Free Speech
So Howard Stern got kicked off 6 Clear Channel stations. He’s put his tinfoil hat and said that it was because a few weeks before that event, he came out in favor of John Kerry over George Bush. It’s pretty tinfoil.
But there may be something to it. I listen on my drive in (and balance it out by listening to NPR on my drive home), and I heard the segment in question that got him kicked off Clear Channel. Was it offensive? I guess so. Was it indecent? No. But here’s the key point: Was it Stern’s fault? The answer is a clear no.
The offense that got him kicked off Clear Channel was a caller who “dropped the N-bomb” with someone that Stern was interviewing. Stern screens callers much like every other live radio broadcast, but it’s not personally Stern doing this. There’s “dead air Dave” who is able to censor out material. From what I heard, the Howard Stern Show has a delay of 1:30 (one and a half minutes). It’s up to the censor to determine what can and can’t be broadcast and bleep out what shouldn’t be. He didn’t.
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill increasing the indecency fines from $27,500 per offense to $500,000 payable by the offender instead of the company they work for. In this case, Stern would have been liable for the maximum amount of $3 million.
Or would he? Stern never said the word. It was up to the screeners and censor to ensure that indecent works never make it to the listeners. So why should Stern be fined for something that was never under his control in the first place?