One of the offenders apologized on his own web site:
Source: http://www.suckiecentral.com/
There is a time and place for everything, but this radio shock jock team pushed a bit too hard for their audience and the radio station. When interviewed on the television news one of the shock jocks said he was sorry but also stated he would have another job in no time. At first I wasn’t sure what opinion to take, but after going to one web site and view the apology, my position became quite clear. If the poor spelling and bad writing are any example, it says to me the fired jocks still don’t get it. Their insensitivity is too engrained.
(Yes, I know one should not rush to judgement with the bad spelling and poor grammar, but the web site just reeks of immaturity to me. Maybe it’s a generational thing, I don’t know. Yet if someone smells from not taking a shower regularly and wearing dirty clothes, isn’t that an indication that poor personal hygiene is a symptom of a greater problem?)
But just as importantly, if the apology writing is any indication of the individual, the radio station hired this person for their audience-grabbing shock value to garner ratings and ad revenue, and really never took into account anything else. Are voice tapes of prospective jocks more important than the rest of the abilities of the DJ? Are the ratings more important than having someone of some intelligence behind the microphone?
And with local attitudes changing quite a bit, is there some almost universal line that just gets on everyone’s nerves? Surely these DJs should have known, even in a liberal area such as Portland that their immature, insensitive humor with such a sensitive topic was over the top?
It’s the nature of the shock-jock business. Get a job; become more and more outrageous, gathering listeners, until you cross the line. Get fired. Get re-hired somewhere else and start over. Nothing ever changes.
The jocks had the right to play the tape and say anything they wanted to about it.
The listeners have the right to change the station, call the jocks and take them to task for it, call the station and take them to task for it, or call the show’s sponsors and tell them what they thought about the show being endorsed. As members of the taxpaying public, they also have the right to question the government about just who is being issued a license to use the publicly-owned airwaves.
The sponsors have the right to change their minds about which media outlets they advertise on.
The station has the right to fire any employee that was doing their job so incompetently that it seemed they threatened the success of the business.
Everyone has a right to say what they wish, and no one has a duty to stand behind every dumb thing that comes out of someone’s mouth.
In 200 years or so, some history professor will relate the Berg incident and chortle dismissively over the poor bastard who had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But today isn’t 200 years from now. The guy’s body just barely made it back to the States, and these clowns are yucking it up at the funeral possession. I can only assume Berg’s family is mortified to hear of such goings on. This sort of insensitivity is offensive to me, and obviously, their listeners.
If the jocks didn’t wish to be fired for being shitheads, they chose, shall we say, unwisely.
I think scotandrsn has it about right. I don’t listen to these kinds of jerks, and their existence annoys me to no end. Even this kind of stuff is more likely to be an eventualy reward for the jerks in question: they’ll take another job somewhere else and likely get richer because of a raised profile. Nobody should be shot or anything, but a beating wouldn’t be out of order. Heck, shooting them might be fun, but on the Constitution level…