WHEN SHOCK GROWS TO HATE
DJS WALK A LINE THAT SHIFTS, BLURS
[Savage specific content in bold. Brad talks extensively about the Fairness Doctrine in this article. -Ed.]
By Brad Kava, SJ Mercury News Staff Writer (feature article); Saturday, February 27, 1999
An incendiary crack by a Washington, D.C., disc jockey had Bay Area broadcasters looking closely
Friday at the line between shock and schlock, hot talk and hate talk.
All agreed that DJ Doug "The Greaseman" Tracht, whose show was aired in San Jose five years ago,
stepped over the line when he made light of the racially based murder of a Texas black man who was
dragged to death behind a truck.
A so-called "shock jock," Tracht, whose shtick is a mix of improvised rants and juvenile humor, was fired Thursday from Washington's WARW-FM after playing a song by Grammy award-winning singer Lauryn Hill and saying: "No wonder they drag them behind trucks."
The comment linked Hill, a black woman, with James Byrd Jr., a black man who was murdered by white
supremacists, an act that made international headlines.
Local radio program directors, personalities and analysts agreed with the firing.
But, they said, risky jokes are part of the job. A joke can blow up the ratings one day and blow up in a DJ's face the next.
"When you are on the air, you say a lot of things you wish you could take back," said Lamont Hollywood, a morning shock jock who has been on KSJO-FM for a decade. "But what (Tracht) said was the worst thing I've heard. It was malicious. It was intended to hurt someone. To me, there is no other way to interpret that statement."
Hollywood, like many of his peers, has been the subject of protests and letter-writing campaigns for things he's said that have offended listeners. Good ratings and good sense have kept him on the air, he said.
Apology issued
Tracht apologized for his statement, and the station aired the apology hourly. He blamed it on
improvisation and bad judgment -- a tightrope all live broadcasters, who operate with no editors and no chance for a second look, must deal with.
But that's a lame excuse, according to local radio managers.
"When you are a broadcaster, you live under a modified First Amendment,"said Jack Swanson, program director of the Bay Area's two biggest talk stations, KGO-AM and KSFO-AM. "When you sit by a microphone, you don't always have the freedom you do standing on a soap box."
Swanson said Tracht's statement was not a close call.
" 'The line' is something we talk about every day," he said. "It's movable. It's got fuzzy edges to it. And it keeps shifting, depending on who is looking at it.
"But there are some cases where clearly, beyond politics or social orientation, you can just look at it and say that's beyond anybody's line."
Partly because of relaxed legislation and relaxed social mores, the line has certainly moved over the past two decades.
On the same day that Tracht made his comment, on national airwaves you could hear one of the original shock jocks, Howard Stern, use a racial epithet to describe Asians. You could also hear KSFO afternoon host Michael Savage describing someone as looking like a "drunk Irishman heading to the bar."
A week ago, Savage upset the gay activist group GLAAD by diminishing a hate crime against a gay
student who was beaten up and had an anti-gay slur written on his wrist. What Savage said: "When a sissy in Novato gets a fat lip, the media treats it like it's World War III."
Purported sex act
And several months ago, "Doghouse" hosts J.V. and Elvis, the morning personalities on a KYLD-FM
show that markets heavily to children, broadcast what the hosts said was a live oral sex act.
Stern has been fined $1.7 million by the Federal Communications Commission, and Savage has
apologized to gay activists after saying he wished they would get AIDS. Nothing has come of the other seemingly offensive broadcasts.
Analysts say that even enforcement does little to protect a community that is becoming more and more jaded. Fines to the large corporations that own the stations do more to publicize the controversial hosts than to punish them.
The rise in shock and hate talk corresponds with the decline of federal enforcement on the airwaves, said author and former radio personality Ben Fong-Torres.
Legislation in 1981 dropped many restrictions for applying for a license, increased the duration of
licenses from three to seven years and dropped public-service requirements and limits on commercials.
No more equal time
The Fairness Doctrine, which required equal time for opposing political views, fell in 1987, and in 1996, companies were allowed almost unlimited power to buy and sell stations.
The result, Fong-Torres said, is that stations no longer feel that someone is looking over their shoulders; they've become less interested in proving that they are serving the community on the community-owned airwaves.
While the FCC will fine stations that present obscene or indecent matter, the complaints must be backed up with tape or reliable transcripts, a requirement that discourages most people from taking action. Generally, stations will react only when community interest groups approach advertisers and organize boycotts.
Even in the wake of his egregious statement, radio people expect the Greaseman to be back.
"Shock sometimes backfires," said Michael Harrison, the editor of Talkers Magazine, which follows the nation's talk show hosts.
"It's like being a football player or a boxer," Harrison said. "Sometimes you get your head beat in. But Tracht will probably get hired again. This could even be a shot in the arm for his career. There is always someone who will do what they can to capitalize on the publicity."
Sidebar: AREA SHOCKERS
The Bay Area has seen its share of shock jocks and aftershocks.
(box) In 1986, Jeff McNeal, disc jockey at San Francisco's KYUU-FM (now defunct), told jokes about the space shuttle Challenger, weeks after all aboard were killed. He was suspended for a day. When he returned, he received 1,000 supportive calls from fans.
(box) KSJO-FM shock jock Perry Stone was fired in 1989 in San Jose after calling a 17-year-old girl a "slut" and a "pig" during a broadcast and encouraging a member of a young Brownie troop to embezzle cookie money. Six months later, he was hired at San Francisco's KITS-FM, but he later was fired for low ratings. He went on to be a morning host and program director in the East.
(box) Music DJ J. Paul Emerson talked about dropping the atomic bomb on the "stinking Japanese" and was fired in 1994 at KFRC-AM. He was hired a month later as a political commentator at KSFO-AM. He was fired three months later, not because he called for AIDS patients to be isolated on islands but for blasting the management at his company, ABC, for refusing to air his appearance on the Phil Donahue TV show.
(box) Inflammatory conservative Bob Grant, whose New York show was syndicated on San Francisco's
KSFO, was fired in 1996 for saying he was "a pessimist" for believing that Commerce Secretary Ron
Brown had survived a plane crash. Grant, who in the past had referred to blacks as "savages," is back on the air at a rival New York station, WOR-AM.
Photograph: Stern
Caption: Used a racial epithet to describe Asians.
Photograph: Doug Tracht
Caption: "The Greaseman," fired over a racial comment, was on the air in San Jose five years ago.
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