NEWS: The King Of All Media Dethroned?

CULTURE: The King Of All Media Dethroned?

Shock jock Howard Stern is shaking in his boots that the days of his morning show may be numbered.

Could this really mean the end of Stern?

STERN: THEY'RE GOING TO SILENCE ME [NY Post]

who's blaming Stern's problems on Bush?

id really like to hear the show from that date, is it streaming online anywhere? ill try and hunt it down and if i find it ill post a link.

for all his sexist bullshit and toilet humor, Stern is still a huge force for free speech in America, and i'd like to hear this show.

I'm pretty sure he wants to lose his job but just can't get out of his contract.

eh. Bush sucks.

Heh, Stern is just a media whore. He is using this to draw attention to himself. And to have an ego big enough to say you have become a symbol of anything is just a sad miscalculation of your own worth.

I don't rely on Stern to be a torch carrier for my free speech. I had it before he existed and I will have it when he is gone.Offensive shock jocks are not a standard to be used when measuring free speech.If anything they are an embarrassment to the people with real issues and real courage who stand up and take on the powers that be. He is not Rosa Parks. He is not Lech Waslensa.He is not the student standing in front of the tank in China.

Free speech is cool and wonderful, but when you are 99% of the time a blithering offensive idiot, you gotta figure someone will try to find a way to shut you up.

Freedom of speech does not mean you are allowed to say anything you want at anytime you want to. It is their network, if they wish not to have him on it, they can choose to do so, much in the same way SG can kick offensive members from this board. They don't owe anyone the right to be stupid out loud in their house if they choose not to.

He has the money to start his own network. Why doesn't he do that? Then he can say whatever he wants and not get fired by the boss.Theres his freedom. The freedom to pay his own way.

The problem for Stern now is that if he starts his own network, he's subject to the same FCC penalties there. He could move to either satellite radio, or Internet streaming, which have no FCC regulation (though they've made noises about expanding to those areas too), but not over the air.

It's just funny, that's all. If anything, Stern's show is no raunchier than it's ever been. Suddenly, he stops backing Bush, and this happens. I also know this happened after Janet Jackson's tit destroyed our morality, so that's a factor, but I do wonder.

Fuck the FCC anyway. The standard of "indecency" is so vague and undefined that it's, well, indecent. It's a great tool to silence people who say things you don't like.

That's what I was thinking.

The FCC and the Bush administration are just making an example out of one of the biggest radio networks, Clear Channel, to make a point.

Stern's show has not gotten any raunchier over the years, and Clear Channel hasn't received any more fines than normal. Most corporate broadcasting firms (both Radio and TV) look at the tiny FCC fines as another cost of doing business. Only this time it's different. Because Clear Channel is being called to heal by the FCC (who is in turn being pressured by the administration to take public decency into hand), they are going to offer up Stern as a sacrifice.

Not that I like Clear Channel or Stern, but this type of knee jerk reaction from an administration in the grip of the radical right is rather alarming.

i am thinking the exact same thing....bush is a master manipuater

Yep! Get out your tinfoil hats! Before he gets to YOU!

fuck Clear Channel and the FCC.

and FUCK GEORGE BUSH.

Plain and simple...as has been mentioned, Stern is no worse now than ever. In fact, his show is now, and probably always was, awful. I have no endorsement of his spiel as I disagree with much of his content, but he has a right to be a sexist fool, like it or not. Others must combat his ignorance through education. What ever happened to the Lenny Bruces, George Carlins, Ed Sanders, and the like...they had context and meaning attached to their rants. They are out there I know...but the Stern's and O'Reilley's get all the attention (yes, I lumped O'Really in with Stern).

The one thing that obviously changed was that Stern stopped his mindless support for American jingoism. I believe it no coincidence that he is now under the gun of a Republican controlled FCC (Son of Collin, Mike Powell) roused in the wake of Breastgate. It's an easy distraction from other issues. And, it's too convenient to silence political critics under the rubric of "indecency." So it's indecent to rag on Bush given his record but not to mock mentally retarded people and denigrate women on a daily basis? Hardly. Freedom of the speech means one is free to say what one wishes as long as those in power like what one says. Stern made that mistake.

Something missing from the FCC's debate here is the overwhleming corporate control of the airwaves helped along by their actions to further deregulate the communications industry and all but rip up the Telecommunications Act of 1934 that branded the airwaves PUBLIC. Those days, especially since the Telecom Act of 1996 of Clinton/Gingrich, are over at least for now, although their are grassroots movements afoot to take back the airwaves.

Also, remember Disney hacking Politically Incorrect host Bill Maur after he was critical of US responses to 9-11? Then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer telling Americans to "watch what they say?" There are far too many other examples of this since Bush took office, literally.

I find myself more defending Stern's rights to use his forum as he sees fit (or unfit), but mostly not his contents. I certainly don't feel sorry for him, but it is WAY too coincidental that he is under fire AFTER the anti-Bush comments. Wonder how this plays out with his bud Guilliani? Funny no one at the FCC complained about right-wing radio's Mike Savage's endorsements of women aid workers being raped in San Francisco or that the same FCC had little to say about Savage's comments about "turd" world nations or rounding up constitutionally protected anti-war protesters as traitors and deporting them like in WWI. Savage, of course, is a rabid Bush supporter. Apparently, to this FCC, that's one demographic that can do no wrong. These fascist speech controllers must go. Debate and true discourse of divergent views are the life's blood of democracy and America is in need of a transfusion big time.

I'll second that.

exactly. he's been talkin about quiting for years.


this topic is fucking stupid, it started with a totally inflamitory statment that is totally untrue. he didn't "not see" Bush's "evil" . Stern totally backed the war, and don't give me that WMD crap, he wanted Bush to go in no matter what, just like i did. you left wing nuts seem to forget that Stern is also Pro-Death Penalty and Pro Gun. you are all on the fuckin 1st Amendment bandwagon when it DOESN'T APPLY in this case THE GOVERNMENT DID NOT CENSOR HIM . HIS EMPLOYER DID ...WHICH THEY CAN DO FOR ANY REASON. you disobey your boss, you get fired. that is life, why should he be any different than the rest of us, they let him slide FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS. it just wasn't worth it any more. Fuck Stern.





[Edited on Mar 07, 2004 by Stirfry]

If this is meant to be a defence of free speech, no wonder people are getting nervous.

Here we go again ...

Yes, the thread continues to be hindered by the tirelessly amateurish and superficial responses of those revealing an unprecedented incapacity to link a few simple dots; except when it comes to pasting insipid graphics in a childish effort to characterize their careless rants as something more than what they are – devoid of any rational or substantiation.

If free speach doesn't protect blithering, offensive idiots, it doesn't protect anyone. Free speach is the mother of all slippery slopes.

Preemptive to threats of government sanction. The current rash of self-regulation is all an attempt to stop or delay government regulation.

You mean you weren't convinced by ALL THE CAPITAL LETTERS?

Again, Infinity has never considered firing Stern for the content of his show. Now, it appears that the FCC is about to start levying fines against them to a degree that will make it impossible for them to continue carrying the show.

So it's not an employer exercising its rights to determine what it wants broadcast on its network. It is a network having to respond to attacks on it from the government

This is scary.

By the way, it should be noted there's a glitch in this thread. The original post is by Princess Leah, viewable (complete with actual links to the source) here.

So the "inflammatory statement" that appears to begin the thread, when read from the link on the boards, is not the actual start of the thread. Princess Leah's post is the actual starting point.

Got it? Good.

Find where I said they aren't and shouldn't be protected. I said you can expect someone to try to shut you up.

Now tell me. Where were his free speech rights violated? He isn't locked away somewhere unable to speak. They didn't execute him in the town square. He can write a book, letters to the editor or bring out videos and Cd's. He can take his act to cable where the rules are much more lax. Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee freedom of employment. It is not a freedom of speech issue. He pissed off his employee, he got the axe.
The only thing he lost was his job and he can get in the unemployment line like all the others who have lost those, maybe even myself coming up soon.

A girl I worked with was fired last week for discussing our companies issues with the company who contracts us. She broke a rule and was fired. No her rights were not violated, even though she was fired for speaking.

Do you feel that the wave of recent SG board zotted members had their rights violated? I don't. Because you do not have nor are you ever guaranteed the right to say anything you want to anyone you want anywhere you want.

If freedom of speech covers all situations,go up into a local biker hangout and shout that all bikers are a bunch of so and so's and Harleys are a bunch of so and so's. I mean hey, it's your freedom to speak, right?
He pissed of his employee, he got the axe.

If SG wants to zot someone for violating rules of their own accord, that's one thing.

If SG gets a letter from a government agency saying they will be fined $100K for every post made by a member that violates some ambiguous standard, and thus they have to zot that member to protect themselves, that's another.

And if SG is told, in so many words, zot that member, or we'll start punishing you for what gets posted, that's worst of all.

Clear Channel, for all its high-and-mighty attitude, did not feel that Stern's content was a problem until Congress and the FCC bitched at them.