Semillas del Pueblo suit against KABC's McIntyer dismissed

CAN WE AUDIT THE WASTE OF THIS LAWSUIT AGAINST FREE SPEECH?

EGP News Service

A judge dismissed a slander and civil rights lawsuit brought against KABC-AM and the radio station’s “McIntyre in the Morning” host by a charter school, court papers show.

Academia Semillas Del Pueblo and its principal director of operations, Marcos Aguilar, filed suit last May 17 in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging the school was the target of an on-air, racist campaign that led to a bomb scare.

But Judge Ralph W. Dau found that the remarks Doug McIntyre made were opinion and not a command to imminent violence or other lawless action.

His 11-page ruling, issued Jan. 10 affirmed a tentative ruling he handed down in the case in early November before taking the station’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit under submission.

“It is clear that no reasonable listener would have concluded that Mr. McIntyre was seriously and literally maintaining that Academia Semillas Del Pueblo was a reconquista grade school, a madrasa, was aiming to train the next generation of revolutionaries, or to mount an attempt to secede from the United States,” Dau wrote. Similarly, reasonable listeners would not believe McIntyre was asserting the school was training terrorists and was a racist organization, the judge found.

Seth D. Berlin, a lawyer for the station and McIntyre, told Dau during the November hearing that his show is not a hard-news broadcast, but one in which he freely gives his opinions on social issues of the day. Often those views are expressed through satire and rhetorical flourish, Berlin said. According to the lawsuit, McIntyre began criticizing several aspects of the school in May 2006, including its funding, curriculum, demographics, administrators and educational statistics, all in order to increase his show’s ratings.McIntyre exploited a combination of anti-immigration sentiment and the nation’s fear of Islamic terrorists to “create a racist fury against Latino school children, teachers, administrators and staff at the school,” the lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit quoted McIntyre as saying Aguilar’s job was to “keep his school, his madrasa school, open so they can train the next generation of Aztec revolutionaries,” and alleged he used “code words” aimed at a target audience to rile up listeners and create a backlash against the school and Aguilar. As a result, the school received many threats of violence, including a bomb threat that caused an evacuation of the campus, according to the suit.

But in a declaration submitted to the court on Oct. 15, McIntyre stated he found the bomb threat against the school deplorable and offered $1,000 of his own money as a reward for bringing the perpetrator to justice. McIntyre denied his use of the word “madrasa” was meant to insinuate that the school was teaching students jihadist philosophy or instructing them how they could become revolutionaries.

Although Aguilar appeared on other KABC radio shows, he refused to be interviewed by McIntyre, according to the broadcaster.

Meanwhile, a man who aimed his car at KABC Radio reporter Sandy Wells as he tried to interview parents and others outside the school was sentenced last May 11 to three years probation after pleading guilty to one count of robbery.

Ramon Flores, 32, also was ordered to pay $174 to Wells and do 400 hours of Caltrans work for the June 1, 2006, attack outside the school. Wells saw a silver sedan speeding straight at him, but he jumped out of the way and was not injured.