Radio's top 10
Pittsburgh:Check out Adrian McCoy's top 10 radio events (locally and nationally) of 2007 in the Post-Gazette. What more can I say?
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Readers’ Forum
“In another on-air ideological battle, syndicated Michael Savage (who’s heard here on talk station WPGB-FM), lost several sponsors after delivering an anti-Islamic tirade on this show. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization whose mission is to correct misrepresentations about Islam, posted audio on its Web site of Savage’s rant, and called for an advertiser boycott. Savage in turn sued CAIR for using the clips and taking his remarks out of context.
The controversy over Savage launched the formation of a new watchdog group — The Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith Coalition, which was formed to challenge hate speech on the radio.”
Adrian McCoy is a lazy journalist. Any hack can take CAIR’s press releases and reprint them.
“But rather than taking CAIR’s boycott lying down, Savage is fighting back, in court. Represented by his lawyer, Daniel A. Horowitz, Savage is suing CAIR primarily for copyright infringement. According to the text of the lawsuit, which is posted at Savage’s Web site, CAIR “misappropriated” his work by posting the four-minute segment in question at its Web site and including it in outreach and fundraising efforts. Taking it a step further, the lawsuit accuses CAIR of misrepresenting itself as a “civil rights organization” and of “advocating a specific political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society.” While the copyright infringement charges against CAIR may or may not pan out, the broader implications could end up holding the most weight.
Savage is certainly not the first to call CAIR’s political motivations into question. CAIR is the leading Islamic lobby group in the nation and the organization is accorded a great deal of legitimacy by the mainstream media, the Bush administration and other politicians, academia, civil rights activists, and even military and federal agencies that have employed the group’s assistance for “sensitivity” and “cultural training.” Nonetheless, questions surrounding CAIR’s philosophical underpinnings, foreign funding, and political goals continue to haunt the group’s footsteps. “
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg..
doug - December 29, 2007 at 6:20 pm