Inside Talk Radio: America's Voice or Just Hot Air? - Hardcover

Laufer, Peter

9781559722780: Inside Talk Radio: America's Voice or Just Hot Air?

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559722789 ISBN 13: 9781559722780

Publisher: Birch Lane Pr, 1995

A radio host and program director traces the rise of today's influential radio talk shows, criticizing the half-truth that often passes for informed commentary on the airwaves and debunking the myth that liberals dominate the media. 35,000 first printing.

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From Publishers Weekly:

"Talk radio is pornographic," charges talk show host and radio programmer Laufer as he takes us on a trip through the wacky?and frightening?right-wing world of talk radio. Laufer calls to our attention a Times Mirror survey concluding that only 6% of the American population has managed to spend any time talking on the air, yet the political power of talk radio is taken very seriously by politicians and the media alike. He gives us a rogues' gallery of talk-show-host celebs: Denver's Alan Berg, who was murdered; shock-jock Howard Stern; Barbara Carlson, who tattooed her Minneapolis call letters, KSTP, on her buttocks; Pat Buchanan, who has been labeled an anti-Semite by fellow conservative William F. Buckley; and the big daddy of them all, Rush Limbaugh, whose "ditto-heads" have politicians across America quaking. Laufer examines hosts and their dissemination of information, which at times is blatantly false; questions whether the hosts are news commentators or merely entertainers; and looks into the effects of the 1987 elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and at the myth of the liberal media. He quotes one general manager as professing, "We don't give a shit about Bosnia...We want to hear more about Lorena Bobbitt." After reading Laufer's inside account of the industry, readers will wonder: If secondary stupidity is catching, is America in for an epidemic? Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Expanding on his not-so-subtle subtitle, Laufer here embarks on a diatribe attacking those most self-aggrandizing of headline grabbers: talk-radio hosts. Over and over, he makes the point that these characters are uninformed, ratings-angling entertainers, not journalists. While his footnotes commendably reflect a "check the facts" credo he finds unconscionably lacking in talk radio, Laufer's relentless stone-throwing eventually does as much damage to his credibility as to the Rush Limbaughs of the world. Laufer himself has been a talk radio professional for 20-plus years, and his journalistic credentials (which include A Question of Consent, LJ 5/1/94, a book on the Glen Ridge rape case and a graduate degree in communications) were apparently all achieved after he established himself as a conversation stirrer. Furthermore, Laufer displays an unbecoming contempt for the listening audience, whom he sees as a bunch of actively antisocial ignoramuses desperately seeking to be shaped rather than informed. Limbaugh and Howard Stern may indeed be contemptible, but Laufer's blunt and elitist message does not make a fair case against them. Not recommended.
Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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