and Clear Channel’s plans for it. The sta­tion which was for­merly Green960 will have the catchy new name “FM Pro­gres­sive Talk 103.7–2″ at its new home, if lis­ten­ers can find it.

...

In many of those cities, the pro­gres­sive sta­tion is usu­ally car­ried on a weaker sig­nal and broad­cast­ers and their syn­di­ca­tors have pointed out that there is often lit­tle, if any, mar­ket­ing done to pro­mote the pro­gres­sive sta­tions. Such was the case on San Francisco’s Green960 prior to last week’s announce­ment, accord­ing to a num­ber of insid­ers who spoke to The BRAD BLOG off record.

Unfor­tu­nately, many that we’ve con­sulted with for this arti­cle either work for Clear Chan­nel or still rely on them to broad­cast their pro­grams so they chose not to speak on the record, though some did.

Accord­ing to their web­site, Clear Chan­nel has “more than 850″ sta­tions reach­ing “more than 110 mil­lion lis­ten­ers every week.” Wikipedia says that “Clear Chan­nel is the largest owner of full-power AM, FM, and short­wave radio sta­tions and twelve radio chan­nels on XM Satel­lite Radio, and is also the largest pure-play radio sta­tion owner and operator.”

After pas­sage of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act of 1996, as signed by Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, media goliaths like Clear Chan­nel were allowed to buy up mul­ti­ple, often com­pet­ing sta­tions in the same mar­ket and allowed leases by the FCC for mul­ti­ple fre­quen­cies on our publicly-owned air­waves in each city.

The law was sold by leg­is­la­tors and lob­by­ists on the premise that it would increase com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket place. The net effect has been the exact oppo­site as pro­gres­sive sta­tions have not been allowed to com­pete for audi­ences on an hon­est and level play­ing field against Rightwing talk sta­tions owned by the very same com­pa­nies in the very same market.

...

The Alwaleed Effect:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/twitter-to-censor-tweets-in-some-countries_n_1235116.html

Twit­ter To Cen­sor Tweets In Some Coun­tries
First Posted: 01/26/2012

SAN FRANCISCO — Twit­ter has refined its tech­nol­ogy so it can cen­sor mes­sages on a country-by-country basis.

The addi­tional flex­i­bil­ity announced Thurs­day is likely to raise fears that Twitter’s com­mit­ment to free speech may be weak­en­ing as the short-messaging com­pany expands into new coun­tries in an attempt to broaden its audi­ence and make more money.

But Twit­ter sees the cen­sor­ship tool as a way to ensure indi­vid­ual mes­sages, or “tweets,” remain avail­able to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble while it nav­i­gates a gaunt­let of dif­fer­ent laws around the world.

Before, when Twit­ter erased a tweet it dis­ap­peared through­out the world. Now, a tweet con­tain­ing con­tent break­ing a law in one coun­try can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.

Twit­ter will post a cen­sor­ship notice when­ever a tweet is removed. That’s sim­i­lar to what Inter­net search leader Google Inc. has been doing for years when a law in a coun­try where its ser­vice oper­ates requires a search result to be removed.

Like Google, Twit­ter also plans to the share the removal requests it receives from gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als at the chillingeffects.org website.

The sim­i­lar­ity to Google’s pol­icy isn’t coin­ci­den­tal. Twitter’s gen­eral coun­sel is Alexan­der Macgillivray, who helped Google draw up its cen­sor­ship poli­cies while he was work­ing at that company.

“One of our core val­ues as a com­pany is to defend and respect each user’s voice,” Twit­ter wrote in a blog post. “We try to keep con­tent up wher­ever and when­ever we can, and we will be trans­par­ent with users when we can’t. The tweets must con­tinue to flow.”

Twit­ter, which is based in San Fran­cisco, is tweak­ing its approach now that its nearly 6-year-old ser­vice has estab­lished itself as one of the world’s most pow­er­ful mega­phones. Daisy chains of tweets already have played instru­men­tal roles in polit­i­cal protests through­out the world, most notably in the upris­ing that over­threw Egypt’s gov­ern­ment a year ago.

It’s a role that Twit­ter has embraced, but the com­pany came up with the new fil­ter­ing tech­nol­ogy in recog­ni­tion that it will likely be forced to cen­sor more tweets as it pur­sues an ambi­tious agenda. Among other things, Twit­ter wants to expand its audi­ence from about 100 mil­lion active uses now, to more than 1 billion.

Reach­ing that goal will require expand­ing into more coun­tries, which will mean Twit­ter will be more likely to have to sub­mit to laws that run counter to the free-expression pro­tec­tions guar­an­teed under the First Amend­ment in the U.S.

If Twit­ter defies a law in a coun­try where it has employ­ees, those peo­ple could be arrested. That’s one rea­son Twit­ter is unlikely to try to enter China, where its ser­vice is cur­rently blocked. Google for sev­eral years agreed to cen­sor its search results in China to gain bet­ter access to the country’s vast pop­u­la­tion, but stopped that prac­tice two years after engag­ing in a high-profile show­down with Chain’s gov­ern­ment. Google now routes its Chi­nese search results through Hong Kong, where the cen­sor­ship rules are less restrictive.

In its Thurs­day blog post, Twit­ter said it hadn’t yet used its abil­ity to wipe out tweets in an indi­vid­ual coun­try. All the tweets it has pre­vi­ously cen­sored were wiped out through­out the world. Most of those included links to child pornography.

Sharp Eyes, Mr. Wilson!

Maybe we can call this “the Arab Sprung!”

I’d sure like to know what Kissinger promised Putin or threat­ened him with over Syria. I see a bil­ious Kissinger at a podium, pound­ing his shoe, shout­ing “We will tweet you!”... Get it? Remem­ber Khr­uschev?... never mind.
The National Endow­ment for Democ­racy, USAID and ‘democ­racy’ pro­mot­ing NGOs are busy grow­ing the Russ­ian social net­works for a try at oust­ing Putin. I hope they don’t get flus­tered and call it the Red Rev­o­lu­tion — been there, done that.

..and what color would a Russ­ian ‘color’ rev­o­lu­tion be? White, of course.

@Dwight: If this is hap­pen­ing then they’re try­ing to hijack yet another legit­i­mate demo­c­ra­tic reform move­ment, given that Putin is one of the pup­pets of the world crime network(yes, includ­ing the Under­ground Reich, they loved this guy! The per­fect lit­tle Krem­lin puppet.).

Hope­fully, Rus­sia doesn’t end up turn­ing into a bonafide banana repub­lic as the Teabag­gers have tried here in America........

@Dwight: And why is ‘democ­racy’ in quotes?

Par­al­lel con­ver­sa­tions on Saudi tech investors on whowhatwhy.com

http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/02/02/close-reading-the-saudis-a-twitter-investment-and-the-end-of-arab-spring/