Public Please

When we think of Dennis Kucinich’s recent announcement to end his bid for the White House to return home and fight for his seat in Congress, we cannot help but reflect on the fact that he returned home, in large part, because corporate media continues to censor him and the policies he advocates, including nonprofit universal healthcare and an end to the war in Iraq. It is often difficult to see what has been censored, but consider MyFox Cleveland’s author-less and argument-free report, Kucinich Drops Presidential Bid.

MyFox Cleveland, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, reports the following assertions - not arguments - from anonymous critics:

“Critics of Kucinich say the 61-year-old, six-term congressman, who has represented the 10th District since 1997 has stopped paying attention to the district since announcing his run for the presidency.”

Like so many other corporate media networks, MyFox Cleveland (which is not really our Fox) does not report substantive arguments, arguments which marshall evidence for their claims. Instead Fox echoes vague worries about an absent Congressman and offers a list of Democratic and Republican challengers. Even in its effort to report on Democratic challenger Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman, Fox does not delve into the issue of whether prolonged visits to Washington D.C. effects local representation. Fox takes the time to write a tiny multimedia piece entitled Councilman Hangs ‘Missing’ Dennis Kucinich Posters, but fails to take the time to report the facts about whether Kucinich is actually missing. Has Kucinich refused to go to work? Is he playing golf instead of casting votes? The answer is no to these questions, but these are relevant questions to the charge of political misrepresention and the kind of critical political context that MyFox Cleveland, a for-profit media corporation, fails to ask, and so censors by omission.

In response to this pattern of corporate-funded political censorship, Kucinich argues that he is working for the people of the 10th District because he has been opposing the war in Iraq, and the war in Iraq through 2007 has cost the taxpayers of his district 903 million dollars, money which could have been spent on local needs.