Bloggers Take on Talk Radio HostsHow many apologies does a professional get before they realize they are an incompetent and move on to another line of work? -- Priceless. (Hey, Mr. Bush, are YOU listening???)
By NOAM COHEN
Published: January 15, 2007A 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.
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. . . .
Ms. Morgan said that the on-air talent had “been reissued guidelines from the company about violent rhetoric and we’ve reviewed those rules . . . ." 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.
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?”
As Mainstream as You can Get -- NYTimes Covers KSFO v Spocko
Advertisers Returning to KSFO?
Three advertisers told The Chronicle that they had withdrawn sponsorship after learning of the commentary from the blogger, and Spocko said more had fled. On the air Friday, morning show personality Melanie Morgan said all but one fleeing sponsor had returned after being contacted by the station's sales department.If true, that would be disappointing.
How Not to Handle a Controversy
KSFO response to bloggers descends into name-calling
Brad Kava, Mercury NewsIt was a mostly one-sided gunfight on the media frontier Friday, as four hosts from the conservative talk radio station KSFO-AM (560) spent the better part of three hours name-calling, patting themselves on the back and shouting down the few callers from the other side who got through.
The unprecedented show from noon to 3 p.m. was convened by the San Francisco station in response to a campaign by liberal bloggers -- including one who goes by the name ``Spocko'' -- who sent recorded segments from the shows to advertisers, some that were offensive to Muslims and seemed to sanction violence against political opponents. . . .
There were some apparent contradictions about whether these hosts wanted to apologize or do battle. Morgan chided bloggers and media members for not seeing apologies she issued on her Web site. Yet, Rodgers repeatedly said they weren't apologizing for anything and warned that ``if you bite us, we will bite back.'' . . . . In the three hours, only a few dissenters made it onto the phone lines. One, a blogger from Virginia, made a few points before Rodgers cut him off in a slew of name-calling. . . .
They also accused the blogger, whose posts have now been distributed widely on the Internet and to advertisers, of threatening their livelihood, and that was something they wouldn't do. When someone suggested that Morgan did the same thing by calling for a boycott of Michael Moore's ``Fahrenheit 9/11,'' she argued it was different because the movie was ``filled with lies and deceit'' and added that she didn't say people ``can't go'' to the movie, ``but as conservatives, we have a right not to go.''
They repeatedly made fun of Spocko for using a made up name that didn't seem to fit an adult. No one mentioned their sidekick who goes by ``Officer Vic.''
Yeah, that worked.
San Jose Mecury Covers Spocko Controversey
The local hosts of talk radio station KSFO-AM (560) will take phone calls and answer questions today from noon to 3 p.m. in an extraordinary response to a lone blogger who has been recording their at-times offensive and violent diatribes and sending them to advertisers. . . .The anonymous blogger, who goes by ``Spocko'' and hosts a site at www.spockosbrain.com, has been picked up by liberal political sites across the country and has had more of an effect on the station than years of protests. . . . The station has consistently been in the Bay Area's Top 10 since it started as the lone conservative radio voice in 1995 and has been under fire by gay and minority groups for statements they deemed hateful.
The Internet has apparently made the protests more effective.
Spocko, who claims to have only 19 regular readers on his blog, forwarded links to statements by the radio hosts to advertisers including Visa, Bank of America and the state of Michigan, which apparently dropped ads.
Heheh. Guess someone's smarting a bit. I'm sure that their "extraordinary response" will go a long way to quelling the controversey. Yeah, right.
More MSM Coverage
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.
Spocko on TV
Two More Advertisers Kiss Off KSFO
FEDERAL EXPRESS AND THE MICHIGAN Economic Development Corporation have both ceased advertising on KSFO, the controversial extremist right-wing ABC Radio affiliate, spokespersons for both advertisers confirmed yesterday. In both cases, the organizations asserted they were unaware that media firms had placed their marketing messages on the station. They had no plans to advertise on the station again. "We were horrified," said Mike Shore, chief communications officer for MEDC.
MSM on Spocko
BLOG WAR: Talk station KSFO in San Francisco has blocked a blogger from posting sound bites he was using to criticize the station.
The blogger, "Spocko," had been posting bits of KSFO shows for months as part of a campaign to persuade advertisers to withdraw sponsorship.
He claimed that several companies, including Bank of America, Visa and Netflix, had pulled their ads to avoid being associated with controversial content.
KSFO contends Spocko violated copyright laws, and last month it sent him a cease-and-desist letter. It also threatened action against his Internet service provider, which has now removed his site.
Hey, Mom! Lookit what we did!
Bloggers Give Spocko An Assist, Post Contested ABC Radio Files
by Tom Siebert, Monday, Jan 8, 2007 6:00 AM ET
MEDIA CRITIC SPOCKO, WHOSE BLOG was shut down last week in response to Disney's complaints that he violated its copyright by posting audio files from right-wing San Francisco talk radio station KSFO, is once again online.
Sunday morning, his muckraking blog Spocko's Brain (www.spockosbrain.com), had resurfaced on the Web, hosted by Computer Tyme Web Hosting. What's more, several bloggers from around the world posted the disputed audio files--all but daring Disney to go after them as well. . . .It took less than 48 hours for the material Disney tried to keep quiet to go wide. By Friday night, the site Online Blogintegrity linked to zip files of the entire collection of KSFO hate rants, as well as solo links to separate incidents. These links were supported by one of Blogintegrity's seven regular contributors, Iowan Scott Ripley, on his personal site, The Zen Cabin (www.zencabin.com). By Saturday morning, a site in Hong Kong and one with sympathies to the Arab world had added the audio files. By early Saturday afternoon, there were a dozen sites supporting them, including the progressive blog that sparked the first news of Spocko's situation, The Daily Kos.
By late Saturday afternoon, selections were posted on YouTube and the battle to suppress the information was effectively over, with Disney and KSFO the losers.
Take that!
