Posted on 11/14/2004 5:12:40 PM PST by wagglebee
Without the information revolution spawned by talk radio and the role it played in this year's election, John Kerry would likely be taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2005.
That's the assertion from longtime broadcast veteran Mike Siegel, whose new book "Power Talk!" chronicles his own exploits behind the microphone as perhaps the most pro-active radio host in America.
"The Swiftboat veterans would have never gotten the time of day without talk radio," Siegel told NewsMax, citing accounts by the Vietnam vets who served with Kerry as the turning point of the presidential campaign.
While elite media venues like the New York Times considered the warnings from Kerry's Vietnam peers to be a "non-story," Siegel recalled interviewing Swiftvet leader John O'Neill on multiple occasions. "Talk radio was the force that gave him the kind of exposure that put the story on the national radar screen."
The same thing happened with the Dan Rather forged document scandal, said Siegel - a story that broke hard against John Kerry just weeks before the election. "If you went back 15 or 20 years, what Dan Rather did would have never been exposed. On talk radio, we covered that like a blanket."
The longtime radio host said there's no question that the partisanship of the big media backfired this year, as the press revealed it liberal bias time and again.
The exposure of controversial memo from ABC News, where political director Mark Halperin urged reporters to go easier on Kerry than Bush, was another "gigantic" factor in the campaign, said Siegel. "We focused on that memo because I felt it was the smoking gun that demonstrated the lack of objectivity by the mainstream media."
Beyond the specifics of the campaign, Siegel credits talk radio with laying the groundwork for the information revolution that has changed the way Americans get their news.
"I'm convinced that talk radio spawned the Fox News Channel and the Internet," the Seattle based talker said. "It was the populist vehicle that proved to be successful in delivering the information the mainstream media didn't want to report."
More than most in his industry, the KTTH host knows how the dynamism of talk radio can impact the political process.
Unlike most commentators, he's an activist host who doesn't mind personally crusading for a cause if he thinks he can marshal public opinion.
In "Power Talk" Siegel details the national talk radio campaign he coordinated in 1988 against a proposed 51 percent congressional salary increase. The episode was perhaps the earliest demonstration of how the power of the radio medium could impact national policy.
Borrowing from a page from the Boston Tea Party, Siegel set out to have talk radio listeners from around the country send 1 million tea bags to Washington, D.C.
The crusade resulted a call for Siegel to testify before Congress, an experience he describes as "humbling." A glowering Sen. John Glenn, for instance, inadvertently paid tribute to the effectiveness of his efforts, telling Siegel at the beginning of his interrogation - "So you're the guy who sent me a lifetime supply of teabags."
In the end the power of talk radio triumphed, forcing Congress to take a public vote on their own pay raise. The measure lost by an overwhelming margin.
Hosting shows across the country in markets like Boston, New York, Miami and St. Louis, Siegel has been in the thick of one political crisis after another, wielding the power of his microphone in ways that had a direct impact in the outcome of events.
"Power Talk!" details the prolific talker's on-air exploits in the midst of the Boston busing controversy of the 1970s, Washington State's Wenatchee child abuse scandal two decades later and Seattle's WTO riots in 1999.
In one particularly dramatic episode: Siegel details how he snagged an interview with Ayatollah Khomeni's spokesman while the mad mullah held 52 Americans hostage - one of the first episodes of Islamic terror directed against America.
As "Power Talk!" amply demonstrates, talk radio has help remake America's political landscape into a truly participatory democracy, with Mike Siegel as one of its most effective practitioners.
Actually, without Buckhead, they wouldn't have had anything. Talk radio has done a lot, but this guy needs to give the Rathergate credit to the man who really deserves it.
MSM, we are watching you!!
bttt
yep ..... their times has come and gone
We really owe a lot to Sean Hannity. He was the first, to my knowledge, to give them wide national exposure and interest.
Sean can be redundant, and occasionally annoying in doing so, but he hammered away at things when others tried to change the subject.
I think the internet served an equally important role in the outcome of this election. Maybe moreso.
Watching it die, which I wish it would hurry up and do.
Sean is a Rush parrot. And his grammar is horrible. "Alan, me and my wife was going to see..." I grind my teeth when I listen to him. Aside from that, I will say that he has taken on some pretty controversial guests on his radio and tv show. For that, I respect him. Too bad he never metriculated from 4th grade English class. IMOHO - Tinfoil and Nomex on.
The "tribal drum".
For what it's worth, I think the reason the 'Rats forced a Friday night debate was to counter the effects of talk radio, they new their pundits could control the weekend TV news shows and Rush, Sean, etc. wouldn't be able to do anything until Monday.
Americans hate cheaters. And it was evident that the MSM was cheating for JF'nK.
When criticizing the education of your betters, please consult a dictionary.
I'd love to know how many voters Hannity persuaded to go to the polls election night. I was driving across NY to PA hoping and praying the midwest and west would keep voting, even if the exit polls didn't look good. Sean deserves to be in the broadcasting hall of fame for his broadcast that day.
And using the spellchecker never hurts, either. ''Metriculate'', forsooth!
F'nKerry grossly under-estimated the speed of light.
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