Protest made latest local news in Rapid City

Today Democracy in Action sponsored a protest in front of the office of KOTA in down town Rapid City.  Here is a post from the Occupy Rapid City Facebook page:

Due to the requests of participants at today's rally in front of KOTA, the scheduled Occupy Rapid City rally for tomorrow, Saturday, March 10th will continue the theme of holding Rush Limbaugh and KOTA accountable for their actions. It is an open forum. All are welcome. The protest will begin at Main Street Square at 12 Noon, and then we will march over to the KOTA station on St. Joseph Street. There were at least 60 people at the KOTA protest today. Their management appears to be placing greed over any sense of integrity. What Rush said is offensive and unacceptable. He must be held accountable. Please come out and protest this horrible stance taken by Rush Limbaugh and KOTA Radio.

KOTA Radio’s web page reported that there were between thirty and forty protesters.  The photo accompanying the report on their website showed five protesters from an angle that did not include the much larger group.

The Rapid City Journal’s website includes an option to see the most commented on recent articles published on their website.  As of seven o’clock on Friday, March 09, 2012 the most commented article was Locals petition to take Limbaugh off air with 190 comments.  The third most commented on article was Limbaugh comments overshadow GOP contest with 37 comments.  Also today, the Journal’s website included a survey poll question that readers could vote on:

Do you think Rush Limbaugh should be taken off the air for the inflammatory comments he made last week on his nationally syndicated radio talk show?

After voting the cumulative results were displayed. The cumulative votes as of this writing were 2,334. The results showed the distribution of votes to be 49% yes and 51% no. This is the same distribution percentage that the poll results showed earlier in the day when the total votes was at 2,008. Obviously, quite a few voters had an opinion on this question, but the distribution was completely static for much of the polling period. That happens all the time, right?

Tonight in perusing the various local television news broadcasts, it appears that the protest efforts weren’t news worthy. Even the Rapid City Journal ignored what appears to be considerable local interest in this issue relating to what the general manager of Duhamel Broadcasting Enterprises, Ted Peiffer refers to as “the most listened to radio program in America.”

Update 11 pm 3-9-12:   KOTATV and KEVNTV did report on the Limbaugh protest today.  KEVN Fox News report put the number of protesters at seventy and KOTA TV did a much better job of showing the whole group than the picture posted on the radio website.  Mr. Peiffer says the calls supporting Limbaugh on the air were three to one in favor keeping the program.  Perhaps he is using the same scientific data collection methods that will be used to evaluate teachers for the new merit pay system.

Update 3-10-12:  Today's Rapid City Journal included a picture of the Friday afternoon protesters with a large caption.  Their online poll vote count had increased to over 2,639 by 8:00 a.m., but the distribution was still stuck at 49 % yes and 51 % no.  For comparison sake consider that according to the data base section of the RCJ website shows that 13,640 votes were cast for mayoral candidates in the 2011 election.  The poll vote count is equal to slightly over 19 percent of the number of votes cast for mayor in scheduled election.  The online poll drew nearly twenty percent of that number votes without being an publicly announced event like the mayoral election.  If Mr. Peiffer got as many callers as the Journal got poll voters, then he must have had a very busy phone day.