I’ve been watching “ER” since long before George (Dr. Doug Ross) Clooney became Oscar-nominated lawyer Michael Clayton, but no more. I’m boycotting NBC because of its actions in excluding Dennis Kucinich from the MSNBC broadcast of the Democratic presidential candidates in Las Vegas on January 15.

Congressmember Kucinich was voted the winner of early debates by viewers, and he won numerous straw polls of Democratic voters by wide margins. Though he subsequently withdrew from the race, Kucinich qualified for public matching funds available to presidential candidates who meet certain criteria. Despite these facts, his candidacy was marginalized by the corporate-owned media, whose networks excluded him from debates and whose pundits downplayed his positions and slighted him during the debates in which he did participate. Kucinich believes that his staunch opposition to war-profiteering and his stance against corporate power trumping citizens’ rights put him at the mercy of those profiteering corporations. In the case of the Las Vegas debate, the corporation was General Electric (GE), the country’s leading purveyor of nuclear energy systems and owner of Raytheon, a defense contractor that sells nuclear weapons. Kucinich opposes the use of deadly and unsustainable nuclear technology in either form and is a long-standing opponent of the war GE profits from.

GE also owns NBC, which first invited Kucinich to participate in the Las Vegas debate, then changed its criteria for inclusion and disinvited him. Kucinich promptly filed suit in a Las Vegas court and was granted an injunction prohibiting NBC from broadcasting the forum if Kucinich were not included. NBC filed a countersuit with Nevada’s Supreme Court, arguing that forcing them to include Kucinich violated the corporation’s First Amendment right of free speech. The court sided with NBC and Kucinich was barred from the debate.

This is neither the first time nor will it be last time that a bona fide candidate is excluded from a presidential debate, but it presents the clearest example of the abusive power telecommunications conglomerates wield in our so-called democracy. The Nevada Supreme Court’s ruling makes clear that an unelected corporation’s First Amendment rights are more legitimate than the rights of citizens to hear the broadest possible discussion of the issues and ideas at stake in our democracy. Corporate-owned media companies decide which candidates to present to the citizens of this country. Unaccountable, for-profit entities determine who is a viable candidate. CNN's political director, Sam Feist, justified excluding Kucinich from that network’s debate by saying, "By having people in a debate that don't have a reasonable chance at the nomination, that takes away from the voters' ability to hear from the people who do have a reasonable chance." I, for one, don’t trust a corporation bent only on increasing its shareholders’ profits to define who is a ‘reasonable’ candidate. And I, unlike ABC, CNN, and NBC, welcome a full and robust debate of a variety of viewpoints rather than the carefully choreographed sound bites of corporate-chosen candidates who espouse positions that too often differ from each other only in degree.

Kucinich protested his exclusion from debates in the courts and with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is charged with regulating the publicly owned airwaves. He got no relief from either entity; the FCC sidestepped the issue because the debates were shown on cable, not broadcast, channels. I personally protested to the Democratic Party in Nevada, which offered no support for one of its own and claimed no responsibility for exclusions and no power to include, even though it was a sponsor of the debate. This stands in sharp contrast to the New Hampshire Republican Party, which withdrew its sponsorship of a Fox News debate when Congressmembers Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter were excluded.

My position has become that I can’t support networks that limit my options and impinge on my democracy. Since I don’t get cable, I won’t miss CNN’s programming. I’m happy to discover that I’m not lost without ABC’s “Lost” and that I can get my crime-show fix with CBS’s “Cold Case” and “Without a Trace” instead of Law & Order spin-offs. I realize that my personal boycotts cost only me and affect the telecoms they’re directed toward not at all, but as Hoosier John Mellencamp sings, “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”

Kathleen Dobie is paying attention and is outraged.