How is talk radio doing when so many young people don't listen to broadcast radio? How can anyone stand listening to NPR? These questions and some free-speech concerns came up in a chat with Derek Hunter, talk-radio host on WMAL-FM in Washington, DC and the author of Outrage Incorporated: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood.
MRC Free Speech America vice president Dan Schneider joined me in talking to Derek. Our recent poll question asking the public about the ideological beliefs of Charlie Kirk's assassin underlined how much young people aren't paying attention to conservative media or talk radio. Most don't listen to old-fashioned broadcast radio. We found 33 percent of students thought Charlie Kirk's killer was conservative, and only four percent accurately placed him on the left. Maybe someone could get confused by listening to Jimmy Kimmel or NPR.
Then we discussed something Derek brings up often on his show: growing censorship in Western Europe of conservative social media posts, especially criticism of immigration policies.
Exhibit A is a woman named Lucy Connolly, currently sitting in prison on a 31-month sentence for “publishing written material with the intent to stir up racial hatred,” under a law from 1986. The New York Post reported that after the terrible mass stabbing incident with a 17-year-old kid with an 8-inch knife in Southport at a dance studio in July 2024, where three children under 10 died, Connolly posted on X her support for mass deportations. Authorities say she “falsely claimed” the Al Qaeda-supporting killer was a migrant, When, in fact, it was his parents who were migrants, from Rwanda). Connolly deleted the tweet three hours after posting, but she’s now in prison. They showed up a week later to arrest her, and she’s in prison. For a tweet. In one case, the cops hauled off a couple over comments they posted in a private WhatsApp group for parents at their children’s school.
The leftist Labor Party's Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy plans to remove the right to a jury trial for defendants facing sentences of less than five years, as often happens with social-media "offenses." The Free Speech Union (FSU) said it would campaign against it, following its research that found defendants facing trial with juries were nearly twice as likely to be acquitted on the basis of free speech, compared to trials without juries.
This story that Derek flagged on his show was a doozy, in this case from Australia. A policeman named Benedict Bryant has been charged with "dangerous driving" for putting a parked car in the way of an "indigenous" teenager who stole a motorbike. The teen tried to evade the car but crashed into it and died at the scene. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation warned "indigenous" readers that the story carried a photo of the teen who died. "The prosecutor said as an experienced police officer of more than 22 years, Bryant ought to have known the rider would not stop."
Enjoy the podcast below, or you can listen to the audio here -- or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and so on.
