Limbaugh/Hannity Parent Company Admits Hiring Actors to Call Radio Shows
By Gustav Wynn
Radio Trickery Reported by GW
An online leak has emerged, revealing a questionable practice used by
the employer of the biggest names in radio.
America's #1 and #2 radio broadcast hosts today and for decades have
been Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, whose ratings and profits have
dominated once thriving local markets. After industry deregulation
paved the way, their boss, Premiere Radio Networks and parent company
Clear Channel Communications have used a Wal-Mart model of
steamrolling or acquiring small, independent original radio
businesses, syndicating everything from robotized genre music
stations to a political talk show hosts selling snake oil.
But according to an online account, Premiere is hiring actors to fake
on-air calls to radio shows who do not divulge the scam. Before being
abruptly removed, their website read:
"Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service... We supply voice
talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or
deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify
the kind of voice you need, and we'll get your the right person fast.
Unless you request it, you won't hear that same voice again for at
least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for
avid listeners".
As reported, once the actor "passed the audition, he would be invited
periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various
scenarios that made for interesting radio." In addition, the source
was specifically told there would be no on-air disclosure of the
fabricated nature of the call. He subsequently landed the job, at $40
per hour and a minimum one hour of work per day.
This suggests an array of radio clients is broadcasting bogus calls
by actors, categorized by their accents or vocal qualities. Next time
you hear a "gruff", "clean", "crisp", "deep", or "textured" voice,
you might just be hearing a Premiere On Call actor secretively
playing a real person.
But they can never go public because they are gagged from talking
about it. Note their iron-clad confidentiality clause, also removed
from the site, but cached here as reported:
"Confidentially agreement: By requesting an audition you are also
agreeing to keep the details of the audition and the type of work
that you may perform confidential. This applies to information
acquired while working for Premiere or any of its affiliates.
Disclosure to any third party, sharing project information or
publicizing what you do (including via social media) may be
considered grounds for dismissal or further action."
"I was surprised that it seemed so open. There was really no pretense
of covering it up", the actor told the TabletMag.com interviewer.
Why is this leaker not in trouble? According to the account, Premiere
had this prospective employee audition for work by actually calling
in live to a show and reading one of their scripts for free. This is
worse by a magnitude - offering people a financial incentive to
deceive promotes a disturbing moral message to people in need of
work, a practice that monetizes and rewards unethical behavior.
Ironically, another clause in the fine print of the one-sided
contract for use of their web service makes users sign away their
"moral rights" and hypocritically claims to frown upon just this type
of fraud and deception, banning activities which:
"[i]mpersonate another person or entity or falsely state or otherwise
misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity, or adopt a
false identity if the purpose of doing so is to mislead, deceive, or
defraud another."
Industry watchers claim they would not be surprised to find any
number of goofy DJ shows using plants for their various pranks and
exploits, but it would be a different story if used for political
shows and "astroturfing". A Premiere Radio Networks spokesperson
Rachel Nelson did not deny the service was being abused, saying
instead that it is the stations that are responsible for how the
calls are "integrated into programs".
In 2008, we reported on an industry insider who worked at Milwaukee's
WTMJ when they denied air time to sitting U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
who was trying to refute slanted claims made to the Wisconsin public.
Since no one filed any FCC complaints, the stations routinely turned
away callers with opposing views, a former program director at the
station revealed.
Salon also reported at the height of the 2008 election that the
McCain campaign was paying ghost-writers to falsify letters-to-the-
editor across the US, claiming that Sarah Palin was a nifty,
qualified candidate.
These dirty tricks stem from tactics exposed last year in primary
documents made public at the Reagan library, calling for manipulation
of book distribution and use of taxpayer money to seed foreign and
domestic pro-war propaganda. Oliver North and "working groups" like
the Heritage Foundation link these 1980s covert astroturfing ops with
Hannity and the current Fox mileu.
While this actor's claim does not specifically prove hosts like
Hannity used the fake caller services his parent company sells,
Hannity's record of being caught manipulating public opinion,
deceptively editing video, suppressing opposing views, and lopsided
call ratios through the decades speaks for itself. His show doesn't
sound like America and never has.
It has been documented and time-stamped on Twitter for years now, how
"average" Hannity callers are denied public rebuttal time. Dissenters
describe how Hannity's screeners practice bias and intimidation,
requiring they produce a return phone number in exchange for air time.
But if on-air calls to political commentary shows were faked without
disclosure, fines or license revocation are well within the
jurisdiction of the FCC or Attorney General's office. Although it
might be hard to prove the host was in on it, it's the FCC license
holder that would be accountable anyway.
Hannity has always maintained it's the listeners and sponsors who
decide if they want deliberately distorted programming, but this
would be deception of a higher order, if he had actors pretending for
example to be soldiers, or military families, doctors, health care
workers, etc.
Hannity's tricks, out-of-context smears and questionable charity
"expenses" suggest he at least owes a skeptical US public a simple
denial of his knowledge of this practice. Otherwise, we may as well
assume he has been faking calls all throughout his 20 year career,
especially using his brand of reporting.
Author's Website: http://opednews.com/amerigus
