Monday, May 19, 2008 Seares: Sounds on talk radio By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
T ISN’T enough that radio commentators use bombast and fire in their language. They have sound effects too, which they now employ with increasing noise and frequency.
They ensure the listener won’t doze off or switch the dial. With sounds ranging from loud drum beat to repetitive catchphrase to derisive laughter, who will?
But that’s not just the function of their sound effects.
We talked about it last Saturday at a Cebu KBP and USJ-R College of Law media forum.
‘Kill! Kill!’
I told the broadcasters, some of whom were radio commentators, the sound effects intensify meanness of the attack on the
target.
The talk show host gives a blistering verbal assault on a public official, capped with “boom, boom” of a drum or a rallying cry of “banati!” or, peals of laughter dripping with scorn and ridicule.
Many listeners lap it up but how about the person who’s figuratively tarred and feathered, skinned alive, or hanged to the strident sound that seems to chant “Kill! Kill! Kill!”?
He and his family and friends, if they can stand the punishment and not smash the radio, will groan in pain.
The attack may not be illegal. In the name of press freedom and duty to examine conduct of public officials in harsh, unflinching light, the broadcaster may get away with murder of honor and reputation. But is it fair? Is it, ah, ethical?
One winces at the word “ethical.” Ethics is a vast, gray mass of rules that vary in substance and practice from newsroom to newsroom, opinion maker to opinion maker.
