Warner Todd Huston
Emerging Corruption
1/15/2011
Lincoln Chafee was the bane of conservative talk radio when he was the RINO Senator from Rhode Island. Now that he is a newly minted “independent” and has become the Governor of the Ocean State, Chafee is in a position to take his revenge on the medium. And boy has this petty man used his power to do just that by banning his state employees from talking to talk radio.
Chafee has revealed some pretty warped logic to sustain his ban on talk radio, too.Through his spokesman, Chaffe said that he won’t go on talk radio because the medium is “ratings-driven, for-profit programming,” and that he doesn’t want his employees going on for the same reason.
Spokesman Michael Trainor… said the policy emanates from a belief that talk radio is essentially “ratings-driven, for-profit programming,” and “we don’t think it is appropriate to use taxpayer resources” in the form of state employee work time to “support for-profit, ratings-driven programming.”
One has to wonder which news media out there isn’t “for profit” and essentially for “ratings” — at the very least through sales if nothing else?
This is nothing but a move toward revenge. When Chafee was in the Senate he didn’t like the free political speech exercised by talk radio and now that he’s governor he’s making a move to starve the medium of something to talk about…
Read the rest at Emerging Corruption.
Update: R.I. Governor Chafee says advertisers should shun divisive talk radio
PROVIDENCE — Taking his criticism of talk radio one step further this week, Governor Chafee on Thursday called on advertisers to stop supporting talk radio that is divisive.
“Those that pay — the advertisers — should shut them down,” he said to reporters following an unrelated event Thursday morning in downtown Providence. “My view is that some of these people don’t even believe what they are saying, but they are making money off it. They’re selling this divisive and highly emotional [content] … because it sells. So the advertisers have to shut them down. That’s my view.”
The comments came during a week in which the independent governor faced criticism and a fair amount of national attention for his decision to ban all state employees, including himself, from talk radio during state work time…
