July 12, 2008

Clear Channel Still Sucks

In the larger scheme of things, Clear Channel Communications is only moderately evil. They don't actively kill people (Zimbabwe, Myanmar), don't actively impoverish them (Monsanto, Dow), nor do they violate anyones civil rights (Bush, Telecom companies). They just took over FM radio, and played really shitty music. Evil, but not ninth-circle-of-hell evil.

Still, they are a corporation. And an evil one (see above). Thus, when they heard that someone was writing a book about the evilness that Clear Channel had done, they quickly took steps to make sure the author would have a chance to interview the company, and made a good-faith effort to see their side of the story told.

Ha ha. No, of course they didn't do that. They immediately blocked efforts by the author to get anywhere near anyone employed by Clear Channel, and hired someone else to write a competing book about Clear Channel. Yup; they fought fire with fire. Rumors (in the original WSJ story) indicated that Clear Channel paid the hack $100k, own the copyright to the book, had right to change anything they wanted in the text, and had to pay the publisher to put it out. I'm sure it's completely unbiased, and a truly moving story of corporate compassion that only has a marginal association with the truth.

In case anyone cares, the Clear Channel "autobiography" has an Amazon sales rank of 22,579, while the competing (objective) book has a Amazon sales rank of 3237. I guess people have figured it out.

Clear Channel remains evil. FM radio still sucks.

Posted by baltar at July 12, 2008 03:21 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Corporate Bullshit | Corruption | Culture | Music


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