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Local Talk Radio
Posted By katie allison granju
I’ve been listening to our local newstalk station, WNOX 990 some in the past few days, trying to get some sense of that audience’s reaction to the terrible TVUU church shooting.
On yesterday afternoon’s show, I heard Catherine Howell ask a fair, difficult and important question. She said (and I paraphrase): Do those of us who do right wing talk radio bear some responsibility for this crime?
First of all, I was a bit shocked to hear her describe herself (and maybe she just misspoke) as “right wing.” She is the station’s primary straight news reporter, so for her to openly state her political bent like that was a little surprising.
But I appreciated her asking the question.
I then heard caller after caller extol the virtues of talk radio, and deny that it had any responsibility for fanning the flames of intolerance for “the liberal movement” (Anybody else wondering exactly what that is?)
Then this morning I listened to some of the Hallerin Hill show with my mouth hanging open, as the great majority of callers complained that this terrible act might be classified as a hate crime.
All crime is hate, one woman opined. If you covet your neighbor’s possessions, that is hate, ergo, there is no such thing as a hate crime.
The idea that hate crimes are not a real, distinct, particularly heinous type of criminal act is especially disturbing in post 9-11 America, where we should be even more grateful for and protective of our liberties. As that bastion of liberal philisophy, the FBI points out, “groups that preach hatred and intolerance plant the seeds of terrorism here in our country.”
I finally had to turn the radio off after the call in which a man literally said that the UU church was “reaping what it sowed.”
Yes, he actually said this.
And Mr. Hill - on a day when our neighbors will be preparing to bury their murdered family members - did not step in to disagree with the man. That was a great disappointment to me.
Jul 29th, 2008
I listen to Rush Limbaugh frequently, not because I agree with him but because I want to know what is going on in the minds of that side of the political spectrum. I am not being melodramatic when I say that I fear the consequences of the breeding of hatred that occurs there. “Liberals” are sub-human in that world. It is not hard at all to imagine someone committing the crimes that occurred on Sunday in Knoxville in that context.
Katie: What is more hateful than killing your own child? Killing an 18 month old child, as was recently reported? Of kidnapping and torturing a beautiful young couple, of holding them for hours, sodomizing, raping, beating, and then killing them as was done here in Knoxville?
The details of that case turn your stomach.
The intended goal of such hate crime classification is not to unite, but to elevate one class over another. Is it worse to kill a lesbian pregnant woman than it is a straight pregnant woman? They are both equally abhorrent. It is the life we value.
Our laws should reflect equality…that ALL who cause harm or take the life of an innocent should be equally punished to the FULLEST extent of the law.
What I hear from hate crime legislation is that one crime will be prosecuted more strenuously than another of equal ACTION and outcome.
That’s not equality in the least.
This is very sad. Some people will just hang on to their self-righteous hate and never stop to look in the mirror.
It is no surprise to me that Adkisson had Michael Savage’s books in his home. Savage is the worst purveyor of hate speech out there, and he has an audience of 10 million. Yes we cherish free speech in this country but at some point there has to be some responsibility that comes with that speech. Everyone got in a tizzy over Janet Jackson’s nipple but no one seems to care that Michael Savage spews hate speech across the public airwaves on a daily basis.
But even worse than Michael Savage and his ilk are the people who profit from them. It bears remembering that talk radio is a multimillion dollar industry. Rush Limbaugh just got a $400 million dollar contract. Clear Channel, ABC Talk and TalkRadioNetwork profit handsomely from spreading verbal filth over the public airwaves. Their hands are as dirty as anyone else’s.
So Savage made this nut kill people? Then what made the Knoxville thugs kill Channon and Christopher? Shall we pilfer through their belongings? Have any of you condemned the pornography that we’ve heard these thugs got juiced up on to go after Channon again and again?
You repeat the same lie over and over that talk radio encourages someone to kill another. Its disgusting and presumptuous.
You presume to judge the heart of man…to eradicate the word sin from the public life by claiming it is “hate” to hold a moral view.
I once heard Michael Savage encourage his listeners to kill “liberal activist judges.” End of debate.
I talked about almost the exact same thing on my site. Good to know others are thinking along the same lines.
No, right-wing political talk radio is not responsible for the deaths and injuries. Only one man is responsible for the deaths. But talk radio is responsible for the ideas they project and how they are presented. They are also responsible for understanding the effect they may have on certain listeners, and adjust intensity and rhetoric accordingly.
This is essentially just a re-hashing of a discussion which just took place:
http://knoxvilletalks.com/2008/07/28/our-communitys-worst-fears-confirmed/
The end result: the ones who want to blame “right-wing radio” are completely unwilling to take responsibility for the hate (and actual terrorism) coming from the Left. Faced with examples such as a murderous anti-war protester who killed an innocent man because he couldn’t find a soldier to kill, Mark David Chapman (John Lennon’s murderer) being a student of liberal thought, Bill Ayers, the ALF, the ELF, etc. - there was nothing but silence. It spoke the volumes and pretty much ended the debate over any responsibility borne by anyone but the murderer.
If we need to go over the same arguments again, we can: but the end result is going to be the same. We’ll probably even see comments from the same empty shells who saw only their personal politics and simmering hatred for people with different beliefs in the aftermath. None of which changed the fact that only one man is responsible for what he did: the man who pulled the trigger.
As far as hate crimes go, there is an excellent reason to oppose them: because they’re “thought crimes.” If you’ve ever read George Orwell’s 1984, then you know where criminalizing what people are *thinking* (as opposed to what they have *done*) has the potential to lead. If what the person did was heinous, then it was heinous because of the criminal activity - not because of what we believe the criminal was or was not thinking was irrelevant.
Terry was also 100% correct about the divisive quality of hate crimes. It leads to selective prosecutions in which one ethnic/religious group is charged with hate crimes while another group isn’t - even when the exact same crime is committed. If there remains a debate about hate crimes prosecutions, we can get into the numbers and specific examples, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave them aside for the moment.
We’re not all in agreement about hate crime, Katie.
I agree with Terry. IMO “hate crime” is just another way of saying “thought crime.”
HC is always gonna be defined according to the peculiarities of the sociopolitical moment, not the inherent value of being human. The concept essentially undermines the dignity of all human beings by assuming special classes entitled to special consideration.
I don’t listen to much talk radio, so I’m no expert. Michael Savage, from the little of him that I’ve heard, is paranoid, grating and ridiculous, and if you’re stupid enough to take him seriously, then you probably woulda done evil things without his help anyway. Rush Limbaugh? He may be a blowhard, but I’ve never heard of him suggesting that liberals are subhuman or that they deserve to be physically attacked and killed. If he ever did say anything so outrageous and just plain wrong, it’d be all over the place.
Besides, if you wanna assign responsibility for the creation of incivility-as-context you need to assign it consistently. Hate is not proprietary to the right. There’s hatred aplenty on the left, and there’s nothing at all new about it. People today mock G.W. Bush as a loathsome ape, almost exactly the same way they did A. Lincoln (What was that thought some of you just tried to suppress? “Yeah, but they’re right about Bush!). Both are examples of the dehumanization which is, it seems, a very useful, not to say almost essential, component of hatred.
Hateful public discourse in this country has a much longer and nastier history than that directed against Lincoln. Why, one of our presidents, in his pre-presidential days I think, once killed a man because of some of it. The fact that it now happens to be delivered on the radio hasn’t changed what it represents. It’s just a mirror. It reveals what’s already there. You can’t forbid it. You can’t eradicate it. You can just acknowledge what it represents and do your best to mend when it overflows.
We are, as we ever were, fragile and insecure, fearful of the other, and ready to do harm to difference to protect the self we cocoon in our sad illusions. Talk radio peeps take advantage of this at least partly because it makes them money. But they’re not creating anything. They’re surfing on waves that they found when they showed up at the beach.
None of this is in any way intended to excuse Adkisson, whose deeds last Sunday were reprehensible. I hope TVUUC’s people heal fast and well, and that their rent family knits together soon. I wish every single one of them peace.
So, if I understand correctly, we should believe that conservative based talk shows cause people to kill and have heard for years and years to NOT believe that hip-hop music that glorifies violence bears some responsibility for violence perpetrated by its followers. Pick a side. People, it is either believe one way or the other. NOT selectively, ALL the time.
WOW this is something else the liberals have become so blind in thier hate of the right that they blamed the crazed actions of a mental lunatic as the party plat form. You should be praising the actions of the brave folks that tackled the gunman and stopped futher blood shed. You should be praising the Knoxville police Dept quick response , you should be praising the Knoxville fire dept and ambulance service for their quick responce, you should be praising the hospital and staff for thier dedicated service instead you choose to lash out at the right as a outlet for your BDS (Bush derangement syndrome) With people lying dead and injured While brave people were being injured saving lives. Shame on you shame on you
SPANKY
Not even close, Jim. Though, its a stretch even Gumby couldn’t perform.
Hate radio is formulaic, that is, it has been honed to hit a precise pitch, for the precise amount of time, and filled with tried and true buzz-words that appeal to people’s worst fears. Now, it isn’t designed to achieve a political end, after all, if they (the hate jocks) got everything they asked for, what could they go on and on about? Rather, it is designed to sell stuff. And it works. Once the average listener is nodding his head to the constant drumbeat of “this is what is wrong with ‘merica” or what have you, then, wham!, they slip in a message from their “sponsors.”
The whores that host those shows will one day have to atone for their choice to do so, in the meanwhile, many more will suffer.
As to your rather absurd examples of “leftist” terrorism, lets first agree that 99.9% of “news” radio is Right oriented. See, we don’t control the airwaves. Why? Our messages are way too nuanced for the radio template. It simply wouldn’t work. (Air America is a good example)
Your team has chosen to let these gas-bags make villains out of roughly half the country. Own it.
Plus, I have yet to hear why we can’t take this dude at his word. He planned this for a week and wrote up a four page letter outlining why he was doing what he was doing. Why can’t we just believe him when he tells us why he did what he did?
I think we need to remember that those that have the job to speak their opinions on the radio and television have just as much right to do so as you have to rant on a blog. We are all lucky to have the right to state our opinions in any method of broadcast we see fit. A blog is no different than radio or television. A blog is just an easier way to get your opinions out. The beauty of living in America is that we also have the right to agree or disagree with what we see and hear. There will always be a percentage who can be led by those doing the speaking or writing, but there is enough that form their own opinions to keep this country diverse and controversial which is as it should be. Personally, I disagree with about half of the stuff I hear on talk radio, but it makes me think and form my own opinions which I appreciate. Someone has to get the information out there. I admire talk radio hosts for their courage to say what many other people are too afraid to say. They really put themselves out there and it takes bravery to be prepared to deal with the backlash.
Since I have the freedom to blog about my opinion. I hate the endorsements the talk show hosts squeeze into their shows. Hate them, hate them, hate them. I agree with Mack. I will be interested in the topic of discussion and suddenly it changes to peddle some product. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was here and there, but it seems like everytime I tune in to 100.3 I’m hearing HHH and Phil endorsing products. There is a place for endorsments, I get that, but geez. How many freakin’ things do you need to endorse? I have a hard time believing that you utilize all of the products you peddle. I’m not sure that this aids your credibility. Just stating my opinion. I get sick of the way the ads are pitched at me and I change the station. I also understand that as a business, you need to make money, but do you have to pimp out your hosts so much?
I don’t think that right-wing talk radio is directly responsible for Adkisson’s actions. He is.
But I do think that people who spew hate (and yes, it can come from either and all sides, but the truth is that the right wing haters have a much bigger platform at the moment) contribute to a climate that, if it doesn’t actually encourage violence, makes it more thinkable.
For those folks to then throw up their hands and say “mercy me, I didn’t mean for that to happen” is more than a bit disengenuous. I hope they can sleep at night.
(cross-posted from KnoxBlab)
Mack -
You’re just repeating the same arguments that have already been knocked down over and over again.
I cite the actual planning, organization and execution of terrorist acts by the Left and you call it “absurd.” I would say their victims wouldn’t call it absurd, but then you evidently don’t care about the victims unless they happen to fall on your side of the political aisle. You can’t just dismiss Leftist terrorism because it not only contradicts, but completely negates, any point you might think you have: it exists, and either you’re willing to admit it or you’re not. Your choice to deny it says everything that anyone needs to know about you.
Your real problem, it seems, is that radio is dominated by conservative talk show hosts. You ignore the overall media (TV and newspapers which have a far greater reach than conservative talk radio) which contributes to Democrats over Republicans at an astounding 100-to-1 margin. But you’re absolutely right, in your world conservatives “dominate the airwaves.”
As far as your ideas being too “nuanced,” that’s ridiculous on its face. The failure of Air America had to do with listeners flat-out rejecting its message. Period. You can have whatever conversations in your head that are required for you to justify that message being rejected by the public, but it doesn’t actually change any actual, you know, facts - as inconvenient as they may be to your political ideology and overall belief system.
I listened to Air America: it was just variations of “I HATE BUSH! RETHUGLICANS ARE EVIL!” over and over all day long. There’s nothing “nuanced” or difficult to understand about it at all. (In fact, I’d say it was the exact opposite: simple-minded and appealing only to the sub-moronic.) You didn’t need to listen for more than a day or two to understand exactly what the message was today and would be tomorrow ad nauseum. There’s no suprise why it failed: it didn’t entertain its audience in any way, shape or form. Believe your conspiracy theories if you like, but that doesn’t mean it comports with reality.
Aunt B -
I don’t understand which part of the guy having obvious mental problems you missed. As I said in the previous thread, if he had said that a dog spoke to him and told him to kill people would we take it any more seriously? Mental illness is mental illness: trying to draw any political point from it is a form of mental illness in and of itself.
Many commenters on this and the previous thread also “claim” to be outraged by politically-motivated violence. But when their ACTUAL beliefs are examined, at the bottom is just hatred of those whose political beliefs are different than their own.
Had we just “taken their word for it,” we would have assumed that they would be angry at any form of ideologically-fueled violence. But when we dig down, we find that they’re perfectly willing to accept the like of Bill Ayers, the ALF, the ELF and their ilk in their midst without a word of condemnation - this particular case just happened to fit with their own personal prejudices.
So what they claimed is nothing like what they actually ARE, (and we’ll assume for the sake of this argument that they are all in good mental health). So tell me why we SHOULD take a mentally-ill man’s word for why he did what he did when so many of the sane can’t even be honest about why they do what they do?
The unfortunate reality is that this is a case of domestic violence “gone wild.” His ex-wife belonged to that congregation and he expanded his anger at her to those who shared her beliefs. This wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t about talk radio. It wasn’t about anything but one man being twisted by his own paranoia and anger.
gemini -
Trying to isolate talk radio as the “biggest platform” is grossly disingenuous. The broadcast news and newspapers reach a far greater audience (see my previous comment about the 100-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans in those media), and we won’t even get into the liberal messaging coming out of Hollywood and permeating the popular culture. Trying to compare the relatively paltry reach of talk radio to that overwhelming juggernaut is a ridiculous attempt to pretend that the world is other than it is.
You want to make a political point, so you ignore the facts. But they’re damnably inconvenient things, those facts, they don’t go away even if you shut your eyes really hard and wish that they would.
To pre-empt the inevitable claims of “that’s not true” in response to my statement about the overwhelming 100-to-1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans in major media, here’s the link to back it up:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=301702713742569
But Jim, you’ve completely missed the point.
It’s not that the conservatives have more of a voice - which you debate. It’s that they have more of a *hate* voice. They have more of a chance to spew hatred. You can’t say that about the nightly news or your local newspaper, even if it were true.
Conservatives have by far the biggest platform for hate speech, and there are more than a few conservatives out there who take advantage of that.
Here in Knoxville, you can listen on the radio to people saying “I’m not saying you should kill gays, but I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, either.”
If Ted Koppel said something so blatant and hate-filled, he’d lose his job in seconds.
If a Muslim shot up and murdered two members of a church and Jihad literature was found in his car and house, would any of you be reacting in the same way?
Would you be demanding that the FBI investigate the literature? The writers? Would you want them shut down as terrorist organizations?
Instead of re-hashing big vacuous generalities, how about commenting on Katie’s specific point:
” I finally had to turn the radio off after the call in which a man literally said that the UU church was “reaping what it sowed.”
Yes, he actually said this.
And Mr. Hill - on a day when our neighbors will be preparing to bury their murdered family members - did not step in to disagree with the man. That was a great disappointment to me.”
I don’t have an opinion - what’s yours?
Wait, I do have an opinion.
Let’s not do big generalities — let’s do specifics
- not “ALL of those X people do this”; but rather,
Let us just speak up when WE hear speech that says “hate that group!” Not just blog — go to the source and tell them.
If a Muslim shot up and murdered two members of a church and Jihad literature was found in his car and house, would any of you be reacting in the same way?
Uh, yes. Gee, what an easy question.
But it wouldn’t be due to hate radio, not in this country anyway, so you wouldn’t be incensed at the conversation.
Those of you who think hate crime laws create thought crimes are just wrong. There always has to be an overt act.
Further, state of mind matters for all sorts of ordinary crime, too. It’s the difference between murder one and manslaughter, for example.
lovable liberal -
“Thought crimes” is a term for criminalizing what people are thinking. First, there’s no way to KNOW what someone is thinking. We can guess, that’s all. In this country we don’t convict people based on guesswork - it actually requires evidence. Unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt what was actually in the criminal’s mind - not just know what radio show he listened to or books that he read, then attempting to convict someone of a “hate crime” is a direct violation of the Constitution.
Second, we all have momentary, fleeting thoughts of doing something which may be against the law. It only becomes a criminal act when we decide to actually act on those thoughts. Hate crime legislation turns that whole system on its head: creating a crime for just thinking it.
You’re confusing “motive” and “thought crime.” I can say that a murderer killed someone because of racial hatred and that’s motive. Hate crime legislation makes his thoughts a separate crime in and of itself with its own additional punishment. Therein lies the difference. I have no problem saying that motivations which involve racial/religious hatred are valid elements of proving a crime: I do, however, have a problem with making the motivation a separate crime for some of the reasons given above in previous comments including the creation of special classes of victims (and inherently devaluing everyone else) and the disparate way in which such crimes are actually prosecuted.
I would simply suggest that you read Orwell’s 1984 to help you understand the world of difference between the two concepts and the slippery slope that attempting to criminalize people’s thoughts leads you down.
Jim,
Just because you say something louder and longer doesn’t make it so.
No kidding. I have read these threads, and my reaction is:
Jim, just Zip IT.
You are what we used to call a LOUD MOUTH.
Your opinion is not that important.
There’s a few misconceptions here I felt a need to correct.
1) Tennessee does not have a hate crime statute under which one can be charged. Bias motivation is considered an element of the crime itself. It can be a sentencing enhancer but is not a standalone crime. In Tennessee, it can be a bias based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, or disability.
2) The feds can charge you with a hate crime as a separate matter, but it still requires you to do something that’s otherwise a criminal offense. The federal statute is limited to crimes motivated by bias against a person’s race, color, religion, or nation of origin. It’s more narrowly tailored than Tennessee’s statute.
3) Bias motivation is distinct from thoughtcrime in that one can only be charged with a hate crime for actually committing something that’s otherwise a crime. Just thinking it or just saying it in a way that otherwise obeys the law will not get one charged, typically.
4) Hate crime does not create special groups, in that a crime committed out of an anti-white, anti-heterosexual, or anti-Baptist bias motivation would not be any different in the eyes of the law than a crime committed out of an anti-black, anti-homosexual, or anti-Muslim bias motivation.
This is easily observed in the state of Tennessee’s annual report on hate crimes: http://www.tbi.state.tn.us/Info%20Systems%20Div/TIBRS_unit/Publications/2007%20Hate%20Crime%20in%20Tennessee%20.pdf . You’ll see whites and heterosexuals are the targets of crimes motivated by a bias against those groups. Under the theory of “special groups,” that would be impossible.
If you wish to make a claim of selective enforcement/prosecution, that’s another matter–but to say that hate crime legislation creates unequally protected groups by the letter of the law is plainly inaccurate. If you wish to argue that hate crime legislation is unneccessary, insofar as the crime is the problem, rather than the motivation–go right ahead, but to say that motivation and the mental state of one committing a crime is otherwise not considered in court is also absurd.
Everyone is welcome to his own opinion but not his own facts.
–Jake, wbir.com
Hate crime legislation makes his thoughts a separate crime in and of itself with its own additional punishment.
Nope. Hate crime laws enhance the punishment available for commission of an existing felony. You’re the one who confuses motive and thought crime. Hate is the motive, as you say, which was my point!
Review the analogy: hate:assault::premeditation:homicide
Both call for increased punishment. There’s not a Constitutional problem. (Of course, of course (!) there would be if merely reading hateful literature - say, something from neo-Nazis - were illegal.)
So, again, a defender of and, undoubtedly, listener of wingnut talk radio has the most basic facts wrong. Of course, it’s not a crime to listen to lying blowhard idiots…
Oh that is just too cute, “anon”. You basically just said, “I cannot offer any sort of an intelligent argument so I am just going to tell you to shut up!”
If you can’t run with the big dogs, then stay on the porch.
Thanks for playing.