Former News Radio Staffer Spills the Beans on How Shock Jocks Inspire Hatred and Anger

[BREMPRO]

from alternet:

...To begin with, talk show hosts such as Charlie Sykes – one of the best in the business – are popular and powerful because they appeal to a segment of the population that feels disenfranchised and even victimized by the media. These people believe the media are predominantly staffed by and consistently reflect the views of social liberals. This view is by now so long-held and deep-rooted, it has evolved into part of virtually every conservative’s DNA.

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners....

(snip)

...The stereotyped liberal view of the talk radio audience is that it’s a lot of angry, uneducated white men. In fact, the audience is far more diverse. Many are businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, academics, clergy, or soccer moms and dads. Talk show fans are not stupid. They will detect an obvious phony. The best hosts sincerely believe everything they say. Their passion is real. Their arguments have been carefully crafted in a manner they know will be meaningful to the audience, and that validates the views these folks were already thinking.

Yet while talk show audiences aren’t being led like lemmings to a certain conclusion, they can be carefully prodded into agreement with the Republican views of the day.

Conservative talk show hosts would receive daily talking points e-mails from the Bush White House, the Republican National Committee and, during election years, GOP campaign operations. They’re not called talking points, but that’s what they are. I know, because I received them, too...

(snip)

....It was Katrina, finally, that made me truly see the light. Until then, 10 years into my time at TMJ, while I might have disagreed with some stands the hosts took, I did think there were grounds for their constant criticism of the media. I had convinced myself that the national media had an intrinsic bias that was, at the very least, geographical if not ideological, to which talk radio could provide an alternative.

Then along came the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Journalists risked their lives to save others as the storm hit the Gulf Coast. Afterward, journalists endured the stench and the filth to chronicle the events for a stunned world. Then they documented the monumental government incompetence for an outraged nation. These journalists became voices for the voiceless victims, pressing government officials to get help to those who needed it.

Yet, while New Orleans residents were still screaming for help from the rooftops of their flooded homes, journalists were targeted by talk show hosts, Charlie and Wagner among them. Not the government, but journalists. Stories detailing the federal government’s obvious slowness and inefficiency were part of an “angry left” conspiracy, they said. Talk show hosts who used e-mailed talking points from the conservative spin machine proclaimed the Katrina stories were part of a liberal “media template.” The irony would have been laughable if the story wasn’t so serious....


full article: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/107326/former_news_radio_staffer_spills_the_beans_on_how_shock_jocks_inspire_hatred_and_anger/?page=1

[Skittles]

1. They ARE stupid - for falling for such obvious propaganda

I mean, it's not even well done propaganda

[tomreedtoon]

2. It's not intelligence. It's emotion.

This is the reason why it was so difficult for Obama to get a hearing. The conservatives don't use thought. They use emotion. People are pissed off and powerless, and all the intellectual arguments in the world can't salve their souls.

This is the great problem with liberal/left proponents. They think it's strictly a matter of logic and scientific thought. To a great extent, they can't empathize, or they can't express empathy. That's something they will need to learn, if they ever want to keep the right-wing media machine from exploiting the vast powerless majority like they did under Reagan and Bush.

[Skittles]

3. uh huh

:rofl:

[Chulanowa]

4. What left are you looking at?

The trouble isn't some flaw in the psyche of those on the left. Like we're some sort of robot from a cheesy sci-fi novel "Unit Seven-H not know how to love"

No, the problem is monopolization. When Reagan lifted the fairness doctrine and deregulated the media industry, it was basically a handout to a bunch of right-leaning people with lots of money to buy, buy, buy. That monopolization has held strong, because due to the industry being as much about ideas as it is about profit, the price for selling openings to those on the left is astronomical. Add to the fact that a lot of advertisers are a little leery of having their money going towards media with a tendency towards anti-corporatism, and you end up with the barren wasteland that is left-wing radio.

The only way to cure this problem, thus, isn't for those of us on the left to "learn how to empathize" but rather a return to sane government regulation of public property - the airwaves.

[tomreedtoon]

9. But who will be ON those re-regulated airwaves?

I agree that re-regulation of broadcast media - and newspapers, even if they are a dying medium - is important. But assuming that can be done, who will speak on them?

I see some of them here; people like Nader supporters who would force all Americans to watch two hours nightly of public TV, as if that would make us all better people. Vegetarians/vegans. Freaking cat lovers. People who, in other words, would push agendas that mean a lot to them and not much to anybody else.

Who speaks for Joe the Plumber, in other words? Not even the real Joe the Plumber does.

Oh, and to answer another poster on this thread - if you listen to college professors, they ARE robots without emotions. And they are the ones usually picked to explain the non-conservative viewpoints on Sunday talk shows.

[Chulanowa]

10. Well, you need to realize something...

"Oh, and to answer another poster on this thread - if you listen to college professors, they ARE robots without emotions. And they are the ones usually picked to explain the non-conservative viewpoints on Sunday talk shows."

Again, I'm not sure who you're looking at. Most people who take that career path are quite enamoured, passionate even, about both hte subject and their students getting a grip on it.

And think about it a second. We know who controls the media. These same folks do the screening, the casting, and the invites. So if we get wimpy or unemotional liberals...? Why is that?

[cornermouse]

5. Don't worry.

Obama will save us.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. you had me until the empathy-challenged part

The great problem with liberal/left proponents is that they're the out group...the repub corporatists are the in group--the ones who hold the monopoly, as Chulanowa explains.

So, the more rational view can't get a hearing.

Also, from my perspective, there are some other factors feeding into the mix.

Just a few components that I see involved, if you'll bear with me as I muse aloud:

the decay of critical thinking abilities leaves one unable to weigh arguments, and therefore, dependent upon undisciplined emotions and simple arguments as a compass.

Fear is a powerful and easy hook; people want direction, and power seeking profiteers are glad to pose as little leaders, offering their compass with a big fat F where the N is supposed to be. From there, without well-defined, compelling alternatives, the noise-machine takes on a life of its own.

People want happiness, want to feel better, and without direction as to how to move productively towards that, stop-gap measures are all we can see--consumerism, scapegoating, anger, blame, parochialism---narrowing the world to less overwhelming proportions. This all feels better briefly, but spirals down and out of control.

I don't think either party, nor many social institutions have done a good job of offering hope, which maybe only a very good (good as in skilled, and as in 'good-of-heart'), very smart, very ethical, very determined leader can do....and to my mind, that's the thirst that Obama assuages. The outpouring of relief and exuberance about Obama says to me that people WANT positive solutions, if only a positive, coherent and powerful vision is offered by a leader.

[fasttense]

6. Why do they hate America?

They are criticizing a newly elected president soon to take up the Commander-In-Chief role for 2 wars. They are so unpatriotic that they care more about their ratings then about criticizing a soon sitting president in a time of war.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Incredible. The White House had reached out across this country like

like, just about any fantasy story that has an evil presence as an antagonist.