A couple days ago, a right wing web site called The American Spectator posted a story claiming that Henry Waxman had ordered aides to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to begin gathering information into what talk radio hosts are saying in order to prepare for a committee investigation into issues of the obligation to public interest by media that use the public radio airwaves to broadcast partisan political messages. Fox News and several right wing blogs then picked up the story, repeating it as established truth.
The trouble with the story is that there is no proof whatsoever that it is genuine. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has issued a statement explaining that there is no such investigation, and the American Spectator has failed to come up with any evidence at all that their story was anything more than pure fiction.
It appears that the right wing is getting mighty nervous about the information that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is digging up on stories like the massacres by Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, and are seeking to create a distraction. Of course, I don’t know the truth of the matter myself, not being a Washington D.C. insider, or even a poser pretending to be one. Still, I find it ironic that the same right wing activists who support programs to spy on the private electronic communications of law abiding Americans are up in arms at the mere idea that a congressional committee might investigate issues of media reform involving airwaves owned by the American people.
