Imus dismissal may have profound effect on media
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By Brad Kava
The San Jose Mercury News
04/12/2007
The firing of shock jock Don Imus from his CBS radio show Thursday, and the fact that he was brought down by a media watchdog Web site may have a profound effect on cleaning up radio and television in the future, say media workers and watchers.
Since he called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos," just over a week ago, Imus has been caught in a firestorm of public reaction, that included criticism from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson - not to mention Howard Stern who left the public airwaves for the refuge of satellite radio, where he can say anything he wants.
"I think this is the beginning of the end of the shock-jock style," said Trish Robbins, assistant program director at San Francisco's KGO-AM (810), the Bay Area's top-rated talk station. "Maybe radio needs to find a new paradigm. The shock-jock does grab everyone's attention and being nice doesn't grab anyone's attention," she said. "It has to be something in the middle."
On Thursday, Imus raised more than $1 million on the radio for children's charities while at the same time hinting that his career may be over. "I don't know if this will be my last radiothon, my suspicion is it will be," he said before the announcement of his firing was made.
Imus was first suspended from his radio show and his simulcast television show on MSNBC and then fired, Wednesday from TV and a day later from radio.
"In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society," said CBS president Leslie Moonves in a news release.
Sponsors had left the television show in droves, after the Web site Media Matters for America (www.mediamatters.org) publicized Imus's comment, sending it to reporters across the country, and Sharpton and Jackson led protests against the DJ.
"It's momentous that a network has decided to exercise a principle of responsibility over a professional loudmouth," said Todd Gitlin, professor of Journalism and Sociology at Manhattan's Columbia University.
"This may turn the tide of verbal laissez-faire that has prevailed for 20 years."
Moonves, whose network broadcast Imus on 61 stations, said he hoped CBS would learn from the experience.
Radio has gone unbridled since the relaxing of the fairness doctrine in 1987, which required stations to present fair and balanced political viewpoints.
Since then, said Gitlin, radio networks have been governed by "the capacity to collect eardrums without any regard for veracity let alone civility."
But the bows of TV and radio stations have been hit hard by cannon fire the past few years.
The appearance of singer Janet Jackson's nipple during the 2003 Super Bowl halftime show resulted in millions of dollars of fines to CBS, and in Congress making later fines ten times more expensive.
The death earlier this year of a 28-year-old mother during a Sacramento radio station water drinking contest has made program directors more careful in what they do for publicity.
And Imus's three word epithet has been a wake-up call to programmers.
"Being mean to be mean is passe`," said Robbins, who has been at KGO for two decades. "We need to find cutting-edge thinkers who know where the precipice is, and whose routine doesn't involve just flat out insults."
Media Matters, the three-year-old progressive watchdog group, viewed the response as a chance to make even more progress.
It sent out a memo Thursday listing other offensive statements by popular conservative TV and radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage.
"A significant group of Americans has spoken out in a fairly significant way," said the group's spokesman Eric Burns. "I think their message is one that most decent folks agree with - bigotry, sexism and anti-Semitism has no place on the public airwaves."
One of Burns's main complaints is with the "mainstreaming of very extremist right-wing personalities" on cable news and radio. When people are expecting serious journalism, they are getting theatrics, name-calling, misinformation and bigotry.
"Media personalities and high-profile journalists have a special role and a special responsibility," said Burns.
On his Thursday radio show, Limbaugh, who has some 20 million listeners, warned that he was now on the hit list of media watchers, and what he calls "the drive-by media."
He cited a report on CNN that he said Wednesday brought up his making fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease last November.
"I'm never not in the crosshairs of these people," Limbaugh told his audience Thursday. "I'm not going to grovel or any of that sort of thing. When you've got the truth on your side and you've got 20 million friends that love you and understand the truth, it's power, folks. I appreciate the concern, but relax. Sit tight. It's going to be fun." |
