Embarrassed, again!

In the 1960s, during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, then first lady Ladybird Johnson gave voice to a big campaign to restrict billboards. They "polluted" the view, you know!

At the time, I was managing a radio station in Kansas. Along with most other radio people, I strongly opposed Mrs. Johnson's campaign. While we were, indeed, a news disseminating medium, we were also an advertising medium, and sorely needed all the advertising dollars we could attract. Billboards were a tough competitor for those ad dollars, because most billboard ad contracts were for extended periods of time. When an advertiser bought a bunch of billboards, his ad budget was locked up for several months, perhaps even a year. I would have loved to have seen that competition removed from my world.

But radio people worried that if the government could wipe out billboards, radio could become their next target? We already had people complaining that our towers, like billboards, were an eyesore. Mostly, however, we just resented the government taking action against a legal, legitimate business.

Eventually the anti-billboard campaign petered out. I don't know how much we broadcasters helped make that happen, but I have always been proud that we stood up.

Now our government is waging war on Fox News Channel. Glen Beck, one of the Fox commentators, believes the White House is planning to "punish" FNC. How might they do that? Well, maybe they could prevail against Comcast, Time Warner, and the satellite companies, to refuse to carry FNC.

Do you see the other networks - cable or broadcast - coming to the defense of FNC? To my great embarrassment, you do not.

Recently, the so-called mainstream media (a term used to distinguish the big news outfits from bloggers, columnists and other small voices) have embarrassed me repeatedly. When CNN furrowed their brow and did a "fact check" of a Saturday Night Live comedy skit critical of President Obama, I almost wept.

When I ran a radio station, it was not a business. It was not a job. It was a love affair! Our radio station did things that made me enormously proud. Once a local newspaper did a story praising our coverage of a tornado threat. Once the vaunted New York Times mentioned our station in a story about talk radio, then a new phenomena. Another time, that same New York Times did a story about our station staging a promotion (celebrating the opening of a new municipal airport) wherein a young woman - my wife - was given her first flying lesson and soloed the plane, all in one day. The first time a woman had ever done that. Each of those events made me so proud.

The most salary I was ever paid in radio was below today's minimum wage. But, we were doing some great things. It has been thirty five years since my last day in radio. For thirty five years I have been proud to tell people of my 25 year radio career.

Today... well, how can you brag about having been a part of an industry that now is an embarrassment?

UPDATE:

Wow! ALL members of the White House Press Corps refused to participate in the interview of a Czar if Fox was excluded! There is hope... once infected by the journalism virus, it apparently is not so easy to expunge it!