Hate fills the airwaves

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 1996 by Raymond L. Fischer

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

CONDITIONS around the world lead to the belief that hate is everywhere: ethnic cleansing and aimless killing in Bosnia, Africa, and Russia; rebels and insurgents in South America and other parts of the globe; the rise of neo-Nazis in Germany and other countries--race against race, color against color, religion against religion. Increasingly, many of the same problems plague the U.S. as small extremist groups direct hate against Jews and blacks; extremist religious groups spread hate against abortionists and homosexuals; and the most extreme of the extremists advocate stockpiling arms to protect themselves against a government they hate and want to overthrow. Much of the hate is transmitted over radio and television.

The April 19, 1995, bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building drastically brought to consciousness the threat of hate and violence in the U.S. After the bombing, Pres. Clinton castigated the media's "loud and angry voices" for "spreading hate and leaving the impression by their very words that violence is acceptable." In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Clinton urged radio talk show hosts and their callers to reject on-air statements "fostering hate and division and encouraging violence."

Conservative radio talk show hosts objected strenuously and vociferously against Clinton's implication that such programs had anything to do with the bombing. Rush Limbaugh, whose talk show is carried by more than 600 stations, maintained that the President was playing the "blame game" and that such a suggestion is "irresponsible and vacuous to ... suggest that this 200-plus-year-old debate caused the explosion of a building in Oklahoma City." Chuck Harder, a talk show host on The People's Radio Network in White Springs, Fla., said, "the irresponsible way the national media and the President are casting blame for the tragedy is breathtaking.... This drumbeat of blame has been increased by Clinton's accusations that talk radio somehow triggered the awful events in Oklahoma."

Clinton consistently refused to defend the right to air "some of the things some of these more extreme talk show hosts have said." Specifically, he objected to a number of G. Gordon Liddy's remarks. Liddy, who broadcasts over WJFK-FM in Fairfax, Va., admitted he used handmade drawings of the President and his wife for target practice and discussed shooting Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in the head and groin "in legally justified self-defense." By implication, if agents of the ATF or other Federal officers were to go to private homes or compounds as they did to the Branch Davidians, who considered AFT actions to be illegal, shooting and killing agents in self-defense would be justified.

Liddy told the media that he did not believe his controversial comments had fueled the "lunatic fringe." However, station owners and managers, who thought he had, imposed their own kind of censorship. A week after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Oklahoma State Senate voted 39-0 to adopt a resolution "urging sponsors of the G. Gordon Liddy show and other radio talk shows encouraging violence against public officials, law officers, or the private citizenry to withdraw financial sponsorship."

On April 25, Bill McNulty, general manager of KCKC-AM in San Bernardino, Calif., stopped airing the show because "the opinion and views of Liddy have the potential to foster and encourage extremist action." (Emphasis added.) Nevertheless, Liddy's Oklahoma City affiliate WKY-AM decided to keep him on the air after a call-in vote demonstrated strong listener support. Liberal talk show host Diane Rehm, whose nationally syndicated morning program originates over WAMU-FM in Washington, argues that "the notion that words don't have power is crazy. If you are G. Gordon Liddy and you are talking about ... killing ATF agents in self-defense, who knows whether or not someone on the extreme, extreme, extreme, isn't going to use that as a reason to go out and kill public officials?"

The First Amendment and freedom of speech issue really came to prominence when the board of the National Association of Talk Show Hosts voted 16-4 to give the 1995 Freedom of Speech award to Liddy during its annual convention in Houston, June 22-25, 1995. Rep. Richard Gephardt (D.-Mo.) denounced Liddy's remarks about shooting at Federal officials as "not only wrong, but outrageous." Gephardt, determined to "keep free speech from becoming an incitement to violence," urged board members and convention attendees to boycott the awards ceremony.

Jerry Williams, who founded the association and opposed Liddy for the award, defended Liddy's right to say anything and accused Gephardt of trying to "manipulate and use talk radio." He also termed Gephardt's suggestion to boycott the ceremony as outrageous as anything Liddy had said. In defense of giving the award to Liddy, president and board chairman Gene Burns declared that the board and the organization were uncompromising in their belief that Liddy had a right to say what he said: "Speech is in desperate need of defenders even when it is confrontational, outrageous, annoying, or irritating."