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This week on NOW: * Congress, Big Media and backroom deals - sidestepping the public's demands over media ownership rules. Mr. Moyers goes to Washington in POWER POLITICS. * Unique perspectives from the election frontline. David Brancaccio gets the buzz in South Carolina from Reverend Joseph Darby and labor leader Harris Raynor - two southerners watching the race. * Can the Democrats reclaim the south? A Bill Moyers conversation with renowned US and Southern historian Dan T. Carter on the psychology and history of Southern politics.
============================================================= POWER POLITICS
When the FCC loosened the rules to allow media companies to own even more television stations, the public was outraged. Everyday citizens, and groups as diverse as the National Rifle Association and the National Organization for Women, inundated the FCC with letters and emails, asking to block the new rules. The US Senate took the remarkable step of passing legislation to roll back the new rules, but today, months later, the leadership of the House refuses to bring it to a vote. While critics wonder why Congress is dragging its feet, NOW takes a look to see if backroom deals are giving Big Media more control than ever over what Americans see, hear, and read. NOW continues its on going coverage of media deregulation and goes inside the quiet deal with the White House and Republican leadership that one member of Congress has called "a great gift" to America's largest media conglomerates.
============================================================= REV. JOSEPH DARBY AND HARRIS RAYNOR
With the presidential contenders heading south to what used to be a Democratic stronghold, NOW's David Brancaccio gets the lay of the land from a religious leader and a labor leader--both political watchers--who remember a day when the Democrats reigned supreme in the south. Reverend Joseph Darby, senior pastor of the Morris Brown A.M.E Church in Charleston, SC, and Harris Raynor, director of the southern region for UNITE, offer their views of the upcoming contest in South Carolina, how Democrats have lost their grip on key constituencies like African Americans, and what they can do to win back their edge in key southern states.
============================================================= DAN T. CARTER
Is it possible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win in the South? Bill Moyers talks to Dan T. Carter, one of the nation's foremost historians on U.S. and Southern history. Carter is the author of several books, including the award-winning THE POLITICS OF RAGE, FROM GEORGE WALLACE TO NEWT GINGRICH: RACE IN THE CONSERVATIVE COUNTERREVOLUTION and SCOTTSBORO: A TRAGEDY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH. Carter currently serves as the first Educational Foundation Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. Carter shares with Moyers his thoughts about the upcoming South Carolina primary and the impact that it has on the national presidential election.
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