SpeakSpeak News

Voters in Estes Park, Colorado, have ousted an agnostic town trustee who preferred not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance prior to town meetings.

“It was a conscientious objection on my part. To take a loyalty oath before the meeting starts – that’s not American,” David Habecker said. “This country was founded on religious tolerance. This wasn’t religious tolerance. They said I turned my back on the flag, that I’m not patriotic, that I didn’t support the troops in Iraq, which is completely false.”

Lori Jeffrey-Clark, a town trustee whose husband led the recall effort, said “I think the voters understood that this was about representation. People just said, ‘Wait a minute – you’re sitting on our board, and you don’t represent us.’ I think they just decided that his views aren’t ours.”

From the Washington Times.

After moving into his new office last week, new FCC chair Kevin Martin ordered FCC staff to remain silent on issues facing the commission. Martin has apparently relaxed those orders, according to Broadcasting & Cable, but he is still prohibiting FCC employees from any public speaking engagements or for speaking on behalf of the commission.

The First Amendment was unavailable for comment.

In Broadcasting & Cable.

“But as the Quiet Beatle sang, all things must pass, and on so too, Powell’s chairmanship. On March 18th, President Bush nominated 38-year-old Kevin J. Martin to replace Powell as head of the FCC. Martin, who has occupied a Republican seat on the commission since July 2001, brings a mixed bag of votes and public comments to the table, some of which are likely to be a marked improvement from his predecessor, while others remain a cause for considerable concern.”

At The Center for American Progress.

The Columbia Journalism Review looks into the Media Research Center. MRC is one of Bozell’s babies and is nominally the Parents Television Council’s parent. It is also a right-wing propaganda mouthpiece disguised as a research organization (much like the PTC, which recently performed hard-hitting “research” on MTV).

Read Propaganda Clothed as Critique at CJR.

A representative of the Concerned Women for American spoke out on cable indecency in an article in Voice of America.

[Janet] LaRue of Concerned Women for America… believes the FCC needs to expand its regulation of cable and satellite. People pay for those services - about 85% of the US households with televisions have them.

“It is time that the indecency regulations apply to cable as well as satellite simply because it is just as pervasive and available to children and is far more sexually explicit in many cases,” says Mrs. LaRue.

Voice of America News

New Hampshire Public Television aired the “Sugartime!” episode of Postcards from Buster last night at 10 p.m. Vermont Public Television also aired the program on Wednesday. Both stations report that the calls and emails they receive were primarily in favor of the decision.

It will probably be decades before we know how badly the children were scarred.

In the Portland Press Herald and WCAX.

It’s not going away, says Robert Corn-Revere. (Until we make it go away.)

In Media Daily News.

The Chinese government has instituted new restrictions on university student websites as part of a Communist Party campaign to strengthen what it calls “ideological education” on campuses.

The new rules require students to register for forums with their real names and block off-campus users.

A spokesman for one university said that his employer “was adopting measures to clean the Web.”

When it happens there, it’s “repression.” When it happens here, it’s “family values.”

In the Washington Post.