The Way of the Shock Jock

AYLMER, QUEBEC | A week ago an angry man charged into our newsroom wanting to know why the Bulletin wasn't covering the conflict between the First Nations and the townspeople of Caledonia, Ontario. He wanted to know why I wasn't advising readers on the injustices there. So, after a lot of thought, here goes.

It wasn't this fellow's views, although they were surprising, but his anger and frustration, his strength and volume, it was his powerful emotional response that was so remarkable. Afterwards, everyone here was talking about his outburst.

Did he have family there, or property? Had he ever been injured by First Nations persons? And, why was he so upset about a situation so far away?

He told us the answer. He told us he wasn't even sure where Caledonia happens to be, but he had been listening to a local radio mouth-off who had convinced him that another race of people were injuring his own, and getting away with it under the very noses of the police and government. These latter are the worst sorts of cowards, is why this is happening, and yet these cowards, the worst, are supposed to be governing us. Hadn't we elected them to keep order? To defend private property? To keep natives in their place?

I saw in front of me why the United States has become the seething place it appears to be (very different from my own experience of Americans as open, good hearted, tolerant, and always ready to help and to act).

The phenomena is called shock jocks, which is descriptive, for sure, but not very accurate.

They're not jocks, jockeys, or hosts, they're advertising salesmen. They are the old-time hucksters, the new version of the hyper sales guys in the movie Glengarry Glengarry Ross. They are iconic in our Americanized culture -- they're in plays, movies, and novels. These are the salesmen who are always selling some thing, no matter who they are talking to, no matter where, or when.

Shock jocks may claim to be selling ideas, arguments, debate, and opinions, but they're really selling listeners to their advertisers. Listeners are product. The more listeners they can generate for their show, the happier their advertisers -- this is advertising. One way to get listeners -- and to get them to identify themselves as such -- is by rolling them back and forth on emotional rides. Emotional highs are pure adrenalin; they're wild and exciting.

All this is delivered free and effortlessly. What's easier than listening?

I wondered if this man's example isn't more widespread, if he's not just an extreme reaction to the media in general, including ourselves (our twenty-eight or thirty-two dangerous pages)?

Do we only focus on negatives, take photos only of disasters, always waiting for a slip-up? If it is it's because negatives and disasters are not common, and positives and successes are, that the negatives make news. Which is good news.

But don't expect it from the local shock jocks; they're busy creating product.

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Copyright © 2007 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/10.07