Talk Radio Tries for Humor and a Political Advantage

TALK RADIO TRIES HUMOR AND A POLITICAL ADVANTAGE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Jacques Steinberg]
Only a week after Don Imus was fired by MSNBC and CBS Radio for making a racially and sexually charged aside about the women’s basketball team at Rutgers University, his former colleagues across the spectrum of talk radio have wrestled with how far they can go in sounding off (and even mining for a few laughs) on the violence at Virginia Tech. Some of the most prominent hosts — including Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Neal Boortz — have shown little restraint. This, after all, is an incident in which many of the themes that often serve as grist for those hosts and their callers — including immigration (Mr. Cho was Korean), gun control (he appears to have used handguns that were legally bought ) and the aggressive coverage of the national media (NBC initially broadcast the suspect’s multimedia manifesto) — have coalesced. And then, in an effort to link the events of the last two weeks, Rush Limbaugh said, “The only thing that Virginia Tech and the Imus situation have in common is NBC.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20radio.html
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-- See also --
* Networks Limit Use Of Gunman's Video
Faced with an outpouring of anger over the airing of the Virginia Tech gunman's hate-filled video, network executives said yesterday that they are sharply restricting their use of the chilling images.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR200704...
* NBC bashed for airing Virginia Tech killer's rants
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-et-tapes20apr20,1,4187...
* TV leaves us to face the terror
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-notebook20apr20,...
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