Tim Robbins Speaks Out to National Broadcasters
 
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:35:44 -0500 (CDT)


Tim Robbins Speaks Out to National Broadcasters

Dear FAIR supporter,

We encourage you to listen to FAIR advisory board member Tim Robbins' no-holds-barred speech on broadcasting and to pass it on to your friends.

The speech is available on the FAIR website:

In MP3 format: http://www.fair.org/audio/Tim_Robbins_NAB_Keynote.mp3

In WAV format: http://www.fair.org/audio/Tim_Robbins_NAB_Keynote.wav

You can email Robbins' speech to a friend at: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=16&mod_page_to_email=3345

A renowned actor, director and writer, Robbins used his keynote address at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on April 14 to speak out about the "dangerous lack of diversity of opinion" that characterizes the state of broadcasting today. 

Robbins opened his speech "apologizing" to Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and other right-wing broadcast pundits:

"A few years ago, they told America that because I had different opinions on the wisdom of going to war, that I was a traitor, a Saddam lover, a terrorist supporter, undermining the troops.

I was appealing at the time for the inspectors to have more time to find those Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was a naive dupe of left-wing appeasement.

And how right they were. If I had known then what I know now, if I had seen the festive and appreciative faces on the streets of Baghdad today, if I had known then what a robust economy we would be in -- the unity of our people, the wildfire of democracy that has spread across the Mideast -- I would never have said those traitorous, unfounded and irresponsible things.

I stand chastened in the face of the wisdom of the talk radio geniuses, and I apologize for standing in the way of freedom."

Lambasting the media for their failure to treat the Bush administration's lies about Iraqi WMDs with the scrutiny they had shown former President Bill Clinton's sex scandal, he calls on the nation's broadcasters to do a better job of upholding their responsibilities to the public. 

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