Has there ever been a case where a radio ( or TV ) station had actually went as far as to SUE an average listener/viewer over gossip that had gotten back to the station?
Last night I was chatting online with an old friend of mine who after 40 years in the biz had just retired. He was telling me that back the 70s and 80s he had worked at stations where they would make an effort to actually track down rumors about their place of business. Most of the time they would get phone calls from listeners saying "..Jane Doe told us that your station will be doing XXXXXXX..if you want to confirm what I have told you here is Jane's phone number..." and they would be calling up Jane Doe. he did admit though that even though they would call up "Jane Doe", that was more/less the end of it but he knew of other stations that did went that extra mile. Now with the radio stations I had worked at over the years, every once in awhile we would still get such calls too and later emails but our management team really could not had cared less.
Today none-the-less, though not very often on this site but on sites like TV Newstalk for example, I have known people who claim they have received private messages over posts that were posted on their forums saying how they will "report them" to the broadcast station they were talking about, having their IP address tracked down and how they would be more than willing to testify in a court of law, etc...Wonder how many radio/TV stations would go that far in putting a stop to a rumor about them? Or do most stations could give a darn? My guess its more of the latter. Besides wouldn't the act of a radio station suing a listener be bad for business?
Last night I was chatting online with an old friend of mine who after 40 years in the biz had just retired. He was telling me that back the 70s and 80s he had worked at stations where they would make an effort to actually track down rumors about their place of business. Most of the time they would get phone calls from listeners saying "..Jane Doe told us that your station will be doing XXXXXXX..if you want to confirm what I have told you here is Jane's phone number..." and they would be calling up Jane Doe. he did admit though that even though they would call up "Jane Doe", that was more/less the end of it but he knew of other stations that did went that extra mile. Now with the radio stations I had worked at over the years, every once in awhile we would still get such calls too and later emails but our management team really could not had cared less.
Today none-the-less, though not very often on this site but on sites like TV Newstalk for example, I have known people who claim they have received private messages over posts that were posted on their forums saying how they will "report them" to the broadcast station they were talking about, having their IP address tracked down and how they would be more than willing to testify in a court of law, etc...Wonder how many radio/TV stations would go that far in putting a stop to a rumor about them? Or do most stations could give a darn? My guess its more of the latter. Besides wouldn't the act of a radio station suing a listener be bad for business?