When does free speech cross the line into hate speech?
Posing that question to a pair of talk-show hosts, Abbie Wolf, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League, launched an ADL-sponsored community education forum held Tuesday of last week at San Francisco’s Golden Gate University.
“There’s an on-off switch on the radio,” replied Ronn Owens of KGO radio “News Talk.” “I assume most people have the good judgment to decide what is best.”
Geoff Metcalf of KSFO radio agreed. “There are blessings and curses of the First Amendment,” he said. “On occasion we’ll have to hear things that are inappropriate, rude, crude and stupid.”
About 40 people attended the forum, titled “Talk Radio in the ’90s: Hot Talk versus Hate Talk, Ratings versus Responsibility.” Joining Wolf, Belva Davis — who hosts a KQED radio show and a KRON television program — fielded questions to Owens and Metcalf on their profession, their politics and their thoughts on right-wing hate speech.
Both Metcalf and Owens agreed that while talk-show hosts may be more influential than most politicians, their primary responsibility is to entertain.
In the process of entertaining, Metcalf and Owens have encountered a fair share of controversy with famous — and sometimes infamous — guests. As host of a conservative talk show, Metcalf has invited guests ranging from members of the state Assembly to anti-Semitic propagandist Eustace Mullins, author of “The Biological Jew.”
Owens, whose views tend to be more moderate, has also hosted prominent and sometimes controversial figures, including former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, whose views on sexual issues antagonized the Christian right.
But some radio hosts clearly go beyond informing and entertaining. Since Father Charles Coughlin vilified Jews over the airwaves in the 1930s, political extremists have found radio a favorable medium to broadcast hate messages. Now, 10 years after white supremacists killed Alan Berg, a Jewish radio host in Denver, right-wing extremists enjoy widespread media coverage through talk radio — sometimes dubbed “shock radio.”
The ADL discussion, however, skirted the issues of hate talk and anti-Semitism until the question-and-answer period, when a woman in the audience asked Owens what he would do if he was handling a program like one that aired in Los Angeles called “What Do You Hate About Jews?”
Owens said he would turn off the program.
The questioner also pointed out that right-wing extremists use television and radio appearances to inject their views into the mainstream media. Owens maintained that most inflammatory radio hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, have simply perfected their style of entertainment.
“He’s found a niche, he’s carved it, he’s polished it,” he said.
But issues of extremists taking over the airwaves may be a moot point. Both talk show hosts forecast increasing corporate domination, which may lead to a different variety of control.
“In 10 years, everything will be owned by two companies — Microsoft and Disney. Small radio stations will be anachronisms,” Metcalf said.
For the moment, though, talk radio might serve a nobler political purpose even as it entertains a mass audience. “On the radio, people listen to their neighbors. In today’s society, you don’t often get people listening to their neighbors,” Owens said.