Shock Jocks

The BBC reports that a Rwandan journalist who encouraged Hutus to slaughter Tutsis during the 1994 genocide has been jailed for life after admitting to inciting violence.

In one broadcast Valerie Bemerik told her listeners: “Do not kill those cockroaches with a bullet – cut them to pieces with a machete.”

She was one of the most prominent voices of Radio Mille Collines – a station which became notorious for its encouragement of the slaughter.

Two senior executives of Radio Milles Collines have previously been sentenced to long jail terms by the UN’s Rwanda tribunal, based in Arusha, Tanzania.

About 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 100 days in Rwanda.

Michael A. Orozco had it right — or rather, half-right. Orozco, one of the lawyers for Hal Turner, the Internet radio host accused of making death threats to three federal judges in Chicago, offered as a defense that his client is “nothing but a shock jock.” But Orozco also added, erroneously, that his client is “a journalist simply stating his opinion.”

Turner’s trial is already beginning to look like a media circus — not to mention an embarrassment to the government trying him. It was revealed recently, for example, that the hate- speaking Turner, whom prosecutors have referred to as a white supremacist and “domestic terrorist” who tried to incite his audience to murder three federal appeals judges, was also an F.B.I. informant spewing his racist rhetoric at the agency’s instruction.

Turner’s trial is expected to bring the three judges to the witness stand in the ongoing trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where the case was moved after Turner’s lawyers successfully argued that he couldn’t obtain a fair hearing in Illinois. Turner is charged with trying to intimidate the judges, who had upheld a handgun ban. He had posted a message on his Web site saying they deserved to be killed — and conveniently provided their contact information and pictures, presumably in case someone wanted to act on his suggestion…

Turner has long been notorious for making anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and white supremacist remarks on his Internet radio show and companion Web site. But last June, when the judges” opinion was released, he posted this message on his site: “The government “especially these three judges “are cunning, ruthless, untrustworthy, disloyal, unpatriotic, deceitful scum.”

Offering that opinion was certainly Turner’s right — but going on to say, “These judges deserve to be killed” may not be.

“That is not just political rhetoric,” said the prosecutor, assistant United States attorney William R. Hogan. “It is not O.K. “very definitely not O.K. “for him to call for their execution and their murder.”

That’s when Michael Orozco chimed in. Not only was Turner just a “shock jock” offering constitutionally-protected “opinion,” he was also speaking and acting in accordance with guidelines the F.B.I. had set out for him as a confidential informer, Orozco noted. In fact, he added, the F.B.I. had even requested that Turner turn up the heat and the volume of his remarks to impress — and perhaps infiltrate — certain shadowy groups the Bureau was looking into.

Turner’s “hand was guided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said. “He was providing a service. This is betrayal.”

Prosecutor Hogan acknowledged in his opening statement that Turner was an informer for the government, beginning in 2004 and culminating in 2007. Defense attorneys meanwhile have subpoenaed Governor-elect Christie, who had been United States attorney for New Jersey when Turner was working for the Feds, to ask Christie why his office hadn’t prosecuted Turner.

Stay tuned for more “shocking” revelations in the coming days and weeks…

Shocking news from the Land of the Shock Jocks: “For more than five years, Hal Turner of North Bergen lived a double life…The public knew him as an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host and Internet blogger with an audience of neo-Nazis and white supremacists attracted to his scorched-earth racism and bare-knuckles bashing of public figures. But to the FBI, and its expanding domestic counter-terror intelligence operations in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Turner was ‘Valhalla” “his code name as an informant who spied on his own controversial followers.”

Turner, who was charged June 24 with posting Internet threats to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago who upheld handgun bans, was facing as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

Turner’s clandestine past had been confirmed this summer when he was jailed on charges of making threats against three federal judges in Chicago. In court after his arrest, federal prosecutors acknowledged his FBI ties but downplayed his importance and described him as “unproductive.”

But an investigation by New Jersey’s The Record – based on government documents, e-mails, court records and almost 20 hours of jailhouse interviews with Turner “shows that federal authorities made frequent use of Turner in its battle against domestic terrorism.

“As Turner took to his radio show and blog to say that those who opposed his extremist views deserve to die, he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils skinhead punk band. Later, he was sent undercover to Brazil where he reported a plot to send non-military supplies to anti-American Iraqi resistance fighters. Sometimes he signed “Valhalla” on his FBI payment receipts instead of his own name.”

In interviews, Turner said the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements and now he feels double-crossed by the bureau after his arrest. The documents reviewed by The Record, however, show repeated instances of federal agents admonishing Turner for his extremism.

Mark W. Smith reports in the Detroit Free Press that Fox News host and Number Two Rated Radio Shock Jock Sean Hannity apologized on his Fox show recently after it was revealed by comedian Jon Stewart that the program had used archived footage of a well-attended rally and passed it off as a recent health care protest in Washington, D.C.

Hannity gave no explanation and called the use of 2-month-old footage in a current news package “inadvertent.”

Hannity said, “We screwed up.”

A truly “Great American!”

Writing in the Boston Globe, guest columnist Steve Almond asks, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Fairness Doctrine?”

“OF ALL the Big Lies told by the pooh-bahs of talk radio, opines Almond, “The most desperate and deluded is this: that the so-called Fairness Doctrine would squash free speech.”

Almond believes this to be, “Nonsense.”

He may be right — but he’s wrong in thinking that:

1) There’s a snowball’s chance in hell the hoary old FCC doctrine will ever return; and
2) That the return of the Fairness Doctrine, adopted in 1949 by The Federal Communications Commission to ensure that licensees devoted “a reasonable amount of broadcast time to the discussion of controversial issues,’” and that they did so “fairly, in order to afford reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints,’” T is any kind of 21st Century answer to what ails America’s talk show airwaves now.

Almond says, “The real shock is that journalists haven’t supported the Fairness Doctrine,” and posits that “mainstream media’” outlets… dine on the same fears and ginned-up wrath as talk radio.”

It’s true, as Almond writes, that, “This is how fake controversies (death panels, the birther movement, etc.) have pushed aside real issues,” and further that, “It’s quite a racket. Talk radio hosts foment ignorant rage, then their ‘mainstream’” brethren cover this ignorant rage as news.”

It’s just not true that the return of the Fairness Doctrine will put an end to the shock jock racket!

“Talk radio?” sniffed one Democratic digital native, “Why are you focusing on that? The only people who listen are seniors and cab drivers, right?”

Wrong, as a report from the media monitoring firm Nielsen has just shown. In fact, within ad-supported media, the reach of broadcast radio is second only to live television.

The Nielsen analysis of media use found that 77% of adults are reached by broadcast radio on a daily basis, second only to television at 95%. This study, in which consumers were physically observed consuming media throughout the day, found that Web/Internet (excluding email) reached 64%, newspaper 35%, and magazines 27%.

In sum, the study concluded that broadcast radio continues to play a major role to all ages — not just seniors — and almost 80 percent of those aged 18 to 34 listen to broadcast radio in an average day.

“There are a lot of critics out there who want to write off broadcast radio, but this analysis of real-time media consumption shows that it continues to play a very strong role,” said Dr. Michael Link, VP of Methodological Research at The Nielsen Company.

Nuff said?

Rather than “roll over and play dead in response to Obama’s marginalization push against key conservatives,” Rush Limbaugh is responding with his “own offensive,” as Brian Maloney reports on The Radio Equalizer blog.

As ‘revealed” in a Fox News Sunday visit, Limbaugh’s key tactic, according to Maloney: “fearless denunciations of Barack’s socialistic reworking of the American economy and political system, all in strategic settings outside of his radio program.”

Sure sounds ‘offensive” to me!

As an eyewitness to the final days of the Bush administration, speechwriter Matt Latimer can report with assurance that “the absolutely last people the powers that be listened to were conservative activists on radio and TV.” Latimer’s message to Democrats: “The Limbaughs and Becks don’t dictate what Republicans do in Washington.” Latimer says Dubya’s team ignored the talk titans – and that was a mistake.

“I really think it is important to help those who haven’t had much experience with conservatives try to understand some of their tribal rituals and enthusiasms,” Latimer said on The Daily Beast web site. “This time, the pressing issue among Those Who Want to Know,” he says, “is the mystifying appeal of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others like them who are now ‘running” the Republican Party.”

To Latimer, the shock jocks” hateful hold “on the GOP is greatly exaggerated.” Moreover, he believes “that’s not necessarily a good thing.”

No word yet from Latimer, however, on whether hate-spewing over the public airwaves is “a good thing” for the rest of us — or the country itself…

CNN reporter Carol Costello ran a segment recently analyzing talk radio and its listeners. Rush Limbaugh was not pleased with the conclusions drawn by either Costello or a psychiatrist she consulted who called Limbaugh “bully.” El Rushbo responded with characteristic grace — suggesting Costello “go sit on a fire hydrant and improve your day.”

No wonder MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann named gave Limbaugh the silver medal in his “Worst Persons in the World” segment and concluded, “You do not need a psychiatrist to figure out that piece of emotional fantasy. Emotionally Rush Limbaugh is a 14-year-old boy.”

Predictably, Rush Limbaugh’s bid to buy part of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams never got to first base, to mix sports metaphors!

Equally predictably, Rush’s many defenders leapt to claim it was because of his political — rather than racial — views and statements.

No surprise on either front. What is surprising is the revelation that NFL executives hold themselves and their league to higher standards than much of the rest of the country!