The Providence Journal on “unapologetic” John DePetro:
The WPRO personality returned to the air Monday morning, sounding unapologetic and characterizing the criticism against him as an attempt by politicians and unions to stifle free speech.
“It’s very simple,” DePetro said. “Politicians and unions should not interfere and try to silence public opinion. Period. That’s it. … The last time I checked, this is still America.”
The “opinion” of one cynical talk radio epithet-flinger is not public opinion. Public opinion is the opinion of many; of the public; of everyone; it’s not the opinion of one opportunistic shit.
DePetro came under fire in November for his language in criticizing female protesters outside a fundraiser for General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo. The Providence Democrat and gubernatorial candidate has drawn the ire of organized labor for authoring the 2011 state pension overhaul that unions are challenging in court.
Talking about the protesters on his show, DePetro said: “What a disgrace. You are an embarrassment. …You are parasites. You are cockroaches. You lie. You are union hags. There’s another word I’d like to use … it begins with a W. and an H. and an O. and an R. and an E. and an S. See if they can spell that.”
He has a legal right to say that; saying that is not a crime. It does not follow that he has a right to say it on a particular radio station.
Following his comments, a union-backed group called For Our Daughters RI created a petition on Change.org asking that local jewelry maker Alex and Ani pull its advertising from the radio station until DePetro was fired. The company declined, though at last count almost 6,700 people have signed the online petition.
I just signed it. It’s here.
In addition, political leaders from both parties said they would not appear on any WPRO show unless DePetro were removed. Some others, including Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, said they would not appear on DePetro’s show, but would appear on others on the station.
The drive to remove DePetro will continue in earnest, with more advertisers being asked to boycott the station until he is removed, said Maureen Martin, chairwoman of For Our Daughters RI, who is also political activities director of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals.
“We’re rolling it out,” said Martin, “as long as this misogynist is on the air.”
The station “made some sort of business decision, I presume” to keep him, she said, “but I think he’s bad for business, and he’s going to be worse for business.”
Martin said For Our Daughters will also mount a campaign to get political candidates not to advertise on the radio station.
Noting that DePetro’s contract is set to expire in March, “clearly the timing couldn’t be better,” Martin said. “Maybe it gives a time span to work with.”
It’s late April and he’s still there, so that means his contract was renewed. That’s disgusting.
There seems to be a hell of a lot of money in the professional broadcast asshole market. I don’t quite understand why that is. Are people really buying a lot of gold and commemorative coins and “male enhancement” pills from the weird companies that advertise on this crap? (or the ones that did when I used to live in nowheresville, PA and had to switch radio stations every ten minutes because of mountains?)
I’ve found it instructive to go digging into the ownership of these stations. Pulling advertising from one particular station when its local asshole goes viral doesn’t matter to a broad investment network with national airwave presence.
WPRO is owned by Cumulus Media.
Wiki list of stations owned by Cumulus
From Cumulus’s own company page: Source
Then have a look at the names and bios on their Executive and Director page. Starting at the top
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Found one woman on the board:
Read through the entire list. Political positions, equity firms, investment banking, aggressive acquisition, corporate law. Also note that out of 17 executives listed, only one is a woman, every single photo is of a white man, and all of them appear to have classic white-exec sounding names. Some mention hiring each other as friends. Their Careers page says they’re an Equal Opportunity Employer.
This is typical of radio stations these days, because of slack FCC rules allowing a few giant companies to buy up radio markets. It’s also typical of investment fund based business in general, where it doesn’t matter what the business actually *is* as long as it can be consolidated, dominated, and milked for financial instruments.
from Eric Garland’s article Parasite Economy:
In the case of radio, there still appears to be an operative purpose to the industry – providing advertising, particularly political advertising, across huge swathes of the country. Dark-money PAC networks pour money into those ad campaigns, which makes earnings for the radio and TV stations.
Given that board and that situation, I don’t expect receptiveness to any sexual harassment or employment discrimination complaints beyond the lowest levels, if that. Much less allowing their stations to have programming or personalities with anything good to say about liberal or progressive concerns. They do mention hands-on oversight of local stations as a selling point for the company, so it’s not like they don’t *know*. Obviously they have some editorial control.
IMHO, the public outcry needs to be about more than local advertisers. The politicians refusing to appear on the station should pull their parties’ advertising, too, and THEY should put some pressure on the station’s corporate leadership. Outside of investment funds, local politicians are the customer base.
(I put too many links in my previous again… Ophelia, if you would?)
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Also, something Steve Ahlquist said in his article that Ophelia linked yesterday:
There is no meaningful distinction between WPRO news and talk
Again, given the corporate selling point that they exercise hands-on management of local markets, it’s very unlikely that they don’t know this practice is going on, or have opinions about it. There used to be an FCC regulation called the Fairness Doctrine:
The FCC revoked the rule in 1987 and, under Obama in 2009, scrapped it permanently.