Page 513 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Shock Jocks: Mak ng Mayhem over the A rwaves

The most shocking element of Pacifica’s history and a groundbreaking influ-
ence upon what kind of speech could be aired occurred when WBAI broadcast
an infamous track, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” from co-
median George Carlin’s 1972 Class Clown. (A routine featured on Carlin’s sub-
sequent album, Occupation: Foole [1973], covered much of the same material.)
This list of commonly used expletives was perhaps not officially prohibited from
radio, yet a complaint to the FCC was made by a father who heard the track
with his son. The FCC did not reprimand WBAI but put the station on notice
that “in the event subsequent complaints were received, the Commission will
then decide whether it should utilize any of the available sanctions it has been
granted by Congress.” Pacifica appealed the notice, which was overturned by the
Court of Appeals. The FCC brought the matter to the Supreme Court, which
came down in favor of the FCC in 1978. This decision codified indecency regu-
lation in American broadcasting. Even though subsequent rulings amended its
dictates, such as the provision that some questionable speech is permissible

shoCk-JoCk PolitiCs

Depending upon one’s perspective, whether or not any individual amounts to a shock jock
depends upon where one stands in the political spectrum. For those on the right, Rush
Limbaugh speaks truth to power; for those on the left, Al Franken holds those who wield
power inappropriately to the fire of necessary criticism. Nonetheless, sometimes individuals
are hired and promoted to the public as fair and polite when even a cursory investigation of
their public activities reveals that they are partisan in the extreme.
Take the hiring by CNN Headline News in January 2006 of Glenn Beck to host a one-
hour prime-time talk show. The president of the network, Ken Jautz, describes Beck as fol-
lows: “Glenn’s style is self-deprecating, cordial; he says he’d like to be able to disagree with
guests and part as friends. It’s conversational, not confrontational.”
However, when one consults Beck’s comments on the air prior to his hiring, they do not
come across as either civil or conversational. They seem little more than one-sided invective.
For example, he apparently so loathes the antiwar politician Dennis Kucinich that he stated
in 2003, “Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into
flames.” The next year, he crossed the line even more emphatically when he characterized
Michael Berg, the father whose son was beheaded in Iraq, as “despicable” and a “scum-
bag” because he deigned to criticize President George W. Bush.
Perhaps the most indefensible, if not alarmingly over-the-top, comment from Beck came
in his attack on the filmmaker Michael Moore. In 2005, he mused on the air about killing him:
“I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if
I would need to hire someone to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in
the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out—is this wrong?”
It remains a quandary what is more disturbing: that CNN would hire and defend a man
who makes these kinds of statements or whether he was being anything other than disin-
genuous when he inquired of his audience if his sentiments were over the top?