Radio host said he wants school shooting impeach distraction

Post Reply New Topic

A Denver talk radio host has been fired after he said he wanted "a nice school shooting" to interrupt coverage of "the never-ending impeachment of Donald Trump." The firing came just hours after a father who lost his son in a school shooting in Colorado earlier this year said the host should be fired.

Chuck Bonniwell, cohost of a talk show on KNUS 710 AM, made the comments Tuesday afternoon coming back from a commercial break before being immediately interrupted by his cohost and wife Julie Hayden.

"No, no, don’t even say that!" Hayden said. "Don’t call us! Chuck didn’t say that."

Bonniwell immediately seemed to backtrack, saying he was talking about shootings in "which no one would be hurt."

KNUS announced Wednesday night that Bonniwell and his wife had been fired.

The host issued a statement on his Twitter account, saying, "I made an inappropriate comment meant as a joke. I’m sorry it was not received that way."

The comment was made about 22 minutes into the pair's show, and was on the KNUS website's archive a day later, before being taken down Wednesday afternoon.

Some of the most infamous mass shootings in U.S. history took place in Colorado, including the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that left 12 students and one teacher dead, and the July 2012 Aurora theater attack that killed a dozen moviegoers. In May, two students attacked the STEM School Highlands Ranch south of Denver, killing senior Kendrick Castillo and injuring eight others.

While freedom of speech is one of the most sacrosanct freedoms in American history, there are a variety of exceptions to the general principle that speech is protected under the First Amendment. We will discuss six such categories:

- Incitement

- Fighting Words

- Obscenity

- Defamation

- Commercial Speech

- Cases in which freedom of speech is outweighed by an even more compelling interest

Incitement of people to commit illegal or lawless activity is not protected by the First Amendment. In a seminal 1919 case, Schenk v. United States,[1] the Supreme Court announced the “clear and present danger” test; that is, speech is not protected when it is used “in such circumstances and… of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about substantive evils that [the government] has a right to prevent.” The opinion, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, also made the famous observation that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.”

The standard for determining when speech was unprotected as incitement was clarified in a 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio.[2] In that case, Clarence Brandenburg, a KKK leader, held a KKK rally in rural Ohio in which he advocated “revengeance” against the government and certain minorities, as well as other incendiary comments. Convicted under a state statute that prohibited advocating violence, he was sentenced to a fine and a prison term.

The Supreme Court reversed his conviction. In so doing, the Court announced the “imminent lawless action” test for incitement. To be considered incitement and thus not protected by the First Amendment, incendiary speech must:

- Be intended to provoke imminent lawless action; and

- Be likely to cause such action.

As Brandenburg’s speech was not made in the presence of potential targets of his advocated violence, it was not likely to cause imminent lawless action. As such, reprehensible though his speech may have been, Brandenburg’s speech was protected by the First Amendment.