If one wanted to organize against Hate Radio, how would one start ( it's personal to me)

[maxrandb]

I know there are a few DUers that share my passion about "finally" doing something about the cancer of Hate Radio in this country, but it seems that without the resources and organization it would require, it's like tilting at windmills.

I may have relayed this story before, but I realized the harm of Hate Radio while on a trip with my family from Lemoore, CA to North Island NAS outside San Diego.

In 2003, I was a Lieutenant "Navy Mustang Officer" at any F18 Squadron in Lemoore, CA. We were about to deploy on the USS CARL VINSON for an 8 month Western Pacific cruise. Since the ship was in North Island, we thought it would be nice too drive down to San Diego as a family. It would be an adventure for my young family. We could spend some time together before I said goodbye for 8 months, and my bride could take the PCH on the way back and spend some time with her cousins family in the Caramel Valley. It was going to be a great trip.

We talked. Counted the cows. Listened to music and enjoyed the beauty of California.

Anyone who has made this trip from Lemoore to San Diego knows that the fastest route is to take Interstate 5, loop around Los Angeles, and continue on to San Diego. On a good day, with no LA traffic, you can make it in about five and a half hours, or, you can get stuck in LA traffic and it will take 8-9 hours. All Lemoore Sailors know the shortcut that includes getting to the 15. It's a little more distance, but it can save you a lot of times and frustration.

I switched the radio to AM to get a traffic report. I hit the scan button. My radio, in the middle of the "bluest" state in the country, commenced to scan and stop on radio station after radio station broadcasting the Rush Limbaugh show. I thought there must have been some mistake. Maybe the radio was just cycling around and landing on the only station it could find. Nope! It was 5 different stations, all with Rush, and each one about 2 seconds of broadcasting time behind. If there were such a thing as Radio Hell, I'd found it.

Here's where it got personal. I decided to just listen, because surely there would be a traffic report at the top of the hour. Surely, I could make it 10-15 minutes.

This was at the top of the drumbeat to the War in Iraq. In fact, the reasons we were deploying just 7 months after getting back from the Afghanistan deployment was because the carrier normally based out of Japan was going to the gulf. Our carrier was taking its place to maintain a carrier presence in the Pacific.

Anyway, Rush was taking about some Dems opposition to the coming Iraq war, and he said; "Dems want more American troops to get killed".

That's when my daughter, who was 10 at the time, and knew my political leanings, said from the back seat; "dad, you don't want more Americans to die, do you"? Hey, kids will be kids.

I assured her that "no, her father wasn't a monster just because he was a Democrat" and that "that guy on the radio was just an idiot".

I took the shortcut, and the rest of the trip was CDs of NSYNC and Shakira. But that question from my daughter stuck with me.

I don't think there was a day of that entire cruise that I didn't think of that. I thought of how I was about to say goodbye to my family for 8 months to serve my country, and millions of my fellow Americans saw me as an enemy because of my political beliefs.

I also thought about how many Americans, despite their age, have the mental capacity of a 10 year old.

My reaction was, how could this be allowed to go on unchecked?

I knew I had listened to college and professional sports teams games broadcast on the same stations that broadcast this cancer.

I knew that I bought and used some of the products and services advertised on the same stations that broadcast this cancer.

I knew there are local stations headquartered in the bluest of blue cities that broadcast this cancer that vilifies, smears and defames the majority of the citizens of those cities.

Here is something else I know in my heart. If there were 200 less of these stations broadcasting this filth, it would equate to 20-30 less Retrumplican House members and 5-7 less Retrumplican Senators.

Corporations and businesses support this cancer.

Universities and professional sports support this filth.

Isn't it time that we at least try to do something about this?

I say yes, but it needs to be coordinated, resourced and organized at a level that is above my paygrade.

[Boxerfan]

1. Pukes have a major head start-this has been a long game for them.

And it has worked very well for them.


Some say bring back the fairness doctrine & yes a modern version is overdue.

But we need our bazzillionares to start buying broadcast studio's instead of dildo rockets. Seriously.

The RW church groups have bought up all the AM airwaves here in Oregon. There used to be an alternative liberal radio station most major cities here. All gone now.


Even profitable stations were changed to a non profitable format-just to get the station off the air.


Repukes have invested major into AM & dominate the market. Reducing it will be a long term task and parity will likely never occur (till we change as a society).

[certainot]

22. don't think buying stations is the answer. what happened was the cons put racist liars on every

corner and stump in the country yelling about democrats and liberals - our sister are whores, our brothers are thieves, and our ideas are treasonous. Americans have to stop walking by with their fingers in their ears. comment below has a few other suggestions

it would help to get the thom hartmanns and randi rhodes on more stations but that's still mom and pop vs walmart.

especially since Putin's been feeding it since at least 2008, getting limbaugh to withhold his support for mccain until minutes after he chose palin, an announcement, like the giuliani/powell press conference, timed to start with limbaugh's show. manafort was mccain's campaign cochair.

[BComplex]

2. I would love to be part of the coordinated effort. Faux plays 24/7 at the prison where my Godson

is currently residing. Faux plays in all the prisons I know of. Faux plays on military bases. THAT is why they claim so many listeners....because there are TOO FUCKING MANY fascists at high levels of business and government that get to determine what is played, and these stations feed their movement. Further and further to the fuhrer.

[nolabear]

5. And Fox-owned Sinclair is buying up local TV stations like mad.

I’m in the SEATTLE viewing area for Chris sake, and two of the four local stations are Fox or Sinclair. They run segments that have a definite bias. Just asking important questions, doncha know.

[Hoyt]

3. I think one has to lean Limbaugh to listen to that crud. Would love to see a version of Air America

nowadays, but it has been tried before and failed.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

4. I used to love listening to Randi Rhodes,

she didn't pull any punches, whether they be Dems or Repubs, and her sense of humor was hilarious, especially her bounce your boobies theme.

[Hoyt]

10. Loved Rhodes too. Back then, I left AA on all night.

[CrispyQ]

6. We're 40 years behind the 8-ball in messaging.

I don't know why our side doesn't take messaging seriously. We need a marketing department, stat! The right has more successfully branded our side than we have. Tax and spend democrats. Dems coming for your guns. Socialists. Baby killers. We let the right hang slogans like Defund the Police & CRT around our neck, without a peep of protest or clarification. I don't know why we never hired George Lakoff or someone like him.

[PortTack]

7. There's a new liberal station being organized in the Midwest...might check that out

[DeeNice]

9. WCPT in Chicago can be streamed from anywhere

[link:https://heartlandsignal.com/wcpt820/schedule/|

[electric_blue68]

15. Hey, thanks! Just added it to my Tune In radio regulars👍

[CrackityJones75]

17. AM 950 KTNF in Minneapolis St. Paul

But really just maybe the western edge of St. Paul and most of Minneapolis.

https://www.am950radio.com/

Can stream them on Tunein radio as well.

[AmBlue]

8. Agreed 1000%

But besides boycotting advertisers, I don't know what the best, strongest approach is. I think we need benefactors with DEEP pockets who can buy up radio stations to counter their poison. Is there a legal approach that could take them off air or neutralize the fire bombs they are constantly throwing? I don't know. If that could be done I would think it would have already happened.

TBH I don't understand why it isn't criminal what Sinclair and Faux are doing. It is the radio and TV equivalent of shouting "FIRE" in tens of thousands of crowded theaters all over the country every day, all day long. They are sowing discord and fear and hatred between Americans, indeed, making my own neighbors flying their black Amercan flags want to kill ME and YOU for no good reason.

They are deliberately and intentionally tearing our nation apart and nothing is being done about it. (And that's only radio and TV! Don't get me started on internet...)

[pecosbob]

11. Paging DUer certainot

[certainot]

21. ha! i put some suggestions below

[hunter]

12. Traditional radio and television are dying.

The younger people in my family ignore it entirely. It simply doesn't exist in their universe.

They use their car stereos as Bluetooth speakers for their phones. That's it. The radio is irrelevant.

At home they stream everything. No AM/FM radios. No cable, no broadcast, no satellite on their televisions.

They think it's odd I have a radio in my kitchen that's tuned to the local public radio station.

My wife and I don't have cable, satellite, or broadcast television. We quit that more than a decade ago.

When anyone starts yammering on about something they heard on hate radio or saw on hate television I tend to be quite blunt, telling them I don't listen to or watch that shit.

People who habitually listen to this stuff are like meth addicts. There's no reasoning with them.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

13. I think George Carlin said it best.

[brooklynite]

16. The FCC has NO authority to regulate Fox News...

...and no way to make an "equal time" provision for radio stations impactful.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

18. Absolutely true,

and I've been constantly saying that to those that think the FD would apply to cable or those that think cable stations have licenses that can be revoked by the FCC.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

19. I just posted that clip for fun. nt

[taxi]

14. Immediate and brute force measures won't do it.

A small, steady erosive campaign reaching the listeners could be one of many approaches.
I knew people who listened to a radio station all day just because they wanted to hear a few minutes of The Rest Of The Story.
If we were able to have a very subtle general knowledge about government message it would not have to attack the right or promote the left. It would be a way to place seeds of doubt into the minds of many listeners.

[certainot]

20. i have a few suggestions. i'm not an organizer or particularly high tech and not on social media

been one of those believers that RW radio has been making real democracy impossible and have studied and monitored it for many years - there’s a decent rundown of Republican talk radio at fakenewsradio.org, including a list of 87 universities that broadcast sports on 260 or so x-limbaugh stations.

i remember a california friend telling me if i was really pissed off about rw radio wait till you hear this guy rush limbaugh...

i can go into more detail but here are a few suggestions.

a good objective might be to scare advertisers off those stations. many of them are not trumpers but those stations include many of the loudest and most attractive to advertisers.

every advertiser, advertising company, university, and pro sports team using republican radio stations shares responsibility for this global warming, trump, COVID disaster. and now for delaying BBB.

1) the most ‘effortless’ way to do this might be to get a few of those universities to start discussing the absurdity of supporting those stations (protests, as a debate team topic, etc). the threat that a school might start looking for apolitical alternatives would force some stations to avoid the ad exodus by changing programming or offering ‘balance’. it would scare advertisers off. other schools would be shamed into following. on that list at fakenewsradio.org - georgia 14, florida 20, pennsylvania 14, michigan 19, north carolina 16 could have a huge effect on a lot of stations in those important states, and their politics, but it might just take a school with one station.

there are also a lot of pro teams doing the same. it might be as simple as getting one athlete to point to the absurdity of supporting radio stations that excuse racism and attack kneeling athletes.

2) MIT researchers and well as the UN have prototyped using AI to automatically record, transcribe, and analyze talk radio. the MIT prototype may be very adaptable to large scale monitoring of patterns, repetition, lie manufacturing etc.

that could be done retroactively (podcasts, recordings, youtubes etc) to explain how we got to this point.

text analysis tools, free and otherwise, are very useful.

3) AI now makes boycotts much easier, faster, and cheaper than a few years ago. on a small scale there are free and cheap tools available. advertisers can be found in transcripts by searching for “DOT COM”, for instance - very little listening needed.

some of that is on the fakenewsradio.org website but it hasn’t been updated lately for AI advances.

the main objective may be to alert the ad industry that RW radio’s hate and lies are not going to be tolerated and ignored any more. limbaugh's death means those 600 stations are probably not able to get the same ad revenue. as soon as the ad industry saw a trend and exodus it would have to do something to start breaking up the monopoly

IMO buying stations is not the answer, and with Democrats like Manchin a new Fairness Doctrine would be a waste of time to try now.