Irony Alert!John McC…

Irony Alert!

John McCain, Sept. 13, 2005:

Congress also provided additional spectrum for first responders in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. So, after spending millions of dollars in funding and additional spectrum for our nation’s first responders why aren’t we better off than we were on 9/11 when it comes to interoperable communications? Because the spectrum Congress provided to first responders in 1996 is being held hostage by television broadcasters.

The ABC network, today:

ABC’s Diane Sawyer had the temerity on Monday’s Good Morning America to lecture White House counselor Dan Bartlett about the length of time it’s taking to get more radio spectrum allocated to public safety when it is television broadcasters, led by the National Association of Broadcasters to which ABC belongs, which have been fighting to delay the move of television transmissions to HD digital on new channels, a necessary step to free up TV channels 60-69, the upper end of the 700 MHz spectrum, for public safety. Citing a low grade from the 9/11 Commission, Sawyer complained that “four years after 9/11, police and firefighters still can’t talk to each other. They don’t have interconnected radios, which is something that could have been done right away.” Unsatisfied by Bartlett, who could have pointed out that Congress stands in the way, Sawyer exclaimed: “But four years?” Later in the day, on ABC’s World News Tonight, Martha Raddatz pointed out: “Why the holdup? The 9/11 commission says part of the problem is that broadcasters have not set aside part of the radio spectrum for emergency personnel, keeping it instead for commercial broadcasts.”

Hat tip to the Media Research Center. This is why it’s very useful to get their e-mail of liberal media bias (or liberal media ignorance, in this case). I think they too sensitive at times, and find bias where it barely or might not exist, but there are still plenty of examples of this sort of one-sided reporting to keep them in business. Today’s CyberAlert includes the documenting of how the major networks handled the initial DeLay charges vs. how they handled yesterday’s dropped charges.

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