Radio station WFAN in New York, which is owned by CBS, has decided to replace Don Imus, the "shock jock" who was fired for making racist comments about black female basketball players at Rutgers, with Craig Carton. This is the same Carton who made fun of Mary Jo Codey’s mental illness on air, suggesting, as recounted in an article in USA Today, that "women who suffer from postpartum depression should relax by smoking marijuana ‘instead of putting their babies in the microwave.’" Lovely.
When firing Imus, CBS issued a statement from CEO Leslie Moonves saying, in part: "We are now presented with a significant opportunity to expand on our record on issues of diversity, race and gender. We intend to seize that opportunity as we move forward together.”
Wow. I can’t say I’m impressed with that record. In fact, I think you are obviously FULL OF CRAP. Apparently CBS thinks it is not okay to make fun of the athletes at Rutgers, but it is okay to outrageously denigrate new mothers with mental illness who are black or white or any other color for that matter. Not to mention Carton’s record of racist and inflammatory comments made about people from Latin America and Asia … Talk about saying one thing and then doing another. WFAN and CBS obviously pretended to be concerned by firing Imus, but the fact that they truly couldn’t care less is reflected by their actions in hiring Carton.
What really kills me about all of this is that CBS Cares has done such great work on postpartum depression. Do they really think that makes up for the fact that they’ve hired a major on-air personality who just makes the stigma we all face even worse?
Thankfully, the New York Times agrees that WFAN has made the wrong choice. Click here for their opinion. Now we need your opinion voiced as well.
Ladies, reach out to WFAN and let them know what you think. Even better, have your husbands join you in your outrage. You can jointly send a letter to Eric Spitz, Programming Director, at:
WFAN-AM
34-12 36th Street
Astoria, NY 11106
You can also let CBS Radio know how much this sucks. Direct your comments to Chris Oliviero, the VP of Programming, at:
CBS RADIO
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
212-846-3939
Or perhaps it would be more interesting to reach CBS through the CBS Radio PR folks …
Karen L. Mateo
Vice President, Communications
( 212) 846 7638
Dana McClintock
Senior Vice President,
CBS Communications Group
(212) 975 1077
We need to speak up for ourselves and not let this hypocrisy go unnoticed.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Katherine.
What will it take for the networks to realize there's a HUGE downside to putting jerks on the air?
Can't we be funny and irreverant without hurting people? Is that really so hard?
Katherine –
Not only will I be writing a letter and sending to all of the above mentioned people, but I will be posting that letter at my blog and encouraging others to also write and complain. You are absolutely right – obviously they didn't really mean what they said and we need to call them on that!
Wow. Thanks for the news bit. I'm so glad we have people like you out there de-stigmatizing! Therese