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FREE SPEECH FOR SALE IN AMERICA

It is for sale if you can afford the cost of access! When the U.S. Constitutions Amendment for Freedom Of Speech was written in 1776, our forefathers never envisioned that rich corporations would be able to drown out and defeat competing opinions using TV ads to distort the truth and thus mislead voters on certain issues. E.g. the U.S. Congress created a bill to heavily tax tobacco products to help pay the health costs of smokers on Medicare as well as to create an ad campaign to help inhibit teenage smoking. Consequently, the tobacco industry spent big bucks on negative issue TV ads and telemarketers employed to conduct negative issue telephone polling which, critics charge, distorted the truth about the bill in order to get voters to pressure their legislators to vote down the bill..... and it succeeded!

The influence of money determines who will be heard. Rich people and corporate conglomerates decide what we hear, creating a plutocracy, not a democracy! Money buys influence!

Even broadcasters (radio and TV stations /networks) are in on it by choosing what to investigate. When broadcasters stole the publics digital airwaves in the Telecommunications Act of 1999, few broadcast news organizations did any kind of lengthy investigation to expose the controversy!

Making matters worse, now that broadcast news organizations are mostly owned and operated by a few corporations, you can bet that you may be getting few if any lengthy investigations exposing the bad things that these corporations may be involved in.

Furthermore, as long as broadcasters are getting rich by selling advertising to their fellow corporate conglomerates which create negative issue ads to distort the truth and sway public opinion, you can be sure that those groups which may oppose these conglomerates or go against the financial interests of the broadcasters may not even be allowed to buy airtime and advertise their opinions.

But not to worry, because those who do oppose the financial interests of Big Business may not even have enough money to go up against corporate conglomerates and warn the public anyway. Nowadays, with the broadcast media in the hands of a few, the heads of these media giants can, in subtle ways, let your legislators know they risk not getting re-elected if they oppose what is in the financial interest of Big Business.

The wealthy people in America and their corporate conglomerates may have been allowed to get away with abusing the Free Speech Amendment for so long that it may be slowly but surely killing true democracy in America.

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: PBS-TV DOCUMENTARY FREE SPEECH FOR SALE IN AMERICA 6/3/00

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