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Air America Begins Syndication Division With ... Newsweek, Whose Current Cover Story Bashes Limbaugh

By Seton Motley | March 11, 2009 | 11:10

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"Journalistic" Cheap Shot at the Competition

UPDATE: Below the fold.

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Couldn't they have at least waited a week to make this announcement?

Liberal radio uber-failure Air America is branching out, expanding their tremendously successful business model to include syndication of outside programming. And with whom are they beginning this new venture?

Why, Newsweek magazine, and their program Newsweek On Air. Newsweek has been thusly broadcasting for twenty-seven years, has won "various awards and a place on so many station schedules" -- and I would venture that most of you have never heard of it.

A state of anonymity that will likely continue with their Air America partnership.

This announcement comes the same week Newsweek uses its cover and the accompanying story to bash Rush Limbaugh, the undisputed king of syndicated talk radio and someone who is diametrically opposed ideologically to the magazine's new syndication partner.

Thereby hiding its new business interests, and one might say their old ideological ones, behind the battered veneer of their journalistic integrity.

And so it goes in the Brave New Media World.

And one additional thought: Where does Newsweek stand on the new ‘Fairness' Doctrine, the Durbin Censorship Doctrine? Are they going to side with the censors of talk radio, or with their free speech rights and those of their fellow hosts? And the right of tens of millions of Americans to freely choose the shows to which they want to listen.

They should publicly answer this vital First Amendment question, and ask their Air America compatriots to do the same.

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UPDATE: When the Air America network was launched in 2004, Newsweek did a fawning, glowing three-page announcement story featuring host Al Franken, including a President Bush-mocking "photo illustration" of Franken standing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit.