by Mike Konrad
There was a time when what was acceptable in media was generally policed. This was the time of the three major networks, who were then accused of controlling public discussion.
Up until the ’90s, ABC, NBC, and CBS ruled the roost, and they tended to keep extreme viewpoints off of the air. Neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists never got a hearing. The media were sanitized, to be sure. In the late 1980s, the FOX network started rising, but it followed a similar practice. The only difference is that FOX paraded itself as conservative at that time.
It was not a total suppression of free speech — though some claimed it was — but it was a sort of gatekeeping. Dissident/extremist opinions could not get a hearing.
Some claimed that the media were controlled by the Jews, but with the arrival of FOX — which was owned by the Murdochs, a Christian family — that claim no longer held up. Yet the ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith) addressed the matter in 1999…
