[Peace-discuss] HOW TO LOSE YOUR JOB IN CLEAR CHANNEL TALK RADIO (fwd)

[Danielle Chynoweth]

===========================
http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article3.html


 The American Conservative  February 2, 2004 
	By Charles Goyette
   *Charles Goyette was named "Best Talk Show Host of 2003" by the Phoenix
  New Times.


Clear Channel gags an antiwar conservative.


"Imagine these startling headlines with the nation at war in the Pacific
six months after Dec. 7, 1941: "No Signs of Japanese Involvement in Pearl
Harbor Attack! Faulty Intelligence Cited; Wolfowitz: Mistakes Were Made."

Or how about an equally disconcerting World War II headline from the
European theater: "German Army Not Found in France, Poland, Admits
President; Rumsfeld: ÔOops!', Powell Silent; ÔBring 'Em On,' Says Defiant
FDR."

It seems to me that when there is reason to go to war, it should be
self-evident. The Secretary of State should not need to convince a
skeptical world with satellite photos of a couple of Toyota pickups and a
dumpster. And faced with a legitimate casus belli, it should not be hard
to muster an actual constitutional declaration of war. Now in the absence
of a meaningful Iraqi role in the 9/11 attack and the mysterious
disappearance of those fearsome Weapons of Mass Destruction, there might
be some psychic satisfaction to be had in saying, "I told you so!" But it
sure isn't doing my career as a talk-show host any good.

The criterion of self-evidence was only one of dozens of objections I
raised before the elective war in Iraq on my afternoon drive-time talk
show on KFYI in Phoenix. Many of the other arguments are familiar to
readers of The American Conservative.

But the case for war was a shape-shifter, skillfully morphing into a new
rationale as quickly as the old one failed to withstand scrutiny. For a
year before the war, I scrambled to keep up with the latest incarnations
of the neocon case. Most were pitifully transparent and readily exposed.
(Besides the aluminum tubes and the trailers that had Bush saying,
"Gotcha," does anyone remember those death-dealing drones? Never have
third-world, wind-up, rubber-band, balsa-wood airplanes instilled so much
fear in so many people.) Still, my management didn't like my being out of
step with the president's parade of national hysteria, and the war-fevered
spectators didn't care to be told they were suffering illusions. So after
three years, I was replaced on my primetime talk show by the Frick and
Frack of Bushophiles, two giggling guys who think everything our
tongue-tied president does is "Most excellent, dude!" I have been
relegated to the later 7Ð10 p.m. slot, when most people, even in a
congested commuting market like Phoenix, are already home watching TV.

Why did this happen? Why only a couple of months after my company picked
up the option on my contract for another year in the fifth-largest city in
the United States, did it suddenly decide to relegate me to radio Outer
Darkness? The answer lies hidden in the oil-and-water incompatibility of
these two seemingly disconnected phrases: "Criticizing Bush" and "Clear
Channel." Criticizing Bush? Well then, must I be some sort of rug-chewing
liberal? Not even close. As a boy, I stood on the grass in a small Arizona
town square when Barry Goldwater officially began his 1964 presidential
run. And I was there for the last official event of the Goldwater
campaign. My job was to recruit and manage my fellow junior-high and
high-school conservatives in a phone bank operation, calling supporters to
fill up as many buses as possible to help pack the stadium -- a show of
strength for the nation's television viewers. Of course that's an
insignificant role to play in a presidential campaign, but it was pretty
heady stuff for a 14-year-old kid from Flagstaff.

I broke with Goldwater in 1976 over his decision to back Gerald Ford
instead of Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination. Ford
was a perfectly decent, if ordinary, Republican (who could have taught the
big-spending W. Bush a thing or two about the use of the veto!). But I
took my conservatism seriously. Reagan was clearly the champion of the
conservative cause.

Perhaps I'm just anti-military? No. I am proud of my honorable service and
of the Army Commendation Medal I was awarded. I also spent a good deal of
time in the 1980s as a member of the Speakers Bureau of High Frontier,
promoting Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a defense policy unlike
today's in that it was actually designed to defend the American people.

I have been a Republican precinct committeeman; my county Republican Party
elected me its "Man of the Year" in 1988; I have written speeches for
conservative candidates and office holders; and I have been employed by
statewide and national political organizations and campaigns, including
the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Despite my
disappointment in Goldwater for not supporting Reagan, I was there when a
small band of the faithful -- no more than four or five of us -- gathered
for a potluck dinner to support the creation of a brand-new public-policy
think tank named after "Mr. Conservative." The enterprise blossomed, and I
was honored several months ago to serve as Master of Ceremonies for the
Goldwater Institute's 15th Anniversary Gala.

I can assure you then that my criticism of Bush has been on the basis of
long-held conservative principles. It begins with respect for the wisdom
of the Founders and the Constitution's division of power and delegation of
authority, and extends to an adherence to the principles of governmental
restraint and fiscal prudence. It proved to be a message that was more
than a little inconvenient for my employer.

Clear Channel Communications, the 800-pound gorilla of the radio business,
owns an astonishing 1,200 stations in 50 states, including Newstalk 550
KFYI in Phoenix, where I do the afternoon program É or did until last
summer. The principals of Clear Channel, a Texas-based company, have been
substantial contributors to George W. Bush's fortunes since before he
became president. In fact, Texas billionaire Tom Hicks can be said to be
the man who made Bush a millionaire when he purchased the future
president's baseball team, the Texas Rangers. Tom Hicks is now vice
chairman of Clear Channel. Clear Channel stations were unusually visible
during the war with what corporate flacks now call "pro-troop rallies." In
tone and substance, they were virtually indistinguishable from pro-Bush
rallies. I'm sure the administration, which faced a host of regulatory
issues affecting Clear Channel, was not displeased.

Criticism of Bush and his ever-shifting pretext for a first-strike war
(what exactly was it we were pre-empting anyway?) has proved so serious a
violation of Clear Channel's cultural taboo that only a good contract has
kept me from being fired outright. Roxanne Cordonier, a radio personality
at Clear Channel's WMYI 102.5 in Greenville, S.C., didn't have it as good.
Cordonier, who worked under the name Roxanne Walker, was the South
Carolina Broadcasters Association's 2002 Radio Personality of the Year.
That apparently wasn't enough for Clear Channel. Her lawsuit against the
company alleges that she was belittled on the air and reprimanded by her
station for opposing the invasion of Iraq. Then she was fired.

They couldn't really fire me, at least without paying me a substantial sum
of money, but I was certainly belittled on the air for opposing the war.
The other KFYI talk-show hosts -- so bloodthirsty that they made Bush
apologists and superhawks Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sound moderate --
vilified me almost daily. As a former radio-station owner myself, it was a
little hard to believe management would allow one of their key hosts to be
trashed day in and day out on their own airwaves. After all, we sell radio
time on the basis of its ability to influence people's behavior. A wiser
programming approach would have been to showcase me as an object of
curiosity, with a challenge to listeners to see if they could discover
where I had gone wrong or how I was missing the imminent threat Iraq posed
to the American people. No doubt the constant vilification I received and
my heterodoxy on the war cost me audience during the interlude. It was
certainly enough to get pictures of me morphing into those of the French
president posted on the Free Republic Web site during the "freedom fries"
silliness. A banner there read, "Boycott Charles Chirac Goyette at KFYI
radio Phoenix, AZ! Protest against the Charles Goyette Show from 4-7pm at
KFYI for his leftist subervsive [sic] Bush-bashing rants. Turn off KFYI
radio for the Charles Goyette Show! No liberal scum talk shows on KFYI!"
Radio does provoke people, doesn't it?

One Clear Channel executive had me take an unexpected day off for the sin
of reporting the breaking news on March 27, 2003, that neocon hawk Richard
Perle, of the Defense Policy Board, had relinquished his chairmanship
under scrutiny of his business dealings and for blaspheming that Donald
Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense since Robert McNamara. So
great were these transgressions that the radio gods themselves must have
been aghast at my impiety. I explained in conference-room confrontations
that both positions were completely respectable points of view. The
comparison with McNamara had been made repeatedly in subsequent days in
the mainstream media. I specifically cited "The McLaughlin Group" the
following Friday and the New York Times the following Monday, and in
describing the Perle resignation, I relied upon details from both Seymour
Hersh in the New Yorker and from syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington.
"Well, then," they explained, the problem was "the emotionalism" of my
remarks. Imagine that, emotionalism in talk radio? I reminded them that
for years we had run promotions identifying KFYI as "the Place with More
Passion," where the Charles Goyette Show was positioned as "Fearless Talk
Radio!"

Clear Channel made it clear -- "With you, I feel like I'm managing the
Dixie Chicks," said my program director -- that they would have liked to
fire me anyway. While a well-drafted contract made that difficult, it did
not prevent them from tucking me away outside prime time.

So I'm a talk-show war casualty. My contract expires in a few more months
and -- my iconoclasm being noted -- it is not likely it will be renewed.
Among the survivors at my station: one host who wanted to nuke Afghanistan
(he bills himself as "your voice of reason and moderation") and another
who upon learning that 23-year-old Mideast peace activist Rachel Corrie
had been run over by an Israeli bulldozer shouted, "Back up and run over
her again!" As he doesn't quite get some of the important distinctions in
these debates, such as that Iranians should not be called Arabs, we would
hope that he's not taken too seriously. Likewise my replacements in the
afternoon drive slot, brought in for glamorizing the war and billed as
"The Comedy Channel meets Talk Radio." If you remember the "Saturday Night
Live" skit "Superfans" with Mike Myers and Chris Farley -- "Who's
stronger, God or da Bulls?" "Da Bulls!" -- then you get the idea. Only
instead of "da Bulls," it's three hours every afternoon of "da Bush!"
Expect to hear more insightful topics like "So Who's Tougher: Michael
Jordan or Donald Rumsfeld?"

I've seen how war fever infects a people. And I was in a no-win situation,
with an audience pre-screened by virtue of 11 hours a day of screaming war
frenzy -- unlistenable for the uninfected -- that surrounded my time slot.
So I knew there would be a personal price for opposing the war, and I was
prepared to pay it. But as a lover of the rough and tumble of public
debate and the contest of ideas, I am disappointed at what is happening in
my industry. At least at Clear Channel, there's only one word for the
belief that talk radio is still a fair and fearless search for the truth:
"Un-Bull-ieveable! 


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