Clear Channel Dumps Howard Stern After Proposed Fine

[Koodauw]

Howard Stern isn't the real goal of this process. The end game is to remove conservative talk radio shows from the air. The elites prefer to have no voice but theirs discussed.

I dissagree with you whole heartily.

The reason howard was removed was Clear Channel didn't want to pay the the fines anymore. (Which have gotten alot larger.) OK thats understand able.

The reason he was fined was for indecent material. He was fined for talking to Rick Salomon about the size of his pennis. As Justice Murphy is states " Such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality." ~ Chaplinsky v. N.H.

The governement is not tring to silence any left or right wing ideas. It is about decensy.

 

[MacNut]

Lets take this arguement, so are the viagra commercials just as bad?

 

[Backtothemac]

Time out
Just because you don't like Stern that is your right just as much as it is my right to want to listen to him. The stuff that is going on in Iraq is far greater than what stern is talking about yet we are fighting over there and showing the carnage on the news for all of americas children to see. So what is worse Stern talking about sex or seeing our Solders getting killed day after day and having the news propaganda showing that every day.

Well, I don't let my daughter listen to either, but when you are scanning on the radio, you don't expect to hear vulgar items that you have to explain to your child. I know what channel the news is on, and how to avoid it but when traveling you don't know.

 

[Koodauw]

when you are scanning on the radio, you don't expect to hear vulgar items that you have to explain to your child. I know what channel the news is on, and how to avoid it but when traveling you don't know.

That is exactly what the court said, and is part of the reason why they can limit what is said on air.

 

[MarkCollette]

A few points:

To those who claim that the Bush administration is not against him, since he got all those fines during Clinton's time, let's do a little math (numbers are rounded for simplicity): $2 million / 14 years = $140,000 per year. Now he's gotten a $500,000 fine, and we're only a few months into the year. Obviously the situation has changed.

As well, in the day and age where all radios have preset buttons, how much of an excuse does one have to be randomly scanning over all the channels, and hit one that has something they don't like? Furthermore, if you randomly skip to some rude channel, how hard is it to press the scan button one more time?

I think that the reality is that we all have our own tastes, some like rudeness, other don't. Some like country music and others don't. I think that all stations should be allowed to play country music, and rude stuff, and let the market decide who wins out. There is a sufficiently large market for children's programming, that I think we can expect separate channels for them, just as there are separate channels for rock, rap, country, dance, etc. Call me inconsiderate, but I could care less if my grandmother likes or dislikes any rude disk-jockey, since I know she can just choose to listen to her Christian radio station. The idea that the government is needed to regulate things, to keep it decent, is laughable. Radio stations live and die by the advertisers, who are extremely sensitive to how people will respond.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

A few points:

To those who claim that the Bush administration is not against him, since he got all those fines during Clinton's time, let's do a little math (numbers are rounded for simplicity): $2 million / 14 years = $140,000 per year. Now he's gotten a $500,000 fine, and we're only a few months into the year. Obviously the situation has changed.

As well, in the day and age where all radios have preset buttons, how much of an excuse does one have to be randomly scanning over all the channels, and hit one that has something they don't like? Furthermore, if you randomly skip to some rude channel, how hard is it to press the scan button one more time?

I think that the reality is that we all have our own tastes, some like rudeness, other don't. Some like country music and others don't. I think that all stations should be allowed to play country music, and rude stuff, and let the market decide who wins out. There is a sufficiently large market for children's programming, that I think we can expect separate channels for them, just as there are separate channels for rock, rap, country, dance, etc. Call me inconsiderate, but I could care less if my grandmother likes or dislikes any rude disk-jockey, since I know she can just choose to listen to her Christian radio station. The idea that the government is needed to regulate things, to keep it decent, is laughable. Radio stations live and die by the advertisers, who are extremely sensitive to how people will respond.

Probably no different than the current administration's enforcement of travel restrictions of US citizens to Cuba, and the hefty fine there. Where it is budget balancing or a feeling that wrong doers should pay the price.

What I am sensing in some of the posts here is, "I don't care about anyone else but myself". This attitude is not just about the airwaves, but stretches into almost every part of daily life. But the law and court history is that the airwaves belong to the public, and as such need to be held to to a standard of decency that is at the same time open and serves the general population.

 

[Krizoitz]

A few things...

1) No MTV is NOT on the public airwaves, it is a cable channel.

2) Yes you can choose not to listen to Howard Stern by turning off the radio, or changing the dial. But Clear Channel has the right not to broadcast him too. There is nothing that says someones views HAVE to be broadcast on the radio. No one is stopping him from having an opinion or putting it out there, they just don't want him to use their stations to do it. He can try to find other venues to express himself if expression is his true drive (such as the internet) my guess is he's more worried about the money.

3) The truth is this would only be a witchhunt if they were suddenly making laws out of no-where. Instead Howard has been either getting away with things because of weak enforcement of current laws or the stations have been willing to pay the fine because they felt it was outweighed by the financial benefit of having him on the air. Now the rules are being enforced AND people aren't as interested in his crap as they used to be. Higher fines + less income from adverts and such = not profitable for them. Its a buisness move. Plain and simple.

 

[Les Kern]

Personally I find the show to be boring and coarse, so I don't listen to it. But there's absolutely no reason the government should be telling me that i can't.
paul

Yes there is, and his name is Mike Powell. Add him together with the ultra-right ClearChannel, and soon you'll be TOLD what you can watch, and when to watch it. I DESPISE those fundamentalist nut-case rat-bastards.

 

[MarkCollette]

What I am sensing in some of the posts here is, "I don't care about anyone else but myself". This attitude is not just about the airwaves, but stretches into almost every part of daily life. But the law and court history is that the airwaves belong to the public, and as such need to be held to to a standard of decency that is at the same time open and serves the general population.

The question is: could someone say what he said, in public, standing on a street corner, and it be legally ok? If so, then why should the radio be any different? On the street corner it might be impossible to avoid, but on the radio you have a nifty dial to turn him off, so I think that radio should allow more than in public, but at the very least, exactly what one can say in public.

As for caring about others, I should rephrase that I do care about things that matter, like physical injury, extreme distress, etc... But as for caring about someone hearing a dirty word or two, never. If anything, the slight stresses of life prepare us for the greater challenges ahead. I seriously think that we should not protect people too much, for their own good. Not that we should go out of our way to screw with people It's just that a little personal responsibility can go a long way.

<theory>
Plus, on a side note, most people form their opinions when issues are brought to their attention. This entails defining who we are, to a degree, by who we are not, requiring us to come into contact with the idea of who we are not. Hearing someone trash-talking, once in a while, is a gentle reminder that if we want to be taken seriously, and not looked down on, then we need to not talk trash ourselves. So, we actually need the ritual of seeing someone get in trouble for pushing the boundaries, to teach those boundaries to us. So we actually need people like Stern to get in trouble, and not be silenced altogether.
</theory>

 

[Urdam]

I agree

 

[Koodauw]

The question is: could someone say what he said, in public, standing on a street corner, and it be legally ok? If so, then why should the radio be any different? On the street corner it might be impossible to avoid, but on the radio you have a nifty dial to turn him off, so I think that radio should allow more than in public, but at the very least, exactly what one can say in public.

Write your congress representitive then, because the courts dissagree with you.

My question to you is what about when I am riding in the car, with my daughter, who is 8 years old. We are traveling through a large city that we are not familar with. I decide to scan through some radio stations, and happen to stumble across the HS show, where he is talking about the size of a quest's reproductive organs, a subject i do wish for her to hear about. Do I as a radio listener not have to the right to turn on the radio and not be offended?

 

[MacNut]

Write your congress representitive then, because the courts dissagree with you.

My question to you is what about when I am riding in the car, with my daughter, who is 8 years old. We are traveling through a large city that we are not familar with. I decide to scan through some radio stations, and happen to stumble across the HS show, where he is talking about the size of a quest's reproductive organs, a subject i do wish for her to hear about. Do I as a radio listener not have to the right to turn on the radio and not be offended?

I hope your not planning on protecting your daughter her whole life because eventually she will hear about the stuff said on Stern wether you like it or not. This is one reason why kids do drugs and drink, its because parents don't talk to their kids enough and you can either explain it to her now or let the kids on the playground do it for you.

 

[MacNut]

I agree that kids should be protected, but why should adults that want to listen be punished because parents never talk to there kids about anything. So everything should be childrens programing in the morning. Fluffy cartoons and barney. Don't talk about the war, my kid might get affended, where do babies come from, sorry cant tell you billy you might be scared for life.

 

[rainman::|:|]

Do I as a radio listener not have to the right to turn on the radio and not be offended?

No, you do not. The way the country was founded on the basis that one does not have the right to not be offended at the expense of another person's civil liberties... and freedom of speech is really the #1 civil liberty. Society and government has never gone to such great lengths to cater to children, believe me 200 years ago children saw things that would stun you today, people being killed constantly, hardship, violence, graphic sex. To say that fart jokes on the radio is going to cause undue harm to your youngster is a bit unrealistic, i think. But it's your place as a parent to put everything in context, instill the values you want, make the rules you want. Children should know that when they hear something like stern, it's just a man being 'shocking' for reaction value, and that, like i said earlier, it's crude. Instead, they see their parents have a panic attack, i'll bet that piques their purient interest.

wdlove, i'm not sure what are you talking about? the government *loves* the conservative commentators right now, the FCC included. So does the general public, always eager to suckle at the teat of a manipulative demagogue (okay, i'm talking about o'reilly here). I seriously doubt there's any conspiracy afoot to have them banned from the airwaves... More like a resolve from liberals to take a fighting stance, ala Al Franken's new radio station.

paul

 

[Koodauw]

Macnut,
Its not about sheltering my daughter. The story was made up. It was more about the principle of the matter. (It's the principle man) I do not plan on sheltering my children to the harms of the world, I beleive in quiet the opposite. The point in the government does has the right to fine HS.

As with all posts which include Macnut.... GO Yankees.

Paul,
The wording of my question may have made the point I tried to make unclear. What I am trying to say that is that while traveling in my car and flipping through radio channels, I believe I have the right to NOT come across something sexually explicit. I refer you to Bethel School District v. Fraser. In issuing the opinion of the court Chief Justice Burger states: "The Court's First Amendment jurisprudence has acknowledged limitations on the otherwise absolute interest of the speaker in reaching an unlimited audience where the speech is sexually explict and the audience may include children..."

 

[MarkCollette]

Write your congress representitive then, because the courts dissagree with you.

My question to you is what about when I am riding in the car, with my daughter, who is 8 years old. We are traveling through a large city that we are not familar with. I decide to scan through some radio stations, and happen to stumble across the HS show, where he is talking about the size of a quest's reproductive organs, a subject i do wish for her to hear about. Do I as a radio listener not have to the right to turn on the radio and not be offended?

I understand your embarrassment of having to educate your child on these sensitive matters. And I understand that there is a time and a place for all things. Maybe there is an age where she would not be ready, and an age when she would be ready. But, as someone else mentionned, it's more likely that someone else will preemptively (mis)educate your child, and so you have a responsibility to head that off and do a proper job yourself. You might then say that if this wasn't allowed on the radio, then maybe the other children in the playground wouldn't know anything either. Let's pretend that is true. Will you know the right time? When those kids are now boys, and they want to say and do thing with your child, will you have already said to her what you could have before?

I was 12 in junior high (grade 7), and so probably 10 when sexuality became an issue in school, due to obvious physiological changes. Females start even earlier, and recently they've been changing even sooner, so like 8 years old. This is slightly shocking me right now as I type this, because the implications are clear: you have to have fully explained sexual processes to your little girl by the time she is 8 years old. That's insane, they're just children then... The reason is their own bodies.

Ok, so the reality of mass media's obsession with sexuality means that she will ask you before then, since she's probably observant. Whether it's on the radio, TV, movies, posters, music, whatever. Even if you cut all that out, there will be pregnant women walking down the street, babies in baby carriages, her own questions of where she came from. We are living creature - we question life itself. You can treat this as something negative, or something positive. You can project that is is something to be feared or something to cherish. You will communicate these feelings, even if by ommission. But you can choose to instill the positive ones at such an early age, that they are woven into the fabric of her being.

I myself think that my response to the Stern show would be something like: Those words are just names for parts of our bodies. They are the crude versions of the words that you already know for your own body parts. Some people don't like when we use crude words instead of regular words, so we avoid using them, but this guy is trying to be annoying so he's using them. You know when you're brother tries to annoy you, and he thinks it's funny, but you don't like it? Same thing.

 

[rt_brained]

Howard Stern isn't the real goal of this process. The end game is to remove conservative talk radio shows from the air. The elites prefer to have no voice but theirs discussed.

I think you have it backwards.

I'm a fan of Stern's show and think he has every right to fight for his own cause. On the other hand, for someone who makes the kind of money he makes from radio, film and television, he's got a long way to go before it has any real affect.

 

[Krizoitz]

While freedom of speech is important, the Supreme Court has upheld on many occasions that it is not unlimited, at least in the scope of where and when it can be said. Some people may cry that this defeats the purpose, but it is part of the realities of any society.

A free society is a delicate balancing act. On one side you have anarchy the total absence of laws, where things like freedom to say whatever you want exist unchecked. On the other you have totalitarianism, where rules and regulations are put in place to maintain law and order. Unfortunately neither extreme works very well. Anarchy's lawlessness means that freedoms aren't protected and totalitarianisms rigidness ends up being used as an excuse to harm the people it was meant to protect.

My point? Our society has to balance freedoms against order. In order to function as a coherent group there must be some limitations in place. In order to avoid totalitarianism there must also be protections of basic freedoms.

In America it has been determined that while the right to express yourself is certainly important, your right to do so whenever, whereever and however is not without limits.

For example, it is unlawful to shout fire in a crowded theater? Why? Because it presents a danger to people that easily outweighs one persons right to express themself.

What does that have to do with Howard Stern? Well for one thing the radio waves are held in trust by the government on behalf of the public which owns it. In order for our society to function as a society we have decided that there are certain limitations on what can and can not be said on the public airwaves at certain times. This is how society works.

Now if the government were saying that Howard Stern didn't have the right to say what he wanted at all, then yes, that would be a violation of his first ammendmant rights. Instead they are saying that while operating on the public airwaves he has to obey certain standards. When he doesn't he gets fined. He doesn't get arrested by the Gestapo and beaten. They don't send people out to cut his broadcasts off. He gets fined. Well thats not true the companies that have decided of their own free will to carry his show get fined.

Now those companies have decided that it isn't worth their money to continue to carry his show. That is their right. Free speech isn't only saying whatever you want, its the right to not allow yourself or your private service to be used to say things you don't want it to. Just as Stern has a right to his views so does the station.

So now he has a few options. He can try and get the laws changed, just as any citizen can by going to his representative government and going through the process. He can find another outlet for his views, be it the internet, or cable tv, or his own living room. Or he can move on with his life. See? No one is telling him he can't say fire if he wants to, he just can't say it in a crowded movie theater.

 

[davecuse]

The way the country was founded on the basis that one does not have the right to not be offended at the expense of another person's civil liberties... and freedom of speech is really the #1 civil liberty. Society and government has never gone to such great lengths to cater to children, believe me 200 years ago children saw things that would stun you today, people being killed constantly, hardship, violence, graphic sex. To say that fart jokes on the radio is going to cause undue harm to your youngster is a bit unrealistic, i think.

You hit the nail on the head with this one. Our founding fathers would kick our asses if they saw the way things are now. If you sit back and look at society, it's got to look so weird from their perspective. Imagine pushing the idea of a treadmill on a George Washington, "yea it's great, you just run in place" I think he would slap you silly. Kind of a funny thought.

 

[MarkCollette]

For example, it is unlawful to shout fire in a crowded theater? Why? Because it presents a danger to people that easily outweighs one persons right to express themself.

I agree with your whole post, but just want to add one bit. It's been demonstrated that yelling fire in a crowded theatre can cause harm. I doubt that many of us would challenge this due to the historical record, and our capability to mentally simulate what would happen given the theoretical situation.

But, how has Stern caused harm? I know, I know, somewhere out there someone's feelings are hurt, or a child has been mentally anguished. Or so we're told. Sorry, but I don't buy it.

 

[Apmonia]

A couple of points:

1. I feel the problem is not with the Howard Stern show per se, it's with the companies like Clear Channel can censor what we listen to on public airwaves. Huge media congolmerates own what we are allowed to think and believe. If one media outlet does not allow a certain DJ to be on the air, then we lose that one voice and what she/he has to say? Somehow I don't feel it's fair to silence anyone, even if you don't support their views, you should support their right to view them. It's not just the liberal or conservative media taking a hit, although each side would hope it's just them, it's all of us. Check out this website to see who owns what and http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/ . This affects everything we see and hear.

2. Who is the FCC? Did I vote for them? Probably the only fair way to decide if somebody is decent or not in a market based economy is to judge by the listeners that person gets. Howard Stern, while I don't listen to him, has a huge fanbase and tons of listeners, he should therefore stay on the radio. If people begin to think he is rude or crude then the market will force him out, but until then I say let him speak his piece. Obviously someone is listening.

apmonia

 

[LethalWolfe]

It's funny that people are saying "let the market sort things out" in protest to CC dropping Stern when in fact that is happening. CC dropped Stern because they don't want to carry his product anymore. His con's out weigh his pro's. CC can carry, or not carry, whatever they want. Telling CC they *have* to carry Stern is as totalitarian<sp?> as telling them they are not allowed to carry Stern.

If there still is a market for Stern other broadcasters will continue to carry him and/or he'll go to XM. If there is not a market for Stern more broadcasters will drop him and his attempt to XM will fail.

And who've mentioned Flint and Hustler. Standards for print are different than standards for over-the-air radio and tv which are also different than cable/satilite radio and TV. And of course you also have different standards for news vs commerical speech.

Freedom of Speech is not "one size fits all."


Lethal

 

[CMillerERAU]

http://horizons.eraunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/03/31/4068f5659c53b

I wrote this for our april fools edition of the newspaper at my college.

 

[MarkCollette]

It's funny that people are saying "let the market sort things out" in protest to CC dropping Stern when in fact that is happening. CC dropped Stern because they don't want to carry his product anymore. His con's out weigh his pro's. CC can carry, or not carry, whatever they want. Telling CC they *have* to carry Stern is as totalitarian<sp?> as telling them they are not allowed to carry Stern.

Except that our problem is that instead of CC dropping him due solely to low demand, it was instead precipitated by large government fines. If CC had dropped him, even without the fines, then that would be that.

 

[Krizoitz]

Except that our problem is that instead of CC dropping him due solely to low demand, it was instead precipitated by large government fines. If CC had dropped him, even without the fines, then that would be that.

The rules have been there for YEARS. The fines were just being finally enforced. Clear Channel got sick of paying the fines. He wasn't a good buisness investment. Again as long as they don't actually stop him from saying what he wants to i don't see the problem.