On the January 11 broadcast of San Franciscio radio station KSFO's Morning Show, co-host Melanie Morgan lashed out over the controversy surrounding Spocko, a Bay Area-based blogger who last year attempted to spotlight the racist and violent rhetoric common to Morgan and other KSFO hosts. Spocko highlighted examples of the hosts' inflammatory remarks on his weblog and in letters to various KSFO advertisers. But as numerous blogs have noted and as Media Matters for America documented, after several major sponsors reportedly pulled their ads from the station, ABC, Inc., which owns KSFO, apparently issued a cease-and-desist letter in December that ultimately led Spocko's Internet hosting service to shut down his blog. Morgan confirmed that "a couple of folks (advertisers) ... have cancelled on us, but we've had other new advertisers coming online."
After Media Matters and others called attention to this story on January 9, both the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco CBS affiliate KPIX have reported on it and stated that Bank of America and MasterCard have pulled their advertising from KSFO. "We have been under attack here at KSFO radio," Morgan stated on January 11, in response to the increased coverage of the controversy. "It is something that has been quite disturbing to us at a number of levels but we are prepared to fight back against people who are trying to get us fired here at KSFO radio and who are trying to deprive us of a livelihood and who are trying to deprive us of our free speech rights." Declining to offer any specifics, she claimed Spocko had highlighted "these audio clips which are out of context, old, or in some cases just outright lies."
Morgan went on to assert that Spocko "has been joined by some very dangerous and frightening fringe-left groups in this country" and specifically singled out Media Matters. "This is all going through Media Matters," she said.
Morgan further announced that KSFO would be pre-empting its regularly scheduled programming on January 12 to air a live special intended to "hit back against those people who are trying to silence us and take away our free speech rights, get us fired, thrown off the air, because they don't like what we have to say." She explained that she and the other KSFO hosts targeted by Spocko -- Brian Sussman and Morgan's Morning Show co-hosts, Lee Rodgers and Officer Vic -- would host the special program, which she said would last "three hours or however long it takes to answer all the questions." Morgan invited "the public as well as the media as well as bloggers to participate in this."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200701120003
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