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When shock jocks attack, the public fires back
 Potty-mouthed talk radio hosts serve a lot of masters.
Whether or not they’re simply following orders (the “Shock Jock Nuremberg Defense”), radio stations seem willing to turn a deaf ear to offensive speech — as long as advertisers buy air-time and listeners continue to tune in.
After MSNBC pulled Don Imus’ radio simulcast and CBS Radio canned him last month for the now infamous “nappy-headed ho” remark regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Imus claimed he was contractually obligated to offer up raunchy dialogue.
Fans of XM Satellite Radio’s Opie and Anthony are rewarded with a steady stream of coarse humor and noxious entertainment. The nationally syndicated pair was recently suspended for 30 days after airing a salacious bit in which the two fantasized about the brutal rapes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other prominent women.
Closer to home, advertisers bailed on “The Gunny Bob Newman Show” following his on-air rant on May 8 insinuating that all Muslim immigrants are terrorist threats and should wear GPS tracking bracelets. Denver-based Clear Channel management later posted what could be loosely construed as an apology on his program’s website.
For every public whipping boy targeted by people fed up with the
constant tirade of stereotypes, untruths and inflammatory language,
there are hundreds of local radio stations across America dishing up
the same type of overheated rhetoric. While the Federal Communications
Commission focuses on nipple-baring wardrobe malfunctions on television
and full-on obscenities, local watchdog groups and media researchers
have raised concerns that area stations are assaulting the public’s
ears with trash talk that skirts the FCC’s own “community standards of
decency.”
SCHMOOZING ON KCOL
Scott James serves a dual role at the Loveland-based 600 KCOL-AM as program director and evening drive-time host of “The James Gang.” The Fox News affiliate boasts a lineup of shows that drive liberals to distraction and feed the conservative masses with weekday doses of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and UFO-devotee George Noory.
The off-air James offers self-effacing humor and is a pensive media insider. He refers to himself on the program’s website as “just a schmoo doing my job” — ostensibly an obscure reference to the “schmoo,” a satirical Li’l Abner cartoon character who symbolizes the threat of lazy welfare recipients to government and big business.
On-air, James’ radio shtick takes over, although his is relatively low-watt compared to the oratory firepower of some conservative talk show hosts. But that hasn’t kept him out of the crosshairs of Colorado Media Matters, a progressive group that monitors and analyzes conservative misinformation. He’s been bitten by the media watchdog for referring to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama as “Barack Osama,” likening Al Gore to a Nazi propagandist, and parroting Republican talking points.
Clearly enjoying the attention that catalogues him with other, more prominent talk hosts of dubious accuracy, James marches on with a three-hour show that riffs on snippets of daily news and conservative commentary.
As program director, he is responsible for ensuring that the stable of KCOL talk show hosts does not violate FCC standards. James confirms that Clear Channel requires each on-air personality to complete annual “decency training,” an online questionnaire on broadcast regulations and definitions of obscenity. The difficulty for talk formats like his, James explains, is that “FCC regulations are a floating target, because we’re supposed to reflect the community’s interests.
“We serve Northern Colorado,” he adds, “and the heart of Johnstown is considerably different than the heart of the CSU campus. What it all boils down to is, the FCC has gotten to where it gets a complaint and it investigates if anything was said that is obscene, indecent, pornographic or salacious, and if by and large the answer is no, they won’t go a whole lot further. If you take a look at the Imus situation, the FCC was never once involved.”
Determining where the lines of personal responsibility and censorship intersect causes a much stickier moral dilemma.
Despite the frequent argument that free speech rights trump all, James agrees that radio hosts cannot say anything they want. The parallel dilemma is that FCC guidelines are so broad that strict definitions of on-air discourse are impossible to come by.
“People say, ‘Well, Scott, then tell me what I can say.’ But I can’t,” he says.
Although James says KCOL relies on listener feedback to a certain extent regarding program content, he claims that his primary goal is to expand the current audience for advertising sales. And controversy does sell.
 Amy Oliver
Amy Oliver doesn’t feel muzzled at all by the management of 1310 KFKA-AM, based in Greeley, where she hosts a daily, mid-morning show in the coveted time slot before conservative firebrand Bill O’Reilly. She strikes a cautionary note, however, about lobbing verbal firebombs on the radio.
“It is a duty to protect the most offensive speech,” she says, “because eventually people like that hang themselves with their own words.”
But she also believes that most people are mistaken in their understanding of free speech: The First Amendment ensures that a shock jock won’t go to jail for saying something crude on the air, but it doesn’t guarantee continued employment.
To keep her gig, Oliver wakes up at 5 a.m. to trudge through the national and local morning headlines for fodder. She also paws through editorials to read what others are saying.
Oliver is also operations director for The Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank led by the irrepressible Jon Caldara, a fellow talk radio host, on Newsradio 850 KOA-AM, and himself a frequent subject of Colorado Media Matters’ misinformation-busting.
Oliver is concerned that her show isn’t reaching an audience beyond those already attracted to talk radio.
As one of the very few female hosts in Colorado, and among even fewer with solo gigs, Oliver says she is careful about making gross generalizations and hurling insults at callers. She doesn’t discuss abortion, for example, because it’s such an emotional and divisive issue.
“I am personally pro-life and I am reluctantly by policy pro-choice,” she says, tipping her certified-libertarian card.
Oliver doesn’t completely agree that the antics of more notorious, high-profile women talkers, like the caustic family and marital advisor Dr. Laura Schlessinger, affect local female hosts, although she does admit that women in talk radio, like most other industries, have to work a little harder and a little smarter to get ahead. Being in a small market also helps. She has free editorial reign over her show, unlike the nationally syndicated programs that are influenced by Arbitron ratings and market research.
Beyond ratings concerns, however, Oliver is seemingly satisfied with her show.
“I can’t believe that they pay me to do this,” she says. “This is more fun than law allows.”
PLEADING THE FIRST
Shortly after the Imus firing, Clear Channel management in Denver hauled in its talk show hosts to discuss the “shifting standards of decency” and to remind them to exercise caution on the air in an environment of close monitoring by media watchdogs and bloggers.
Those are the kind of internal conversations Bill Menezes, editorial director of Colorado Media Matters, would like to hear more of.
Despite right-wing accusations that the liberal illuminati is working to shut down conservative talk radio, Colorado Media Matters has more high-minded aims: to hold the media accountable for falsehoods, distortions and misstatements made on the public airwaves and in print.
With a small staff of local researchers based in Denver, the group monitors news reports and commentary across the state. It then identifies, analyzes and corrects misinformation that fails to meet tests of accuracy, reliability or credibility, or that serves only to advance conservative agendas.
Denver-based 630 KHOW-AM’s Peter Boyles is a frequent reprobate by Colorado Media Matters standards.
“He’s one of the most egregious offenders in the state, if not this part of the country,” Menezes says. “He might read the results of a poll about people’s attitudes on immigration reform and basically twist the questions and the responses to fit his point of view. We also look for extreme commentary unsubstantiated by fact. Or extreme commentary that people have rejected as irresponsible or improper.”
One example is Terry Anderson, a fellow shock jock from Los Angeles and frequent guest on Boyles’ show. He let loose a real humdinger recently, arguing that he was misquoted when a caller accused him of saying that “Latinos breed like flies.” Anderson claimed that he actually compared Latino birthrates to chickens and rats, not flies.
“Why is this considered an acceptable way to conduct discourse about important public issues using the public airwaves?” Menezes asks. “The American public decided a long time ago that suggesting persecution of a group of people based solely on their ethnicity or religion are not acceptable principles in American culture. As a matter of fact, it’s unconstitutional.”
Whether an incident is simply a host trying to get a rise out the audience or a pattern of offensive speech, Colorado Media Matters uses its website and email alerts to build awareness about questionable yakking, then calls for public dialogue.
That’s exactly what they did when a local Imus-like situation recently came up. Strongly worded statements by civil rights groups and concerted petitioning by ProgressNow Action, a statewide progressive social-networking group, caused advertisers to pull their spots from “The Gunny Bob Newman Show” following his anti-Muslim statements, first exposed by Colorado Media Matters. To date, at least three advertisers have requested that their commercials be removed from the program.
In addition to public awareness, Media Matters also reaches out to hosts and station managers, asking questions like: “Why do you consider this acceptable? Why are you using racial and ethnic slurs and falsehoods to promote your points of view?” Conservative radio stations have been virtually unresponsive to the group.
“You can embrace the First Amendment without abusing it,” Menezes says.
FAIR AND BALANCED
Most recent talk radio controversies have not involved federal censorship. Contrary to right-wing radio hosts’ cries of big-government supression, the feds aren’t bunkered down in an undisclosed location monitoring their shows. FCC sanctions levied for rules violations are precipitated by public complaints and investigations. The trend has been for activist groups to band together and force action through petitions and boycotts.
For Steven Zansberg, a pre-eminent attorney of First Amendment rights who has represented talk radio hosts and stations on free speech and libel cases, it boils down to an economic issue: Offended citizens vote with their pocketbooks and pressure advertisers directly rather than seek government censorship.
One solution under consideration calls for Congress to reign in offensive speech by restoring the Fairness Doctrine, a rule that required broadcasters to present controversial subjects in a “fair and balanced” manner. The rule was established by the FCC in 1949 and enforced for nearly 40 years, although it was never codified into law. The rationale was to prohibit a handful of companies from creating more media outlets that would serve as single-agenda mouthpieces. There was also concern that scant, post-WWII-era broadcast frequencies would result in fewer outlets, limiting the public discourse.
In 1987, the Reagan administration successfully pushed to deregulate the media industry and eliminated the doctrine, claiming that it violated free speech rights. In 2000, further safeguards were repealed that ensured individuals or groups targeted in on-air attacks or campaign editorials were given an opportunity to respond on the air.
Today, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio and 2008 presidential candidate, and a few left-leaning members of Congress contend that differing perspectives and minority views are not represented due to a current “scarcity” caused by mega-corporations dominating media markets.
Zansberg, who works for the D.C. firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, is skeptical.
Ownership consolidation doesn’t necessary translate into narrow programming. In Colorado, Clear Channel owns both the liberal 760 AM Air America affiliate and conservative stations. If there is money to be made, the media-holding companies will exploit it regardless of the political ideology promoted on-air. Public broadcasting and the Internet also serve the community’s needs for diversity, he adds.
 Patrick Plaisance
Talk radio content that is disrespectful, foments prejudice and stereotypes, and promotes inflammatory language is the subject of media ethics research by Patrick Plaisance, an assistant professor of journalism and technical communication at CSU.
“Across the spectrum on radio right now, you’ll hear all kinds of ethically questionable content,” Plaisance says, “but should it be protected? I say absolutely yes.”
He contends that people need a better sense of media literacy because the American public does not comprehend the blurring of lines between news and “infotainment.” As a media ethicist, Plaisance is concerned that news consumers don’t understand the reasons and motives behind the bombardment of news, features, editorials, advertising and talk radio programming. The key lies in the nuances of media content, and that’s where the majority of the public is illiterate. The irony is that even with an overwhelming number of news sources, people naturally gravitate to what comforts them or affirms their worldviews.
“Conservative talk radio is particularly effective in this because it trades in gross generalizations and assumptions that are not investigated, substantiated or backed up by evidence,” Plaisance says. “So it’s very easy for people to take these claims as fact. It’s convenient and expedient in lieu of real analysis and introspection.”
The challenge, he says, is educating media consumers to become more critical and aware that bias travels along a two-way street: Both the provider and the consumer carry a set of ideological baggage that colors how they perceive information.
In a post-communist world, it’s curious that right-wing radio embraces “agitprop,” the favored mass communication technique of the Bolshevik movement to inform the masses and incite them to act.
Plaisance laughs at the analogy.
“We have in media research what we call ‘the new propaganda,’ which is not top-down government pronouncements but rather it’s in the form of everyday talk that presumes to be authoritative and authentic,” he says. “Talk radio is a cultural phenomenon in response to the fear and insecurity that drives our sense of American exceptionalism, a hyperpatriotic superiority complex that is so prevalent in conservative politics.”
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