Jul 2, 2007

The Rumor Mill: FCC Threatening News Outlets?

According to a poster at GotMead.com forums, a site dedicated to the making of alcoholic beverages made from fermented honey, Missouri State Congressman Jim Guest, known for his opposition to the Real ID act, was explaining to an attendee of Saturday's Ron Paul rally that the FCC had been threatening local FCC licensees into blacking out coverage of the Ron Paul rally.

Jim Guest (the Missouri State Congressman who gave an introductory speech for Ron Paul at the event) was asked (beforehand) to look into why the local media wasn’t covering the event, his contacts (at the stations?) reported back that the FCC had contacted the stations and told them in no uncertain terms not to give coverage to Ron Paul’s event. This isn’t some wild conspiracy that was on the rumor mill at the event. I was standing right next to Congressman Jim Guest while he was explaining this to someone who had asked him why the major media wasn’t here covering Ron Paul.
This information was sourced to this post in GotMead.com's forum. However, since others have posted the story the GotMead site has gone dark. Could this be due traffic overload or perhaps the post is being sent down the memory hole? The site now just displays a standard maintenance message.

Somebody should probably contact Jim Guest and find out if he said anything like this during the rally and if there is any corroborating documentation of a concerted FCC effort to shut down Paul coverage. Not that it makes any difference, but it would be good to have a smoking gun.

Editor: the original post which is the origin of the "rumor" is available again.

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