I was waiting for some broadcaster to start a thread about Bill Moyers’ Journal (September 12) which had a segment entitled “Rage on the Radio”.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/watch.html
Either nobody saw it, or people are too uninterested (too embarrassed?) to raise the subject. So here goes.
If you have anything to do with scheduling talk radio you ought to watch it, then take a good look in the mirror and ask yourselves if your conscience is clear. To any broadcaster who enables the likes of Michael Savage to take to the airwaves, I would ask: is there really nobody else in the entire broadcasting universe who can satisfy your chosen format without promoting hate and still help you make as much money? If the answer is no – I’m sorry, but the only decent thing to do is sacrifice some of your bottom line until you find someone who can. There must be plenty of young talents out there who would gladly fill your airtime and build an audience.
Then again, you could break away from your all-conservative-all-the-time format and give the other side a chance to be heard which, despite my advocacy for the progressive talk format, I believe is a far better option than the continued ghettoization of opinion radio.
It was hard for me to stomach all the vileness that was reported in Moyers’ program – all of it from the political right. As an unrepentant FDR liberal, I resent that broadcast managers who presumably consider themselves decent individuals would give airtime to people who tell their listeners that we liberals are a virus, traitors, ought to be shot, etc, etc, etc.
I’m not so naïve as to believe that toxic talk is limited to the political right; it’s just fact that because there are so many more conservative than liberal hatemongers on the air, they have by far the most influence. Were I responsible for scheduling a progressive talk radio station, there is no way I could have someone like Mike Malloy or Randi Rhodes in the lineup and still look myself in the eye.
While it is hard to prove that hateful speech leads to specific hateful actions, there is plenty of historical evidence from around the world that it cumulatively degrades societal health, just as there is that tobacco harms physical health. If speech doesn’t sway people, how do you account for the success of 20th century world leaders in moving their populations to do good things and bad? This is brought home all the more by our current turbulent economic times. Anyone with even a modest knowledge of history will be aware of the dire results that can befall a nation when its population is victimized by financial turmoil and provides an all-too-willing audience for demagogues to exploit.
Either you believe that words influence people or you don’t; but it’s very difficult to argue that your audience cannot be swayed by speech when the lifeblood of your business is provided by a multibillion dollar advertising industry whose very existence is based on precisely the opposite proposition.
As one of the contributors on Moyers pointed out, radio rage at least polarizes the public so much that people on the left and right cannot discuss issues with each other without a rapid decline in the civility of the conversation; I know that from experience. Our continuing national inability to talk over issues without the conversation degenerating into insults and character assassination will only deepen the already deep trouble that our nation is in when it comes to solving its very real problems. We are handing the next generation a profoundly dysfunctional nation.
Old-school conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Frank Horton and Barber Conable – honorable people all - and maybe even a chastened Richard Nixon would be horrified and offended by the way present-day conservatism has mutated and by the way it chooses to propagate itself in the media. They must be turning in their graves.
It’s time, broadcasters, to quit your comfortable denial, so step out your bubble and acknowledge that some of what you peddle over the air is hate. Then clean up your act, regardless of whether you think toxic talk is a cause or a symptom. Someone has to break the circle, and it might as well be you. Spare us the BS that these people are entertainers; so were the Romans who threw Christians to the lions. Considering its corrosive effect on our culture, how is this stuff any better than hard-core pornography?
And don’t try to hide behind the first amendment. This is nothing to do with rights; as conservatives used to believe, rights come with responsibilities. Liberals are often told they have the right to express their opinions but station owners have the right to decide whether to put them on the air. Why aren’t toxic talkers told the same thing? It’s high time you started thinking about something beyond only your financial returns. As a certain candidate says, “country first”.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/watch.html
Either nobody saw it, or people are too uninterested (too embarrassed?) to raise the subject. So here goes.
If you have anything to do with scheduling talk radio you ought to watch it, then take a good look in the mirror and ask yourselves if your conscience is clear. To any broadcaster who enables the likes of Michael Savage to take to the airwaves, I would ask: is there really nobody else in the entire broadcasting universe who can satisfy your chosen format without promoting hate and still help you make as much money? If the answer is no – I’m sorry, but the only decent thing to do is sacrifice some of your bottom line until you find someone who can. There must be plenty of young talents out there who would gladly fill your airtime and build an audience.
Then again, you could break away from your all-conservative-all-the-time format and give the other side a chance to be heard which, despite my advocacy for the progressive talk format, I believe is a far better option than the continued ghettoization of opinion radio.
It was hard for me to stomach all the vileness that was reported in Moyers’ program – all of it from the political right. As an unrepentant FDR liberal, I resent that broadcast managers who presumably consider themselves decent individuals would give airtime to people who tell their listeners that we liberals are a virus, traitors, ought to be shot, etc, etc, etc.
I’m not so naïve as to believe that toxic talk is limited to the political right; it’s just fact that because there are so many more conservative than liberal hatemongers on the air, they have by far the most influence. Were I responsible for scheduling a progressive talk radio station, there is no way I could have someone like Mike Malloy or Randi Rhodes in the lineup and still look myself in the eye.
While it is hard to prove that hateful speech leads to specific hateful actions, there is plenty of historical evidence from around the world that it cumulatively degrades societal health, just as there is that tobacco harms physical health. If speech doesn’t sway people, how do you account for the success of 20th century world leaders in moving their populations to do good things and bad? This is brought home all the more by our current turbulent economic times. Anyone with even a modest knowledge of history will be aware of the dire results that can befall a nation when its population is victimized by financial turmoil and provides an all-too-willing audience for demagogues to exploit.
Either you believe that words influence people or you don’t; but it’s very difficult to argue that your audience cannot be swayed by speech when the lifeblood of your business is provided by a multibillion dollar advertising industry whose very existence is based on precisely the opposite proposition.
As one of the contributors on Moyers pointed out, radio rage at least polarizes the public so much that people on the left and right cannot discuss issues with each other without a rapid decline in the civility of the conversation; I know that from experience. Our continuing national inability to talk over issues without the conversation degenerating into insults and character assassination will only deepen the already deep trouble that our nation is in when it comes to solving its very real problems. We are handing the next generation a profoundly dysfunctional nation.
Old-school conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Frank Horton and Barber Conable – honorable people all - and maybe even a chastened Richard Nixon would be horrified and offended by the way present-day conservatism has mutated and by the way it chooses to propagate itself in the media. They must be turning in their graves.
It’s time, broadcasters, to quit your comfortable denial, so step out your bubble and acknowledge that some of what you peddle over the air is hate. Then clean up your act, regardless of whether you think toxic talk is a cause or a symptom. Someone has to break the circle, and it might as well be you. Spare us the BS that these people are entertainers; so were the Romans who threw Christians to the lions. Considering its corrosive effect on our culture, how is this stuff any better than hard-core pornography?
And don’t try to hide behind the first amendment. This is nothing to do with rights; as conservatives used to believe, rights come with responsibilities. Liberals are often told they have the right to express their opinions but station owners have the right to decide whether to put them on the air. Why aren’t toxic talkers told the same thing? It’s high time you started thinking about something beyond only your financial returns. As a certain candidate says, “country first”.
