Posted on 04/19/2007 12:02:57 AM PDT by panther33
How the media got Don Imus canned
An advocacy group spun the shock jock's previously ignored comments into a media darling.
By: Joshua Sharp
If we've learned anything from the Don Imus affair, it's that the media can get anybody fired.
The "shock jock" was chatting with his executive producer Bernard McGuirk on his radio show when they started to analyze the two teams in the NCAA women's basketball championship game.
Most have heard what he said - so it's not worth repeating.
Immediately following the show, there was no massive protest. Listeners didn't storm the studio, and most of America wasn't even listening to his show.
The controversy only began when the liberal group Media Matters for America, which listens in on hundreds of radio and television shows trying to find something offensive, posted the Imus video online and e-mailed journalists and activists, trying to conjure up a storm.
That was April 4.
Eager for a controversy, more media outlets began gradually to pick up the story.
On April 6, Imus apologized "for an insensitive and ill-conceived remark." And yet the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons never had any intention of accepting that apology - the situation was too easy to exploit. And the media kept pounding the story.
It wasn't until April 9, five days after the comments were made did MSNBC and CBS Radio decided the comments warranted a two-week suspension.
The media kept pushing the story; it was great for ratings. They made it a controversy, they called it a scandal.
Then advertisers started pulling out, fearful of the bad press. That was April 10.
Finally, on April 11, MSNBC canceled Imus' simulcast. But more than a week after his comments, "Imus in the Morning" was still being carried by CBS.
On April 12, CBS canceled the show, effectively ending Imus' career in traditional media.
Why did it take so long?
If what he said were as awful as people now say, wouldn't he have been fired within 24 hours?
Instead, it took eight days of growing media attention - an eternity in today's news cycle.
Imus was fired because Media Matters for America and the mainstream media framed his comments as a front-page controversy. Few people cared, at least at first, because Imus' coarse sense of humor has always been a staple of the program.
Nothing about these comments stood out - until the media got involved.
They used his language to get their audience interested. They framed it as a scandal to help their ratings.
And they repeated his comments to their unsuspecting audience, thereby forcing an excerpt of his show on people who had no interest in hearing what Don Imus had to say.
His traditional audience is, for the most part, immune to offensive statements - he's called a "shock jock" for a reason. What he says is likely to offend some people; sensitive audience members need not apply.
But the media forced the entire nation to listen to him.
We could have gone without hearing what he had to say. When stories like this dominate the news, tension between races is unnecessarily heightened. Some might say the media needed to expose Imus as a racist, sexist jerk, but all they really did was give his vulgar comments a bigger microphone.
I had never heard of Imus before this incident. His television show was broadcast on MSNBC, which barely generates a Nielsen rating. According to the latest Arbitron ratings, Imus' radio show isn't heard by 99 percent of the country, even on a good day.
What's disappointing isn't Imus' comment - he's a dirty old man who doesn't deserve our attention - rather the way the media and a fringe hypersensitive culture made it into a controversy.
For the advertisers who pulled out, and to CBS and MSNBC, questions remain: Why weren't Imus' comments deserving of termination on April 4 or 5? Why did you only cut ties with him a week later, when the public pressure was too much to ignore?
It's all about the money.
We should have just ignored this aging radio host's trashy comments and stopped listening to him, but instead the media repeated his words and brought painful publicity to both him and the Rutgers women's basketball team.
It wasn't necessary.
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Joshua Sharp is a communication sophomore from Corcoran, Calif.
© Copyright 2007 Daily Trojan
It was very interesting to see so many in the media turn on Imus so quickly. I kept waiting for someone to go back into the MSNBC archives and dig up all the thousands of near-similar insults he had hurled at various people, but it never happened. His admittedly stupid remarks about the Rutgers women were never put into the context of his show. And it was just plain scary to see him fired for three stupid words despite his three-decade career that included raising more than $40 million for children's charities.
The NBC News president who fired Imus is still on our TV screens today. Now he's showing us all those pictures that the Virginia Tech murderer mailed to NBC. On MSNBC, it's been 24-hour coverage of the shooter's "manifesto." Apparently, NBC isn't worried about the number of people who are offended by that. The Virginia Tech murderer who mentions the Columbine killers in his writings will now undoubtedly inspire more school shootings because the idiots who run NBC value ratings more than they care about copycat mass murderers.
The Virginia Tech killer gets all of his ramblings aired after he shoots dozens of people, but those same ramblings would not be aired at all if he hadn't killed anyone. NBC's lesson of the day for psychos is... If you wanna be famous, go on a rampage. If you want people to finally pay attention to you, go on a killing spree.
While a very charitable and relatively harmless shock jock named Don Imus sits on the sidelines because of a slip of the tongue, NBC hands over editorial control of its networks to an insane mass murderer. Sad and surreal to see, but ridiculous events like these are becoming the norm in a country gone wrong for too long.
The sneaky little Stalinists, it's what they do.
All the Rat’s are up in arms over a off handed remark. Yet!...
Hillary Delegates Spit on Police Honor Guard
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a392439591af3.htm
Honor guard harassed at Arena (repost: Dems spit on police)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/536477/posts
Democratic Delegates Boo The Boy Scouts of America - - Same Group Spit On Cops’ Color Guard in NY
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a399d010a5083.htm
“Eager for a controversy...”
That sums it up. If the media can’t report that WWIII is happening, then they’ll try to figure out a way to get it started.
Buncha bloodsuckers.
This guy did his own press kit between the two murders. Thats unusual to say the least, but it got him his 15 minutes of world wide fame that so many sick minds crave.
NBC acted completely irresponsibly in this situation and just as Joshua is saying in this article, its all about pandering to the lowest urges of folks to get a few more eyeballs looking at NBC for just a few more moments. In this, NBC and our sick killer share the same values, do what ever to get some attention for just a few moments irregardless of the consequences. For the killer, the consequence was his own death. For NBC, its not as bad, the consequence of making this guy a anti-hero is that perhaps they will spawn many more of these dramatic events to get folks to watch for just a few more moments. NBC is far sicker.
Good article. And it was actually printed at USC? There IS hope yet.
I don’t understand why Imus didn’t own his own show and just loose his syndication (to be picked up later by interested stations).
Given that I didn’t actually see the program and the media has a way of ‘editing’ to suit themselves......
It seems that it was more than idle chatter. The comments were set up with video of the two girls’ basketball teams playing their last game. If that is true and the media didn’t put that film into their story, then Imus and his sidekick premeditated their comments and had more than enough time to decide it wasn’t appropriate.
But then, I never could find anything appropriate on the Imus show, or anything else on MSNBC for that matter.
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