New York Times On Shock Jocks, Rush Limbaugh, Media Matters

SHOCK VS TALK

Where Radio's 'Hurtful' Language Really Originates







No wonder the Media Matters crowd is so angry with their mainstream media pals: they sure aren't towing the party line!

In fact, a major Sunday New York Times piece on the post- Imus radio environment is more notable for what it leaves out than what is included. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

While David Brock and his Huffingtonian friends tried to use the Imus sacking as a trial run for the removal of issues- based hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and others, the NYT instead correctly places the Imus incident in the "shock jock" radio context.

Inside the Grey Lady's newsroom, did they miss the memo? Check again, guys, the notepaper has a George Soros letterhead.

From the piece:

Almost two weeks after CBS Radio fired Don Imus for his racially and sexually demeaning remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, Nick Di Paolo opened his talk show on another CBS station in New York by mocking a manual that, he said, one of his bosses had given him that morning.

The booklet was entitled “Words Hurt and Harm” and, as described by Mr. Di Paolo, it urged him and his brethren to avoid the sort of stereotypes that had not only upended Mr. Imus but had also just gotten two colleagues on WFNY (92.3 FM) suspended for broadcasting a six-minute prank call littered with slurs to a Chinese restaurant.

“Right away, we’re starting with a false premise,” Mr. Di Paolo told his listeners on April 25, just after noon. “Because words don’t hurt.”

He then proceeded to refer to someone in the studio who was apparently of Colombian descent as “a drug dealer,” before using an exercise in the manual as a springboard to the following observations: that “enough” Native Americans drank to make them fair game for a joke; that waiters in Chinese restaurants were “efficient” and “better than most, you know, other ethnic groups as waiters and waitresses”; and that Jewish mothers were “bad cooks and a little hairy.”

The part of the radio spectrum where Mr. Di Paolo holds forth each day — shows in which commentary and entertainment fuse, sometimes under the rubric of a morning or afternoon “zoo” — remains as arguably and insidiously untamed in the days after Mr. Imus’s collapse as it was before, based on a New York Times screening of nearly 250 hours of shock-talk radio broadcast over the last week.

Gay men and lesbians, and women and Muslims, among others, were frequent targets of ridicule; coarse, sexually explicit banter, particularly descriptions of anal and oral sex, proliferated, much of it reminiscent of the routines that once drew Howard Stern heavy penalties; and meanness appeared to be a job prerequisite, whether a host was belittling someone who called in or the unwitting subject of a prank call.

In a sense, the hosts of these shows are juggling live grenades each day, putting the companies that broadcast and sponsor them at the greatest risk of collateral damage, particularly as the smoke clears from the Imus affair.

While the story's theme is that FM shock talk has changed little since the I-Man's removal, some of those singled out today accused the paper of "prodding" advertisers into dropping sponsorships, according to All Access, an entertainment industry trade publication:

The article says that TIMES staff (twelve reporters in addition to STEINBERG are listed as contributing to the piece) monitored "a dozen prominent shows on so-called terrestrial radio for five weekdays in a row" to compile the article, which quotes TALK RADIO NETWORK's MANCOW MULLER, WKXW (NEW JERSEY 101.5)/TRENTON's CRAIG CARTON and RAY ROSSI, ST. LOUIS-based STEVE AND D.C., the WSKQ (MEGA 97.9)/NEW YORK-based "EL VACILON DE LA MANANA," and WRTO/MIAMI's "EL TRAKATEO" (STEINBERG called Spanish-language radio "the Wild WEST of the medium").

Discussing the article on OPIE AND ANTHONY's show MONDAY morning, sidekick JIM NORTON noted that newspapers have a "vested interest" in hurting radio as an advertising competitor. "He's a PC, hall-monitor little sissy-boy," NORTON said of STEINBERG, later adding that STEINBERG was "trying to create a story" by taking out-of-context quotes to advertisers. OPIE added that the quote cited by STEINBERG from NORTON ("Would it be possible, could you whistle 'Singin' in the Rain' while I rape a girl?," NORTON asked a guest whistler in a several-years-old segment replayed on a "best-of" show APRIL 25) was an obvious reference to the movie "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE."

In addition, at Harvard University's Nieman Watchdog website, Morton Mintz is busy comparing these jocks to conservative talk hosts.


While we would hardly put it past the New York Times to engage in journalistic advocacy, this focus on radio's real filth greatly undermines the left's crusade to remove dissenting voices from the airwaves.


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