After watching Shadows of Liberty: The Media Monopoly in American Journalism over the weekend, I didn't expect I'd be surprised by much during my interview with the documentary's filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay on The BradCast today on KPFK/Pacifica Radio. But I was.

It's a beautiful and maddening film, featuring many voices --- such as Julian Assange, John Nichols, Dan Rather, Amy Goodman, Robert Parry, Robert McChesney, Dan Ellsberg, Sibel Edmonds and many more, including even yours truly --- who will be familiar to readers of The BRAD BLOG. While aspects of a number of the stories told in the film may be familiar, there were elements that even I hadn't heard about it, in just about every one of them.

I had planned to ask Tremblay about his struggles finding commercial theatrical distribution for the film in the U.S. I'd presumed that, at least, would be next to impossible, given the subject matter of the film (the corporate takeover/merger of the near-entirety of our mainstream media in collusion with the highest levels of the U.S. government.) What I hadn't counted on --- what caught me completely off-guard --- was that Tremblay said that, while the film has been featured at prestigious film festivals around the world, the bulk of the major festivals in the U.S. had turned the film down. Yes, those supposedly "independent" film festivals are, apparently, not quite as independent as they used to be, it seems.

Our conversation, today, was the first, as I understand it, that Tremblay has been able to have in the U.S. media about this important film which has been several years in the making. (I was interviewed for the film about three years ago as I recall.)

The good news: We were able to talk about all of that today, unencumbered by any corporate filter and over our public airwaves on Pacifica Radio in L.A. (and over 110,000 blazing FM watts across much of Southern and Central California!)

The even better news: You can watch the film, in its entirety, streaming on the Internet as of tomorrow, Thursday, April 4 at Shadows.KCETlink.org. (You can watch a number of clips from the film there already.)

And, the even better news still: Shadows of Liberty will air on actual television, beginning Friday, April 5th at 8pm ET and PT on independent KCET in Los Angeles and nationwide on Link TV (DISH Channel 9410, DIRECTTV Channel 375).

Until then, you can listen to my conversation with Tremblay from today's BradCast, which includes a number of clips from the film --- along with a few more items of note in the news week (such as concerns about the 100% unverifiable voting systems set for use in the race of Stephen Colbert's sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, in her run for the U.S. House in S. Carolina against former Gov. Mark Sanford; the Virginia GOP voter registration worker who was caught tossing registration forms into a dumpster just before the Presidential Election last year, but who seems to now be getting off the hook, and, of course, a visit from our own Desi Doyen, as usual, with the latest Green News Report) --- all right now here.

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

P.S. Please be the media and spread the word. Thanks.
P.P.S. If I haven't "sold" you enough on the film here and in the radio show above, see the official trailer embedded below. Those of you who know my voice will recognize it a few times...

While both Brad Friedman and Sue Wilson have written in detail here at The BRAD BLOG about the recent closure of progressive talk radio stations in cities such as Portland and Seattle, along with the FCC's failure to enforce the public interest obligations of the conglomerates that own those stations, there's an interesting development on the other side of the dial, at least in Boston, where the demise of right-wing talk radio --- in a region where the format once dominated --- hints at a downward spiral for a key element of the conservative entertainment complex.

The latest sign of right-wing radio's malaise may be seen in the apparent demise of Boston's WTKK-FM.

The Greater Media Inc.-owned smooth-jazz-turned-right-wing-talk station is reportedly preparing to undergo yet another format change in early-January, returning to music.

As a conservative who listened to WTKK for years, I'm amused by this development, especially in light of the continued industry-wide fallout over Rush Limbaugh's verbal assault on Sandra Fluke earlier in the year.

Friedman and Wilson have shown conclusively that good progressive radio is not being allowed to succeed --- that the national corporate interests of these large media conglomerates (just as predicted by some media observers decades ago, following the passage of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996) are being placed ahead of the local public interest obligations which broadcast licensees are required to meet in exchange for their use of our public airwaves.

With the challenges now being faced by good progressive talkers facing obstacles stacked against their success, is there anything wrong with enjoying the spectacle of seeing bad right-wing radio fail, as appears to be the case in Boston at year's end?...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: With Hurricane Sandy recovery underway, Bloomberg endorses Obama, Romney is heckled, and the impacts of climate change finally begin to dawn on corporate media and public officials; PLUS: Planning ahead for a climate changed future ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): CIA's Climate Change Security Report Delayed Due To Hurricane Sandy; Winter Storm May Hit In Early November, Possibly On Election Day; Energy company CEO: Why do we have to talk about climate change today?; Australia Rejects Calls From The Fossil Fuel Industry To Roll Back 20 Percent Renewable Energy Target; Exxon And Shell Earn $54 Billion So Far In 2012, After Taking $800 Million In Annual Tax Breaks; KFC UK will no longer source from Asia Pulp & Paper ... PLUS: The Onion: Nation Suddenly Realizes This Just Going To Be A Thing That Happens From Now On ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A Tale of Two Conventions: wrapping up the DNC vs. RNC; It's official: 2012 shaping up to be hottest year on record; Shell begins Arctic drilling, but the Arctic has other plans; PLUS: 9/11, and the consequences of ignoring warnings ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Foul smell across Southern Cali; Caribbean coral reefs near collapse; BP unloads millions in Gulf of Mexico leases; Massive wildfires, evacuations in West; NYC unprepared for rising sea levels, storm surge; Looming national security issue at chemical plants; Climate change challenge for power plant operators; China orders renewable energy standard ... PLUS: GM calls report of money-losing Volt sales 'grossly wrong' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Bill Clinton makes the green case for Barack Obama at the DNC; PLUS: DOJ excoriates BP for "willful misconduct" and "gross negligence"... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): US taxpayers scammed by cheap coal auctions; Keystone XL Update: new route proposed, TX blockade shuts down worksite, Transcanada seizes US property through eminient domain; Organics vs. chemical farming; Patagonia's glacier melt accelerating; Video: How climate change will change your weather; Australia's carbon tax enriching polluters? ... PLUS: Special Report: "The Worst Environment Money Can Buy" ... and much, MUCH more! ...

"Do you really want to live in a country where one party is so desperate to win the White House that they go around trying to make it harder for people to vote if they’re people of color, poor people or first generation immigrants?," Bill Clinton asked rhetorically on Tuesday night during an event organized by the Arkansas Democratic Party.

In what The Nation's Ari Berman highlighted as a possible "preview" of the former President's remarks tonight in Charlotte, where he'll be headlining at the DNC, Clinton savaged the Republican efforts, particularly in Pennsylvania and Ohio, to suppress the Democratic vote:

Berman goes on to note that Clinton offered similar sentiments during a speech he made last year, when he decried the "Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today":

In last year's speech, a clip of which we'll post again below, Clinton said:

Will Clinton offer similar sentiments tonight during his speech in Charlotte?

UPDATE 9:10pm PT: In fact, Clinton did give a shout out against GOP voter suppression during his rousing convention speech tonight: "If you want ever American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority, and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama!"

The short clip from President Bill Clinton's 7/6/2011 speech to student voters, in which he slammed Republicans for their voter suppression efforts follows below.

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

No doubt during this election cycle, like every election cycle over the past forty years, we'll hear from the GOP about "tax and spend" Democrats.

Even though it doesn't detail how every Republican since Reagan has combined massive, unpaid-for tax cuts for the wealthy with runaway, unpaid-for military spending --- creating a great excuse to destroy the New Deal safety net, in order to slash their runaway deficit-spending --- this chart is, nonetheless rather revealing...

None of that, of course, has kept the bulk of the "Lamestream Media" from repeating the myth of Republicans as "fiscal conservatives," a concept this site has spent many years attempting to debunk. Last night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow did exactly the same thing when it came to the claim that Mitt Romney's newly chosen Veep pick, Paul Ryan, is a "fiscal conservative."

To borrow from CNN's Soledad O'Brien yesterday, "I understand that this is a Republican talking point because I've heard it repeated over and over again" --- in this case by the Beltway Media --- but "you can't just repeat it and make it true."

Maddow dispatches with the "Ryan as 'fiscal conservative'" nonsense in the unforgiving video below, in which she notes:

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: It's official: July 2012 hottest month ever recorded in the US; Romney running against the wind (energy industry); Deadly monsoons in Asia; Major plastics spill in Hong Kong; PLUS: Bill Clinton offers good news on the path to clean energy at the National Clean Energy Summit ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): NRC freezes nuke licensing decisions over waste storage problems; World's groundwater supplies over-exploited; Geothermal energy industry stalls in CA; Dr. Michael Mann debunks Richard Muller (again!); Chevron refinery damage may take months to repair; OR teens take global warming to OR Supreme Court; Forest Service changes policy on wildfires; Arctic sea ice impacting Shell's drilling plans ... PLUS: Cold War post-nuke apocalypse?: The 1980s-era Soviet plan to wage germ warfare on the US ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Triumph of propaganda over truth: D.C.'s King of the Deniers, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) takes a victory lap; Deadlock at Durban? Final days of the UN Climate Conference in S. Africa; 2011 breaks its own record for weather disasters; PLUS: GOP threatens to take another hostage to push the Keystone XL pipeline ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Must-reads: "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change" and "The Brutal Logic of Climate Change Mitigation"; EPA finds natural gas 'fracking' contaminated WY drinking water; Coal company put 'profits over people' in mining disaster; $4 billion for energy efficiency retrofits; GOP Jon Hntsman flip-flop-flips on climate denial; 1st floating wind turbine deployed in Atlantic ... PLUS: See for yourself: Time history of atmospheric CO2 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Just a friendly reminder. As originally posted on Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)'s flickr stream last May...

So who are the "big spenders" again?

[Hat-tip David Roberts.]

UPDATE The original graphic we used above had been posted by Pelosi's office on 5/3/11, even though they had updated the graphic on 5/19/11. We had linked to the updated one, but had posted the older one here (which illustrates the same idea, though George W. Bush's increase to the debt was seen as 115% versus 86% in the update, and Barack Obama was responsible for increasing the debt by 16% versus 35% in the updated version, which is now posted above.) Thanks to longtime BRAD BLOG commenter Soul Rebel for catching the mistake!

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IN TODAY'S VERY SCARY RADIO REPORT: Superbugs are on the rise! And Monsanto is helping!; Extreme drought and climate change affecting power plants in the US!; PLUS: It's 'Dirty Air Week' in the U.S. House, the scariest place of all!!! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Former Solyndra employees allege mismanagement; Solyndra executives will plead 5th in hearings; US will implement international standards for oil market transparency; BP Oil not degrading on Gulf floor; CERN Study: Are cosmic rays causing global warming? [No.]; $44m settlement in SF Bay oil spill; Interior Dept. confronts growing costs of wild horse control; World Bank: Ditch fossil fuel subsidies to fight climate change; Monsanto wins lawsuit against soybean farmer; Toxic BPA turning up in children's soup cans; Typhoon Roke spares Fukushima nuclear plant; Russia extends life of aging reactors; Rick Perry's dirty deals with Big Coal; TX, KS sue EPA over air pollution rule ... PLUS: Foreign land grabs in Africa threaten greater poverty ...

In apparent response to GOP leaders of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee who requested in June that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Julius Genachowski "strike the Fairness Doctrine from the agency's rulebook," the former corporate media executive has announced exactly that today, striking the rule, and 82 others, from the official FCC rulebook...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Earlier today, Brad Friedman reported that, despite high unemployment and food stamp usage at an all-time record high, U.S. corporations were experiencing record profits.

Simultaneously, Los Angeles Times reported that Senate leaders have reached an accord to pass three more NAFTA-like "free trade" agreements (Panama, Colombia, and South Korea) when Congress returns from its August recess. The Times stated: "Proponents [e.g., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce] say the trade agreements...will pump as much as $14 billion into the U.S. economy and add more than 250,000 jobs."

The reality was better captured by Ross Perot during a 1992 Presidential Debate when he warned (video reminder below) that NAFTA would produce "a giant sucking sound of jobs headed South"...

Yesterday...

Happily, since we're on the road, we'll associate with Think Progress' Ian Millhiser today who offers more background news on this and the GOP's War on Voting, in which he accurately concludes: "It’s much easier for the GOP to win the game, after all, if they can make it impossible for the other team’s players to even take the field."

[Hat-tip Blue Girl.]

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

"In a time of universal deceit --- telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Ah, the 2012 election cycle is fast approaching. The Plutocrat (aka 'Republican') Party is in the process of garnering funds from far-right billionaires like the Koch brothers in order to present their usual "jobs, jobs, jobs" propaganda.

"Jobs, jobs, jobs" will come to us not only by way of paid-for political ads, but by way of corporate MSM "coverage" which will conveniently neglect to mention that the GOP-controlled House has not offered a single bill that would create a single job, or that the 2010 GOP "victories" have merely produced an all out assault on the middle-class including an effort to eliminate Medicare, an assault on the fundamental right to engage in collective bargaining, and drastic cuts in programs designed to protect the health, safety and economic well being of the vast majority of the American people at the same time they tirelessly strive to protect subsidies for the oil cartel and tax breaks for billionaires.

Against this backdrop, Robert Reich has come up with this two minute, fifteen second explanation of "What’s Wrong with the Economy..."