A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers.Note the typical bully behavior: when they're called to account, the bullies whine and cry that they're the victims and that if (big "if" there) they did anything wrong, they were provoked beyond reason, and they have no intention of apologizing or changing their behavior. For example
The lead blogger, who uses the name Spocko, said that he and other bloggers had contacted more than 30 advertisers on KSFO-AM to inform them of comments made on the air and to ask them to pull their ads.
The comments were also posted on Spocko’s Web site, spockosbrain.com. In response, ABC Radio Networks, which owns KSFO and which in turn is owned by the Walt Disney Company, sent letters to the site’s service provider, demanding the clips be taken down from its servers. The provider complied, raising the issue of what constitutes fair use of copyrighted material by a critic.
In an unusual cap to a simmering controversy, four talk radio hosts at KSFO-AM themselves played the clips on Friday, which had, in some cases, drawn national attention for language considered racially insensitive, religiously intolerant or containing violent imagery. The broadcast contained the occasional carefully measured apology for language that “could have been put more elegantly,” as one host, Melanie Morgan, described her comment — “We’ve got a bull’s eye painted on her big wide laughing eyes” — about Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, who is from San Francisco. “But Ms. Morgan added that her words were obviously a political metaphor that had to be distorted by critics to appear violent.
Ms. Morgan said that the on-air talent had “been reissued guidelines from the company about violent rhetoric and we’ve reviewed those rules and we don’t believe that we have crossed any single line.” But the hosts were uniformly defiant against the bloggers, who were called “crackpots with keyboards” and accused of using “guerrilla tactics.”
Most of the callers were sympathetic during Friday’s broadcast, but one blogger who has supported Spocko’s cause, Mike Stark, was encouraged to call in. The extended dialogue perhaps can best be summarized by one exchange.These are the people who bemoan the "angry Left." Uh huh.
Mr. Stark: “You’ve spoken of the number of apologies you have tried to make. How many apologies does a professional get before they realize they are an incompetent and move on to another line of work?”
KSFO’s Lee Rodgers: “Well I haven’t apologized for anything and I am not going to start with you. How the hell do you like that, creep?”
Those of us who have supported Spocko, either with blog support or financial aid, know that this is just the start, and getting the attention of a major media outlet like the Times is a good step forward. Spocko also encourages bloggers to become well-informed about how they can defend themselves against the attacks of the likes of the trolls at KSFO and their minions in the legal profession. Education is the ultimate weapon and a bulging-biceps defense of bloggers' rights under the copyright law's Fair Use doctrine is part of that.
So spread the word: we're not going to let the bullies win.
