'Shut Up, America!' Hits Amazon Best-sellers List
May 11, 2009
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WASHINGTON – Despite the title, "Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech" is not a gloomy book that suggests the die is cast on anti-First Amendment efforts emanating from Washington.
On the contrary, author Brad O'Leary, whose books hit the best-sellers list at Amazon this week, is donating the profits from his latest title to preserving freedom of expression – with a special focus on talk radio and the Internet.
The book is currently No. 1 in three non-fiction categories – including "censorship."
O'Leary, along with WND's Joseph Farah, organized the first-ever "talk-show summit" here last month – bringing together a diverse group of the nation's top hosts and producers, representing some of the very biggest shows in the country.
The fruits of that effort are beginning to show – with a new organization headed by talker Roger Hedgecock called American Radio Free Speech.
Of enormous concern to O'Leary and the new coalition is the changing political complexion of the Federal Communications Commission, currently composed of two Democrat and two Republicans. Barack Obama has nominated a new chairman, Julius Genachowski, which would give Democrats a 3-2 majority once he is confirmed.
As WND previously reported, Genachowski advocates creating new media ownership rules that promote a diversity of voices on the airwaves. In fact, Genachowski is credited with helping craft the Obama technology agenda, which states: "Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum."
"Such language is bureaucratese for government control," says O'Leary. "So-called 'public interest' requirements would put broadcasters at the mercy of local review boards. Such boards would, of course, be politically charged entities with the power to bar any broadcast content that is not deemed to be in the 'public interest' of the local community."
O'Leary says the plan amounts to the development of party-approved "commissar committees" to censor the kind of lively and free-wheeling debate America has known since the scrapping of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" by President Reagan's Federal Communications Commission in 1987.
By demanding radio stations answer to local community watchdog boards to ensure programming is "balanced," "fair," "diverse," "tolerant" and "serving the public interest locally," O'Leary says the rules and legislation being planned will once again make talk radio accountable to politicians, political activists and bureaucrats at the FCC.