BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Monday, November 15, 2004
RADIO TRAGEDY. Here's a
small but interesting wrinkle in the tragic story of Brad Bleidt, who
reportedly attempted to commit suicide after admitting he had bought
WBIX
Radio (AM 1060) with money
he'd obtained by defrauding his investors. As one of the few
independent radio stations remaining, WBIX has attracted an
inordinate amount of attention from other media organizations -
including the Boston Globe and the Boston
Herald.
For one thing, WBIX is the home of
Bailey
and Stein, hosted every
weekday from 9 to 10 a.m. by Globe columnists Steve Bailey and
Charlie Stein. It's a very good show that deserves a wider audience,
and I would say that even if I wasn't an occasional unpaid
guest.
For another, Bleidt and
Herald publisher Pat Purcell had talked in the past about
forming some sort of partnership, which would have given Bleidt
much-needed capital and Purcell the radio outlet he has long coveted.
In the spring of 2003, Bleidt
told me he was definitely
interested in some sort of arrangement. Added Purcell: "We've had a
number of conversations, and that's a possibility."
Those plans, however, were
contingent on the FCC's loosening its prohibition on cross-ownership,
a rule that forbids any one owner from controlling a newspaper and a
radio or television station in the same market. Later in 2003 the
FCC, as expected, all but abolished the cross-ownership ban. But
Congress, prodded by angry constituents, put the FCC's action on
hold, where it has remained ever since. Congress did the right thing,
but in this case what was good for democracy was bad for Bleidt
- and possibly for Purcell as well.
When I interviewed Bleidt a year
and a half ago, he sounded relaxed and confident. He made it clear
that though he was looking for some sort of print partnership, he
would not be willing to sell out entirely. "Actually, I'm having too
much fun," he told me. "That's what's so delicate. We really have
to make sure it's the right fit." But he closed on an oddly
threatening note, mildly worded, yet totally out of sync with what
I'd thought was a pretty friendly exchange. "You be good now," he
said, adding: "I'm serious."
As it turns out, Bleidt didn't even
own WBIX at the time of our interview. According to yesterday's
Globe account, by
Christopher Rowland, Bleidt agreed to buy the station for $13.2
million in November 2002, but didn't complete the deal until January
2004. In the spring of 2003, when I talked with Bleidt, he and his
wife, WBZ-TV (Channel 4) reporter Bonnie Bleidt, were controlling the
station, but he had apparently not yet come up with the cash he
needed to call it his. Then, just six months later, he reached an
agreement to sell
to Chris Egan, the son of
EMC founder Richard Egan.
The Herald coverage is worth
reading as well. Here
is Cosmo Macero's piece from yesterday's paper. Today the
Herald follows up here,
here,
and here.
According to the papers, the sale
to Egan is expected to go through. But if this thing's not nailed
down, then all bets are off. Here's one possibility now that WBIX has
a 24-hour signal: Bloomberg
Radio, the home of
Boston-based hosts Michael Goldman and Tom Moroney, would almost
certainly love to have a Boston outlet. And Bloomberg ownership would
fit well with 'BIX's all-business orientation.
COUNTING THE VOTES. I remain
in wait-and-see mode regarding accusations that John Kerry would have
been elected president were it not for shenanigans pulled by the
Republicans, especially in Ohio. I've read some things that are
interesting, but I have yet to see anything I would consider
proof.
But why do we have to read
out-and-out
distortions like the
assertion by Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young about "Kerry's groundless
claim in a campaign stump speech that one million
African-American votes weren't counted in Florida"?
Groundless? Uh, I think not. Greg
Palast, who knows this stuff cold, wrote
on Friday:
American democracy has a
dark little secret. In a typical presidential election, two
million ballots are simply chucked in the garbage, marked
"spoiled" and not counted. A dive into the electoral dumpster
reveals something special about these votes left to rot. In a
careful county-by-county, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the
Florida 2000 race, the US Civil Rights Commission discovered that
54% of the votes in the spoilage bin were cast by
African-Americans. And Florida, Heaven help us, is typical.
Nationwide, the number of Black votes "disappeared" into the
spoiled pile is approximately one million. The other million
in the no-count pit come mainly from Hispanic, Native-American and
poor white precincts, a decidedly Democratic demographic.
Now, Young writes that Kerry
claimed one million African-American voters were disenfranchised in
Florida alone, but I think she's mistaken. Palast quotes Kerry's
remarks before the NAACP convention earlier this year: "Don't tell us
that in the strongest democracy on earth a million disenfranchised
African-Americans is the best we can do. This November, we're going
to make sure that every single vote is counted."
There is a high statistical
probability that a million black voters were disenfranchised four
years ago. There is no reason to think much has changed since then.
By the way, be sure to read all of Palast's piece, which
argues that Kerry would have won Ohio and New Mexico - and thus the
presidency - if African-American votes weren't tossed at a rate far
higher than those of whites.
And Cathy Young needs to start
boning up on the facts.
posted at 10:28 AM |
6 comments
|
link
6 Comments:
Young's column today is a disaster. She hangs the whole column on ridicule of the phrase "reality-based", yet never explains where it came from (Ron Suskind's NYT article on the Bush machine, where one Bush aide explained that reality isn't important - they create their own).
She also buys the administration's slippery Iraq rationalization - from the original (Saddam had al Qaeda ties, which made him a valid target of 9/11 retaliation) to the new (Saddam had ties to terrorists unspecified).
If she had more respect for facts, perhaps her reasoning would be clearer.
You refer to Bonnie Egan. Is that a typo or is she related to Chris Egan?
Oof. Bonnie Bleidt. I have now corrected the item. Thanks, and my apologies.
Dear Dan,
Thanks for keeping tabs on the latest news from Ohio. A recent paper by a U-Penn professor, when added to the case that Palast makes about selectively disenfranchised voters, presents a very distrurbing scenario. Essentially, it suggests that even those who did get to vote may still have cumulatively leaned towards Kerry, and that something is very fishy with the tallied results. This is the most measured, articulate and comprehensive consideration of exit poll discrepancies that I have read thus far:
www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf
- Curtis Hughes, Cambridge, MA
curtis.hughes@comcast.net
It's over folks...it's freaking over. Let's talk 2008 and stop whining, I'm sick of talking people of the ledge. You continue to make us all look like the pussies we are portrayed as in the mainstream media.
GET FREAKING OVER IT! HE WON.
Dear Anonymous,
Point taken... but seriously I don't think there is so much whining going on as there is just some legitimate questioning.
There are good reasons for doing this: One is to find out exactly what happened so that we don't have anything questionable happen the next time around - if in fact something shady happened in Ohio, then we'll never stop it from happening again if we don't call them on it this time. Secondly, Bush currently claims to have "political capital" to spend and wants to act as though he has a mandate. Anything we can legitimately do (without resorting to mindless conspiracy-mongering) to undermine the national sense that he does indeed have a mandate must be done, as a kind of damage control, so that he is not perceived as having the public's blessing. If an investigation of Ohio seems at all likely to reveal that Bush does not have the mandate he claims to have, then it should indeed be undertaken, even if some do say we should just "get over it."
- Curtis
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
