The Best Media Money Can Buy

John Archibald exposes Larry Langford’s payoffs to local media figures.  I don’t even want to summarize; this makes me want to puke.  Go read.

10 Responses to “The Best Media Money Can Buy”

  1. Kiki says:

    Completely and truly despicable.

  2. Jennifer says:

    I haven’t even gotten my damn paycheck yet! Who do I have to call?

  3. Perhaps the Birmingham News should take up Shirley Chisolm’s motto for her Presidential run: “Unbought and Unbossed.” Although they’re not really unbossed – the corporate overlords keep the editorial content in line. For example, not a word in their article about the details of Rep.Sue Schmitz’ arrest – dragged from her shower at 6:15 a.m. in a raid by a group of officers that acted like it was a meth lab. Methinks if a Republican had been violently hauled off and knocked around it would have made a Stantis cartoon at least.

  4. Kathy says:

    Jennifer, you could try Frank Matthews, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

    I’m glad the News has stopped kowtowing to Larry. Kyle Whitmire at the Birmingham Weekly is also keeping an eye on the mayor and his, um, interesting approach to the math.

  5. Bill says:

    Frank Matthews is to journalismm what Heide Fleiss is to commerce.

  6. bhmhomeboy says:

    Langford learned from the best:
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/29column.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

    I’m not defending Langford, but there appears to be a double standard in to the reaction and the outrage.

    BTW and on another topic, former U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft used to hold Bible Study at the Justice Department. Langford appears to be more in line with the right wing than progressives.

  7. Kathy says:

    bhb, I’m not sure who you think is practicing a double standard. I wasn’t blogging when those stories broke (and neither was Danny, if that’s where you’re going), but I remember seeing plenty of outrage around the progressive blogosphere at the time.

  8. sansou says:

    Not quite the same, but has anybody tried to navigate the Secretary of State’s website lately? Maybe it’s fixed by now, but after the News reported on the contribs to Larry AFTER the election, I went to SOS to have a looksee at the BARD PAcs. Had to view every page sideways cuz the ‘rotate page’ buttons were missing. Some reports were inconsistent between Form 1 statement and the actual Contribution and Disbursement pages.

    However, despite the user-unfriendly SOS site, I did find that Langford was the most frequent recipient of the 5 Stephen Bradley PACs. And Drummond Co. was the biggest benefactor– chipping in $18,500 into each one of the five Bradley PACs on Dec. 24, 2007 –for a total Christmas Eve gift of $92,500. Just something else to keep an eye on.

  9. [...] the only one who wrote an interesting story about Larry Langford last week. While John detailed Larry’s payoffs to local media, Kyle Whitmire at the Birmingham Weekly took a look at his questionable approach to funding that [...]

Leave a Reply