premature congratulations

Premature congratulations

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial was less than desired but

more than expected. Rather than try to rationalize McGee's statements,

the editors praised WNOV's owner Jerrel Jones for suspending Michael

McGee Sr.'s radio program "indefinitely." But what is indefinitely?

Tuesday? Wednesday?

Will the son fill in for the father as he did on Friday? Can we expect

a younger, more audible and somewhat intelligible version of the same

hateful speech?

Jones has made it clear that the final decision has not been made. The

editors missed an opportunity to encourage Jones to sever his

relationship with the McGee family permanently.

But that would have required a spine.

Meanwhile, the TV/Radio columnist Tim Cuprisin echoes the sentiments

of the editors, and then adds Jones' decision to suspend McGee Sr was

a "moral" choice rather than an economic choice.

But Jones didn't have to take action. Unlike big corporate media,

it's easier for independent stations like WNOV to get through these

kinds of messes. They're not subject to the same kinds of pressure

as, say, Clear Channel Communications, when it suspended Mark

Belling a few years back after his slur on Mexican immigrants.

Clear Channel had just flipped a bunch of its stations to a Spanish

language format, and thus found itself faced with a protest by the

very group it was trying to reach.

Likewise, NBC and CBS had to bow to big advertisers who didn't want

to be associated with the derogatory comments Don Imus made about

the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Jerrel Jones has a freedom that corporate broadcasting doesn't. The

decision that he made was less of a business decision than a moral

one.

Give me a break. We'll never know what finally made Jones make the

move he did, or what will motivate his final decision, but Cuprisin

has no business pretending he knows Jones did it out of some sense of

morality.

Let's look at the track record. McGee has certainly provided plenty of

excuses before to yank him off the air, yet Jones has never before

demonstrated the sense of morality Cuprisin is seeing now.

What Cuprisin should be noting is that Jones faces a possible

defamation lawsuit, a series of new complaints to the FCC, and yes, a

possible threat to Jones' advertising base.

And unlike what Cuprisin asserts, Jones' operations are far more

vulnerable to local advertising pressure than a big corporation with

extensive national pressure. It's just silly to assert otherwise, and

makes me wonder how Cuprisin has the job he holds if he doesn't even

understand basic economics.

That being said, one wonders if anyone at the Milwaukee Journal