You know, you can get banned from here for hate speech and wishing death on people. I suppose MSNBC has the same sort of policy.
No one is stopping you from listening to what you want. But this is a BROADCAST medium. That means it isn’t just going to the people who want it. It is going to everyone within signal range. For a 100,000 watt station that is a pretty huge area. I was a DJ for a couple years in NorthEast Texas and I remember getting a call from a nice lady in Maryland! It seems some atmospheric conditions had reflected our signal back down to her area and she was so amused at getting a station from rural Texas that she called the 800 number to tell us about it. Broadcast stations pay the price for being able to use public property(the frequency they transmit on) by agreeing to use this resource responsibly. The FCC defines what is and is not responsible behavior on an individual basis, although there are some guidelines. Most of the repression and “eggshell treading” we’re seeing now is stations trying to prove they can be trusted in exactly the way MTV and NBC have proven they can’t be.
Enjoy,
Steven
Only if they choose to tune in to it. If you turn on the local public t.v. or the radio or the internet or open the pages of a book in a public library, you may find you don’t like what you encounter. It is your perogative to then tune out. Not everything in the world must be catered to the most conservative denominator on the off chance they may hear something devastating.
This is what’s frightening. As far as I know, the FCC is an UNELECTED agency deciding FOR ME and millions of others what is irresponsible or indecent on a personal basis. I don’t remember who said it but a congressman once said “I can’t specifically define indecency, but I’ll know it when I see it”. Seems pretty arbitrary. I have no problem with guidelines such as safe harbor times or the seven dirty words or set rules like “don’t say fuck”, but when minutes and minutes of the stern show are edited out because he talked about a bowel movement I get queasy. What exactly are Michael Powell’s qualifiations for heading the FCC and being in charge of deciding what I want to hear?
If the airwaves are public and OF THE PEOPLE, then if we want to hear Stern or Dahl or Bob and Tom or Don and Mike without the butchery of the FCC, then we should be able to.
And the eggshell walking is, in my opinion, solely due to the fact that stations and individuals can now be fined up to $3,000,000 a DAY for ‘obscene’ behavior.
Since when do we have a right to a radio show?
Or do you believe that Howard Stern has MORE rights than, say, me? Like, super-free speech? Or Free Speech Xtra?
Elitist fuck.
You believe whatever you like, Doors. pat pat But don’t assume that no one has any principles just because you don’t.
(Hey! Tell us again how Canada has more oil than Iraq! Snigger!)
Agreed. But that’s not what that comment was all about. I think Savage is a scumbag, too, but rjung is blowing smoke about unfettered freedom of speech, or as he put it “It shouldn’t matter what side of the political aisle you sit on, folks getting punished for expressing their views is un-American any way you slice it”, and Savage was exercising his freedom of speech and got fired for it, hate speech or not. That’s all I’m saying, nothing more to read into what I said than that.
rjung, my principles are sound. I believe (as you say you do) that you can say whatever the hell you want to whenever you want to. But I believe that certain things carry consequences, and your statement that I quoted above makes no exceptions. So now you have to weasel, or try to divert attention to something else that you assert I said, which I did not in fact say.
In other words, you’re full of shit. But that’s nothing new for you. I can admit when I’m wrong. I’d like to see you do so now. Or should I expect more weaseling?
Doors, unless you can find an incident where I said Michael Savage should be censored for his political views, you’re merely throwing out bullshit here.
I have repeatedly maintained – and will continue to maintain – that “freedom of speech” means nothing when it’s used to defend speech you like, and it gets its strength when you use it to defend speech you dislike. If Savage got bumped for his political views, then that’s simply reprehensible and unAmerican. Supression of any unpopular speech is merely a fundamental sign of cowardice, as far as I’m concerned.
Whether or not you believe me is irrelevant, since I give no weight to your opinion. But since you’re the one who was knocking my character with no proof whatsoever, I suspect most folks reading this exchange will simply conclude that you’re being a Grade-A Asshat, and leave it at that.
It’s a shame that yet another interesting OP had to be completely hijacked and subsequently ignored so the two of you could sit here and measure your dicks.
Thanks
He graduated from Georgetown Law, then became an associate at O’Melvany & Myers, LLP, focusing on telecommunication litigation and communication, then he became Chief of Staff of the antitrust division at the DOJ. He was appointed to the FCC by President Clinton, then made Chairman by President Bush.
And by the way, Powell isn’t the force behind strengthening the indecency provisions. In fact, I don’t think Powell cares much one way or the other about the indecency rules. The big advocate for strengthening indecency is Commissioner Copps.
Again, I don’t think this is a censorship issue. You’ll notice that this word does not appear in the thread until I’m accusing of claiming censorship.
I shouldn’t have, however, made it out to be any sort of conspiracy with words like suspicious. There may be motives here to please conservatives, but maybe it is all coincidence, or maybe no pattern at all.
My main point was not whether or not there was any deliberate thought or coordination here, but to point out that radio seems to be systematically stripped of a certain kind of view quickly after it appears: a strongly pro-Bush voice that later turns anti-Bush. This isn’t just about liberal vs. conservative voices as a whole, but a vocal representative of a very specific and very damaging trend: a former conservative/Bush supporter turning against their standard script. This sort of person does not seem to have long for the radio, whatever the ultimate cause, and that certainly strips away a dimension from political discourse.
But, as to profit motive, I would remind people that the government, especially the Republican party in this case, directly controls the process by which corporations buy and sell stations, as well as setting what and how much they can own. These are financial stakes much higher than the price of what this or that radio personality can pull in.
Look: radio delivers its content over a certain medium using a certain technology which use must in turn buy a certain technology and use it in order to partake. Cable works exactly the same way. I fail to see the difference at all. Why is content on one regulated, and not on the other? Furthermore, we sell property in land, so why not property in the airwaves? All natural things now privately owned were once things available to all. What’s the difference?
That why he wrote that he was personally outraged by the JJ mess, or countermanded things like saying Bono’s outburst wasn’t obscene?
Waaaaaa… as you so eloquently put it in another thread, you don’t get to choose what people say in response to a comment on a public message board. If blowero hadn’t called me a whiner, I would never have shown up in here.
Anyway, am I to surmise from your comments that you will be sending that letter shortly, rjung? If so, can I get an advance copy? Not that I don’t trust you to be as good as your word or anything… well, yeah, that’s pretty much it. I don’t.
Since you asked so nicely, Doors, I dropped the following in my mailbox earlier this evening:
Sorry to disappoint. 
Like I said before, don’t make the mistake of assuming other people are as unprincipled and petty as you are.
In that case, I apologize for misjudging you.
Principled (even if not very timely), rjung.
I disagree though that either of the two bozos I cited were unfair victims of censorship. They were sanctioned by the companies they worked for because
they were offensive jerks.
You don’t have a right to say anything you want on the air and expect it to be protected because it’s your “opinion”.
So being a lawyer gives you some amazing insight into what is decent and indecent for the entirity of the country? I should have switched my major. It’s the “appointed” not “elected” point that gets me. I don’t think everyone in the world needs to be elected, per se, but someone who is the head of controlling what I get to see and hear and perform and publish should at least have the majority interest in mind.
Airman I thought it was obvious I was refering to both you AND rjung. You’re right, I have no control over who posts where, but I can express my distaste with it.
If you’re referring at all to Stern, I’d like you to cite EXACTLY what they were removed from air for. Or are you just assuming?
And that, sir, was my whole point.
And you’d think that I would learn to look before I post, too. Needless to say, that was me.
I must have a hundred posts like this by now. :rolleyes:
Doors, this thread is not your finest moment.
I was referring to Bob Grant and Michael Savage (see earlier post).
By the way, I am no fan of the Clear Channel Corporation and their stable of cloned stations.