A cautionary tale of a small, obscure blog, a media behemoth and *cough* “containing the story”.

I broke a thermometer once, when I was a kid, and was absolutely fascinated by the resultant mercury “spill”. Unaware of the dangers associated with the substance, I’d put my finger out to touch one of the globs and have it either skitter away or break up into many smaller globs. The more I pushed at them, the more little silver nubs there were spreading all over the table, creating entire colonies. Who knows how far it could have gone had not my mother walked into the room and swiftly wiped out my little world.

Bloggers, while just as likely to multiply when you attempt to stomp on one, are a little tougher to wipe out, though, as ABC/Disney will no doubt soon discover.

Here is the story, so far, as I understand it.

Spoko, a proud Z-list blogger (meaning few had ever heard of him outside of his friends, small circle of readers and other bloggers) toiled away in relative obscurity on his site, Spoko’s Brain, chronicling the venomous eliminationist rhetoric and hate speech coming from the San Francisco(?!) radio station with the call letters KSFO. Here is how Spoko describes it (posted at Online Blogintegrity, which is making sure that Spoko’s voice can still be heard – via Bouphonia):

From I am Spoko

KSFO is a Disney affiliate whose radio hosts broadcast violent rhetoric directed toward journalists, liberals, Democrats, Arabs and Muslims all over the SF Bay Area and to the world via the Internet.

And it’s here, apparently, where he ran afoul of the Mouse:

I commented about the content of these host’s broadcasts on my blog and informed KSFO’s advertisers about what they were supporting by letting them listen to the exact audio quotes from the hosts.

This was the result:

Two days before Christmas I got a Cease and Desist letter from ABC regarding my use of audio clips from KSFO radio hosts Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers on my blog, Spocko’s Brain (see attached PDF).

Why the C&L Letter Now?

In mid-December I got confirmation that a major national advertiser, VISA, pulled their ads from the Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers show, based on listening to audio clips I provided them. I also think that FedEx, AT&T and Kaiser are considering pulling their ads. Visa isn’t the first advertiser who has left KSFO, multiple advertisers have left the station, especially from the Brian Sussman show. In July of this year when KSFO lost MasterCard as an advertiser someone from KSFO “outed” me on a counter-blog (which I won’t link to). This same person has also threatened me with local and federal criminal action for using the audio (which I clearly used under the fair use portion of copyright law). And because they have suggested violence toward me (in addition to talking about suing me “for everything I have”) I have chosen to remain anonymous.

As Thers has said, 95 percent of blog fights don’t mean anything, but I think this one does since KSFO is using the full weight and force of an ABC/Disney lawyer and copyright law against a private citizen blogger. I dared to use the audio content in question for nonprofit educational purposes (I don’t even have ads on my blog!), and thus under the protection of the Fair Use Doctrine set forth in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C.§107.

While most of the material used at Human Beams Magazine that is not produced by our own columnists, or submitted by writers, is used under the creative commons license, on some rare occasions we have reposted parts of articles or other material under the Fair Use Doctrine, as is the case with many other web publications, especially blogs.  Spoko has not, from what I gather, recorded and reposted full radio programs on his media criticism blog, but small snippets of the relevant hate speech - fully credited to their sources, that being the point - for advertisers (and others) to reference when making their decisions about listening to or advertising on the programs.  In my totally not a lawyer way, I am having trouble seeing how this violates the Fair Use Doctrine as opposed to possibly just impacting the profit margin.

This is a rather important situation, not only because of the hate speech (which is good to highlight in and of itself) but because what it means for the rest of us, bloggers and other online publishers.

Spoko again:

It’s about Money not Ideology

Talk Radio is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is also a regulated industry because the public gave the broadcast airwaves to radio stations. There are rules. First there are FCC rules with fines of $315,000 for obscene and indecent speech, thanks to the Christian Right. Interestingly, the radio union, (which KSFO hosts hate so much) worked very hard to stop those fines from being directed to individual radio hosts. So the corporation will bear the burden of any fines. Next, there are guidelines at the local station level, the network level and the parent company level. So even if the inciting of violence and hate speech is ignored by the FCC, the continued violent rhetoric has been, and continues to be, approved at the station level (KSFO) the group level (KGO-KSFO) the company level (ABC Radio) and the parent company level (Disney). They are ALL aware of this speech, and because they have not acted in a meaningful way, they all are giving approval for it to continue.

No Management Action

When Keith Olbermann and Media Matters ran Melanie Morgan’s comments about “putting the bull’s-eye on” Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, management did nothing. Morgan did a jokey non-apology where she never even mentioned she used the term bull’s-eye.
I’ m guessing Lee Rogers may have gotten a memo telling him to stop talking about burning people alive, torturing them and blowing their brains out, because on November 30th, he defiantly said to management and advertisers, “Nobody is gonna tell me what to talk about or not talk about or in what fashion on this radio program. It ain’t gonna happen!”

ABC/Disney acted only when they lost revenue. Then they went after ME with a cease and desist letter.

Why me? I’m not the one saying journalists should be hanged, thieves should be tortured and killed, people should be burned alive, stomped to death or have their testicles cut off. I’m not the one saying that millions of Muslims should be killed on the presumption that they are extremists or just because they live in Indonesia . I’m not the one who says that lying is as natural as breathing to Egyptians and Arabs or demanding that a caller “Say Allah is a Whore” to prove he is not an Islamist. I’m simply documenting this speech and providing it to the people who are paying KSFO hosts on commercially supported broadcast radio.

They have Lawyers, Guns and Money. I’ve got a 5th tier blog and no money

Because I and some other listeners hit right-wing talk radio in the pocket book, they are acting like wounded animals and brought out the big guns, Corporate Lawyers. Am I scared? Hell yes. They can easily squish me like a bug and tie me up in legal battles for the rest of my natural life (and Vulcans live a long time), not to mention that unlike KSFO radio hosts, I’m not getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and generating millions of revenue for a multibillion-dollar parent company. If I pursue this further I expect the next step is a “CyberSLAPP” suit.

I don’t want to consider the possibility of Morgan’s good friend Michelle Malkin deciding to publish my address and real name so that her minions can send me death threats or “white powder” in the mail. Chad Castagana, was charged with mailing more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder to liberals. He got the idea from someone that journalists, liberals and democrats were the enemy and deserved to die.

Brian Sussman proudly poses with his handgun in KSFO publicity shots and says that he thinks that everyone should have the right to have a machine gun. Maybe I’m over reacting, why would they attack me? I’m not famous, I’m not an elected official, I tried very hard to be accurate about what THEY said BY USING THEIR OWN WORDS.

I tried to help companies protect their brands from being tainted with the violent rhetoric and anti-any-religion-but-right-wing-christianism speech. I wanted to help the VPs of marketing avoid being associated with Lee Roger’s “testicle talk” or Sussman talking about cutting off a finger and a penis of an Iraqi in his imaginary torture sessions.

It’s about Brands: All the Blessings, None of the Taint

I have found out that KSFO is sold to advertisers as “a Disney affiliate” with all the associated family-friendly connotations. So KSFO is getting all the benefit of the Disney name as well as the massive infrastructure of ad sales at the national level. Clearly ABC Radio doesn’t want KSFO hosts’ horrific comments to actually reach advertisers. Advertisers are kept in the dark so KSFO can benefit from the Disney brand glow (ABC Radio News creditability glow?).

Advertisers should be able to decide if they want to keep supporting this show based on complete information. We already know that management at ABC and Disney support these hosts, which means that the ABC/Disney Radio brand now apparently includes support for violent hate speech toward Muslims, democrats and liberals.

But instead of directing the hosts to refrain from violent rhetoric and hate speech, they go after the weakest person with the fewest resources. It’s cheaper and easier.

Bottom line: ABC/Disney is supporting and profiting from this violent speech, they should at least also accept any negative connotations or financial impact it might have to their image.

There is more there, including actions you can take, sample letters to advertisers, and other advice.

If you’d like to listen to some of the hate rhetoric that Spoko has documented - (what? You, like ABC/Disney, thought that stepping on one blog (blob) would stop the spill?) – you can find links to the various snippets here, and here. If I come across more (or get some time to put up some here… I am doing major catching up from holidays and illness, though) I will add to this post.

In the meantime, if you want a laugh and to see how not to contain a story, do a Technorati or Google blogsearch on KFSO and Spoko, or just Spoko, as well as a regular news search. Obscure and unnoticed but by a few no more, is he… nor is the venomous rhetoric that is being spewed over our airways.

Let, some might say, a thousand stories bloom.