Tell OPB To Stop Promoting Wal-Mart!!

Heard it with my own ears. Yuk!

Love all
Trust none

NPR / PBS is now officially part of the USA Corporate takeover, what are you gonna do?

It's not just OPB, and it's not just Wal-Mart. More and more major corporations are funding our public airwaves. Our access to information is restricted by these huge multi-national corporations. For example, don't hold your breath waiting for an in-depth report on corporate farms' effect on small family-owned farms from the ADM News Hour.

One solution -- get rid of your TV, and fund/support alternative media and bloggers that you feel good about.

For what it's worth, here's more articles & info about Wal-Mart --

Wal-Mart Crushes Union by Closing Store
 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0511-03.htm

Acres for Wal-Mart
 http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21820/

Wal-Mart Invades Mexico
 http://www.counterpunch.org/ross03172005.html

A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room
 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1101-06.htm

For years, I've been too poor to donate cash to OPB. I wonder if they ever have a homeless or poor persons night for answering the phone banks. OPB or CPB or both, have been progressively selling out more and more on the ad issue to big corporations.

Way back, ads for corporate sponsers used to be just a simple slide with a logo before or after a program. Slowly, they gave them more and more of an edge as we've come to the present, where finally, some of OPB's corporate sponsor ads have been allowed to become very agressive in seizing the viewers senses.

What were once courteous acknowledgements of a corporations desire to make a gesture of gratitude to those of the public who had helped it thrive, have become complex multi-layered sensory spells designed to capture and condition a viewers attention and receptivity to the products they're hawking.

The strategy of these promercials is not dignified or honorable, especially considering that kids are a significant part of public televeisions audience, but OPB needs, or thinks it needs the money, so we're assaulted by them. I'd really like to see OPB go back to the days of subtle, simple, informative slides. This is a far more decent gesture to the public.

Promoting Walmart, though I haven't seen that promotion on OPB yet (in the other room a lot with the box on)it seems as though airing that kind of thing is just another step in the decline in respect OPB has shown it's viewers over the years. Walmart is a plague on humanity. They don't even deserve a simple slide, because OPB shouldn't be taking their money. There might be hundreds of local businesses not currently donating to 0PB, that might be encouraged, if they could afford some decent exposure on OPB. It could be a responsible to give them a little more exposure than a slide since they don't sap the lifeblood out of a commuity and enslave low income wage earners as WM does.

I first thought that this was a nuts idea. If walmart is handing out money, why not take it? At least some of their ill-gotten gains can do some good.

Wrong! When opb accepts tainted money, they become tainted, too.

Activism is not pretty. Sometimes people and groups who you thought were your friends get caught up with the bad guys. When that happens, you encourage them to recover, but if they don't then they become legitimate campaign targets.

OPB and PBS are now taking walmart funds to broadcast public relations commercials proclaiming walmart's good jobs and community service. They are trying to paint lipstick on a pig.

The christian right has adopted tactics that were developed by the radical left because they are very effective. Boycotting is one very effective tactic. The left has grown complacent and some find this kind of activism distasteful. Fighting walmart and its ilk is worthy of not only not shopping there, but resisting it in other domains as well. Pressuring OPB to not accept walmart money is not only good for their ethics, but is also gets the poisonous propaganda off the air as well.

Just in case you want to send them an email, here is the address
 http://www.opb.org/contactus/

Ask them also to stop advertising for Merck Pharmaceuticals, for GE, which puts good things to death, Ford Motor Company, and every other corporate entity?

Well, yes, eventually, if there is just cause. One battle at a time.

It's not just OPB and PBS and NPR and Wal-Mart. The goal of all giant corporations is to totally dominate every aspect of our lives.

We can't rely on our corporate-controlled representatives in Congress to listen to us. But if we don't start doing something real soon, obscenities like the following will be commonplace:

"Mount Rainier, brought to you by Megabucks Co.

Imagine the scene: You and your family are enjoying the splendor of Yellowstone National Park on a brilliant sunny day. Just as a geyser erupts, you notice the plaque nearby: "Old Faithful's performance is brought to you by the makers of Viagra."
In other parts of the country, you could enjoy Great Smoky Mountains National Park, "sponsored by Philip Morris USA," and Arches National Park, "supported by funding from McDonald's."

The commercial tie-in possibilities are unlimited. Sadly, they could be the future for the nation's underfunded national parks.

The National Park Service proposes to open up commercial sponsorship of the park system and encourage park managers to solicit corporate donations. ..."

 http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/5379721p-4864690c.html

I both ceased supporting and watching OPB when their
brief mentions of corporate sponsors became very close
to full fledged commercials on public TV.

I emailed them with the reason I would not be
sending anymore checks. I got absolutely no reply
from them.

I support KBOO exclusively instead.

P.S. Have you ever passed by OPB and taken
a look in their employee parking lot?
Mercedes, SUVs, and the like.
They're fat and happy courtesy of the corporate thieves.

I'd feel more comfortable if the lot were full of beaters and bicycles.

And thier coverage of Lewis and Clarke is racist! A couple weeks back the commentator claimed that after six years of trying to convince the tribes to co-operate with the planned lewis and clark celebrations few have. They went on to claim that the individuals and tribes that did co-operate with the celebrations must be "More culturally advanced than thier ancestors." No Shit! They said this. A later Lewis and Clarke program went on to describe thier sexual persuits on the trail. Of coarse as they made disturbing jokes about lewis and clarks descriptions of how easy native women were, they chose to omit the rapes that occured.

OPB is National Propoganda Radio. There's nothing "progressive" about it.

The problem is PBS, NPR and local affiliates are trying to stay afloat in a increasingly capitalist society, while our lawmakers continue the march to 'bleed it dry'. It's not just Wal-Mart, it's Shell, ADM, and others that mar an otherwise unbiased outlet. It's time to step up efforts to fight the GOP/corporate crusade, namely by lobbying congress.

Mr. Rodgers and Big Bird taught me, as well as any teacher did in school, to empathize with your fellow man. Nova and Nature taught me to appreciate the complexity in the world's people and natural landscapes. We can give back by donating modest sums, but they're like drops in a bucket riddled with GOP-created holes. We're ENTITLED to at least ONE beneficial TV and radio station, RIGHT?? So go to the root of the problem, and focus your efforts there. As unnerving as Wal-mart money is, OPB is merely trying to get by.

OPB still is about the best television programming in our area, and yes, things are expensive and they're just trying to get by, but this business of conceding to the demands of morally dubious mega-corporations in order to obtain operating funds is insidious and dissipating. The sponsor acknowledgement/commercials they want to run on OPB are designed to condition and program viewers to a state of receptivity to those corporations. Does this sound like a desirable or healthy effect to foist upon the public?

Through their ads on OPB, they devise to have viewers become customers of their products and services, customers with reduced concerns about the morally and ethically dubious activities the corporations are carrying out around the world and on its people.

The mega-corporation's first and only priority is the bottom line, and to that effect, to the extent they are able, they corner the market on a resource or a commodity, then market it for everything its worth, subordinating harmful consequences to the earth and its people to this objective. They strip and despoil the earth, enslave it's people, create market infrastructures such as the automobile industry and the stick frame housing industry that use up the earth's resources at an unsustainable rate, then devise to have the public worship them for doing so.

How long it will last, who can tell, but for some time now congress has been in danger of being driven by a number of holier than thow, "I don't want my money being used to pay for etc.,etc., etc." types. The U.S. is supposed to be a community where all the members agree to support a setting that provides freedom and justice for everyone, yet these types if allowed, would whittle away at the foundation that supports this community. Dont't exect those people to be sympathetic to your pleas about inadequate funding for PBS uless you're prepared for a lot more religious and conservative programming on public broadcasting.

Fortunately, enough people in the U.S. still seem to be able to see clear of the extremists so as to keep them from overwhelming everything. Selling out to more and more corporations like walmart, archer-daniel-midlands, chevron, doesn't help in that direction. Tell OPB to economise and go local rather than take the mega-corp money.