More MSM Coverage

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A series of events involving a local liberal blogger, a San Francisco conservative radio station and the reaction of two of the larger corporate advertisers in the country -- Bank of America and MasterCard -- is revealing how slippery freedom of speech has become in the digital age.

The tale of Spocko, a self-described "fifth-tier" blogger who lives in San Francisco, exemplifies how one person with a computer and an Internet hookup can challenge the views of a major media corporation -- and what a media corporation will do to stop him.

For the past year, Spocko has been e-mailing advertisers of KSFO-AM with audio clips from its shows and asking sponsors to examine what they're supporting. Some sponsors have pulled their ads, after hearing clips like one of KSFO's Lee Rodgers suggesting that a protester be "stomped to death right there. Just stomp their bleeping guts out."

. . . .In a statement Wednesday, KSFO program director Ken Berry said, "Many of the remarks attributed to KSFO on the Internet are old, lacking context and, in some cases, outright lies. When our hosts have stepped over the line, they have apologized and have been reprimanded."

Berry declined to specify Wednesday which remarks were old or lies or who was reprimanded. Instead, at noon Friday, KSFO will pre-empt regular programming to allow four KSFO personalities cited in Spocko's e-mails to answer questions on-air about the controversy from the public, bloggers and media. "I don't tell people what to say, but I do think there will be some mea culpas there," Berry said.

Berry said KSFO will invite Spocko to appear on the air, but the blogger has declined such invitations in the past, saying in an e-mail to The Chronicle, "I'd be just another revenue generating 'event' for them to their audience, and they would love that kind of 'controversy' because it would MAKE them money and they still had control.". . . .

Spocko said it would be dangerous to dismiss the comments he's heard on KSFO as the sort of ratings-boosting hyperbole endemic to talk radio, even if it's uttered in the name of entertainment.

"It's entertainment until somebody is attacked," Spocko said. "Until it crosses the line, which I think this does."

From the Chicago Daily Southtown:

There are a lot of right-wing pornographers on the radio, provocateurs who get their jollies making up evil nicknames for Barbra Streisand and telling the same seven Bill Clinton jokes forwarded through e-mail accounts for the past half-decade.

Even in this crude environment, however, the hosts at KSFO radio in San Francisco stood out.

. . . .This isn't mere political porn. It's political snuff, the equivalent of those sad little films of people stomping on hamsters in high-heeled shoes.

And it attracted the attention of a liberal blogger, pseudonym of "Spocko," who wrote to the station's management to protest. And when the station management turned a deaf ear, he wrote to the station's owners, ABC and Disney, figuring that family-friendly Disney Radio wouldn't want it known that it paid people who called for the deaths of political figures in public.

. . . .He posted audio clips from the shows on his blog, Spocko's Brain (www.spockosbrain.com) so that people could hear that his assertions were true.

Advertisers were appalled. Visa yanked all its ads from the station.

Bank of America and Netflix likewise rebelled. And Disney finally took notice.

Instead of responding with more free-speech arguments, however, Disney slapped Spocko with a cease-and-desist order, saying his posting of audio clips from Morgan's and Sussman's radio shows on his Web site violated the station's copyright. The corporation threatened Spocko's Web host with a lawsuit, and the host pulled his site down, the audio clips along with it.

But within days, Spocko had found a new Web host, one not so easily cowed by the mighty Mouse, and the clips were back up in all their violent glory. Dozens of progressive news sites also posted them, in sympathy with his cause, saying the clips constitute fair use of the material.