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A few ongoing sagas in the world of blog free speech.

The SpockosBrain story lives on and Spocko has had some real success in his campaign to hold San Francisco Radio Station KSFO accountable for the over the line hate speech they fill the airwaves with. Two day ago, USA Today ran a pretty supportive article about the fight ands today in SpockosBrain, he reports that another
sponsor has pulled its advertising. Here is the USA Today piece:

In a dispute between the "new media" of the Internet and the "old media" of broadcasting, liberal bloggers and conservative talk-radio hosts are accusing each other of trampling the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech.

[..]Some advertisers, including Bank of America and MasterCard, have deserted KSFO since an anonymous media critic identifying himself online as Spocko began posting recordings of the station's "Hot Talk" hosts. Spocko and some of his readers have been e-mailing the audio to KSFO advertisers since 2005, asking the companies whether they want to be associated with the controversial rhetoric.

The First Amendment flap was debated Sunday on CNN's Reliable Sources. Dan Riehl, a blogger critical of Spocko, said some of the radio hosts' comments "were blown out of proportion or misrepresented" in the complaints to sponsors. Mike Stark, another blogger and a Spocko ally, said: "The way to fight free speech that you disagree with is to engage in more free speech. And that's exactly what Spocko did."

[..]"Yes, this is a freedom of speech issue, and this individual is entitled to say what he wants to," Morgan told the San Francisco Chronicle. "But he's trying to take away my livelihood, and I'm not trying to take away his."

(EFF attorney Matt) Zimmerman says Spocko's rights are in more peril than the station's. "ABC/Disney tried to use the legal process to silence a critic who was actually amplifying their speech," he says. "Spocko was doing exactly what the First Amendment is designed to do - promote this marketplace of ideas

There was also a piece in last weeks NY Times that shed a little light on the controversy. In the process, KSFO has managed to smear their advertisers who showed concern and pulled ads, Media Matters as a Terrorist Left Wing Organization and anyone else including the thousand of bloggers who have shown their concern and posted about this. If you would like to learn a little more and listen to some of the offending rhetoric from KSFO that started all of this brouhaha, please go check out the
blog integrity blog page. I think there is a tape posted today and they have a library of the offending material available for downloading. P.S. if you visit Spockos page, if you are inclined, he has a paypal icon up and he could use some bucks for his legal battle, but he is too shy to ask you! You know, sometimes, we win one!
There is another episode in this post and it is a littler story and it is unfolding as we speak. It involves a blog that I admire very much in Toledo, Ohio. PoliticsinMudville
is a blog about local Toledo politics, but the author who goes by the tag of Liberal Democrat is a pretty fearless fellow who won't back down from a fight. His blog is an amazing voyage into the many faceted interests and passions he wants to tell us about. Intensely political, bordering on radical, he uses logic, wit and sheer intellect to express his views on national and world politics, religion and science. He recently attracted the ire of the religious right in Toledo and is the victim of non stop right wingnut noise posts which he doesn't erase on principle and tries to deal with in a logical way. The main perpetrator is a being called barb who is a fundamentalist fanatic who rants about gays, quotes the bible, defends our involvement in Iraq, is still convinced that the Clintons are part of a Southern Democrat Mafia involved in shady murders etc. etc....Sure, that's what free speech is all about, but this has become an obsessive vendetta and I'm sure it's taking it's toll in brain cells. I post responses from time to time until I get too mad and my sense of humor starts to wane.
I would tell you to check out Politics in Mudville just because I think, quality wise, it is one of the best small blogs I have ever seen. If you think you are intellectually up to battling barb...be my guest! If you want to see an X-Ray close up of what you are going to deal with, check out barbs blog, barbwire. Today she had a post on the enlarged "pleasure centers" found in the brains of homosexuals and what could be done with them.
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