The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Disgusting
: DJs in Portland, OR were fired for laughing at the tape of Nick Berg’s execution. And well they should have been fired. This didn’t happen because of FCC threats — there are, so far as I know, no FCC rules for incredibly stupid, insenstitive, wrong-headed, inhuman, unpatriotic, cruel, rude, and downright slimy behavior. The station simply had the good sense to get rid of these idiots. And their apology (ungrammatical as hell) did them no good.
Couldn’t some of Howard Stern’s antics be considered “stupid, insenstitive, wrong-headed, inhuman, unpatriotic, cruel, rude, and downright slimy” by some? Enough so to complain to the FCC?
good point mm, sort of like when Stern asked Wendy the retard this morning if George W. Bush raped her last night in her hotel room.
Be careful what you wish for Jeff, some folks would turn your reasoning around as justification for Clear Channel getting rid of Stern.
Personally, I’m glad the station fired those idiots.
An indicaton that the culture has reached slime saturation? Have we discovered that shallow, stupid, lowest denominator appeal is no longer cute, funny, attractive?
Perhaps. But we do not have a groundswell or tidal wave of change. Just some currents and eddys.
The celebration of stupidity will continue.
Get real, man.
Nick Berg is the undisputed 2004 Darwin Award winner. A total moron.
When you swim in shark infested waters, you have no right to complain about being eaten.
At least the media has restrained from calling him a ‘hero’. Thank god for that.
PS. His father is a jackass.
Tell you what….that “apology” is funnier than anything Stern has done this entire year
Potus, that’s exactly the type of attitude that makes the difference between you and the people who do go out in the world and do work in dangerous environments to help other people. People know when they go work in Iraq, Afghanistan that there’s a chance of them being killed, but they kstill go, believing it to be a risk worth taking.
I like to think that Berg made a conscious decision to choose a life of risk and achievement over safety and sneering.
I assume potus’ beliefs would also include American policmen who work in dangerous neighborhoods as Darwin Award winners. After all, they do go to work in “shark infested” waters. Farmers, the dummies, work every day in one of the most dangerous jobs in the US. Darwin Award nominees, for sure.
I presume potus works in a totally non-dagerous place. Perhaps in the Southwest corner of his basement where he perfects his cranio-anal inversion skills.
I am all in favor of free speech, given that allowance is made for those you deliberately offend to call you to task. My late father pointed out that he fought thru the South Pacific in WWII for, among other things, the right to free speech. He also said that if you deliberately desecrated the flag in front of him he would feel compelled to punch you in the face, just once, to demonstrate to you that you succeeded in your endeavor to offend him.
Ah, Portland. The politics of San Francisco with crappier weather.
First step on the road to suppression of Free Speech. Oh yes. Just like Stern.
i’ll have to disagree with you on this one Jeff.
if stupidity defines who should be on the air and who should not the radiowaves would be silent.
freedom of speech, bro, i dont care how upatriotic, cruel, rude, etc. it is.
people should be on the radio because they have listeners, not because they aren’t stupid.
Tony:
Any editor, publisher, broadcaster, producer — and, yes, blogger — makes choices about what to include in his or her “product.” No one can compell me to include a post about a topic I don’t like or link to someone I don’t like; that’s my choice. Similarly, the station in Portland can choose whether or not to have an idiot and it is their business decision (they may give up audience).
My point is that they did not do this under government pressure and threat of censorship; they made a content decision. In fact, there is no FCC regulation that would take in what these guys did. And that shows us how useless and stupid the regulation we do have is: The F word is the worst thing to happen to civilization but goofing on the beheading of an innocent American is ignored by the law. Which says that the law is an ass and should not exist. The marketplace — yes, agreeing with you, the audience — will rule. And in this case, I’ll wager that the station made a decision in the belief that it was doing so on behalf of the audience, that the audience wouldn’t want to listen to these asses anymore (I wouldn’t). Those decisions are properly made at that level, not by the Commisar of the FCC.
I agree that radio stations should be free to hire and fire whom they wish.
Actually, the word in your post that caught my attention was “unpatriotic,” because I don’t see how that applies in this case. I won’t quibble with any of the other adjectives you used to describe the DJs’ boorish behavior. But I don’t see how this incident has anything to do with whether they love their country.
Are you setting the stage for arguing that DJs who oppose the war or Bush, or who express outrage about the prison abuses in Iraq, are being unpatriotic, and therefore fair game for termination? That seems to be dangerous turf for an ex-journalist.
I personally have no use for “shock jocks,” and choose not to listen to them myself. However, I find it somewhat amusing when a self-professed fan of at least one prominent shock jock expresses shock when a shock jock says something shocking. Isn’t that what they get paid for?
Again, I agree that the station should be free to fire them if it so chooses.
fair enough Jeff,
but how about suspending them instead for a few days?
when Rush said that our soldiers were “blowing off steam” by doing what they did in that Iraqi prision, I cant imagine a better message to send to Rush that he was out of line than by saying, “we know what to expect from your show, but this was unacceptable, you’re suspended for a few days and we expect an apology when you return to our air.”
These guys remind me of the drug-infested, sugar-saturated losers who were a few years behind me in high school. I grieved for our fate when they came of age…and now I know why.
Had the Portland DJs been a bit smarter they would have had friends and supporters flood the FCC with complaints about their on-air behavior. Jeff would then tell us how their firing was a gutless capitulation to a mob of First Amendment haters who know how to manipulate the government to silence dissent. They could have been heroes like the Great Howard Stern instead of a couple of out of work sorry losers.
so let me get this straight…clear channel was obviously getting rid of Stern because of government pressure, but the rest of the media world is allowed to regulate and get rid of those individuals they feel are out of line.
Yeah…that makes sense.
sorry Jeff, you’ve painted yourself into a corner with this one.
More bizarre news. A social studies teacher is being questioned now. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/education/3306083/detail.html
“At Grossmont High School, a social studies teacher allegedly brought in still photos from the video and played the sound from the decapitation video, according to NBC 7/39”.
“The teacher allegedly saw the video and made a comment to the effect of “This is why we don’t go to war,” the station reported”.
Jeff said: My point is that they did not do this under government pressure and threat of censorship; they made a content decision.
– But how do you know there wasn’t a chilling effect here?
Jeff said:In fact, there is no FCC regulation that would take in what these guys did.
– I see no reason why someone couldn’t call the FCC and complain that this was “obscene” or “indecent” and therefore would easily fall within FCC territory.
Jeff said:And that shows us how useless and stupid the regulation we do have is: The F word is the worst thing to happen to civilization but goofing on the beheading of an innocent American is ignored by the law.
– Are you suggesting that the laws should regulate whether a station can broadcast the goofing on the beheading of an American?
Sorry, as others have noted, this really appears to be a double-standard.
The station has the right to fire whomever they please.
As for the FCC, they are setting limits for what is acceptable to the public on public airwaves. Jeff has a right to object to the limits as set. I have a right to not object.
It’s really that simple.
Everyone who calls this a double standard is missing the point even after Jeff has spelled it out repeatedly. Jeff has never said that a private company shouldn’t have the option to remove a DJ because they said something stupid and offensive. He only thinks that the GOVERNMENT shouldn’t have any hand in it. In other words, as a private individual, he has the right to censor in his own small corner of the internet just as a radio station has the right to remove one of it’s DJs. But if the goverment comes in and starts fining bloggers and/or radio stations for their comments he has a problem with it. He feels that it violates that little law known as the first amendment. If Clear Channel decided to remove Stern for his comments without government interference, Jeff wouldnt’ mind. But we know that’s not happening because Stern is a huge money maker for them. And that’s the equation that the Government is trying to change. They want to make it more expensive to keep Stern than to dump him. I can’t imagine how that is not interference in free expression.
Let me just sum it up: It’s the government, stupid!
I’m not with Jeff on this one. His description of the Portland DJs sounds like a first-class resume for a shock jock. If you hire people to fill the airwaves with verbal trash, you shouldn’t be firing them for doing what the job description says: giving the audience shock treatment.
I rhink their behaviour was disgusting, but that is not a good reason for firing them given the context in which they operate: low-class bullshit for pay.