Chris Baker, formerly a talk radio host in Houston, took over the morning spot on KTLK in early March. On Friday, he took issue with the debate among Minneapolis law enforcement personnel as to whether police should limit the use of Tasers and pepper spray on protesters in Minneapolis (link to audio file). Baker’s suggestion is violent suppression of what he calls “stinky protesters” that are part of “an industry funded by billionaires and communist organizations (and) they are well-coordinated and incredibly dangerous.”

Baker continued: “So we’ve been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and Tasers on this crowd. You know, I’ll tell you what works on a crowd like this — a machine gun, that always works very well.“

Baker’s co-host, “Jordan,” agreed: “Mow ‘em down, baby!” he added.

“You must have order, you cannot have a civilized society without order and if that means cracking a few skulls, so be it,” said Baker. “A good ole boy network is what you need and hand out some ax handles.”

Peace advocate and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley heard the violent rhetoric on Friday. “It doesn’t take an expert on the First Amendment to recognize that suggesting the ‘good ol’ boy network’ hand out ax handles and machine guns be used to mow a crowd down comes close to inciting violence,” she wrote at the Huffington Post. “This inflammatory rhetoric looks no different than the reason we are not allowed to falsely yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

She continued: “I can also speak from personal experience — having worked almost 24 years as an FBI agent — that such remarks would almost certainly elicit investigative concern if the tables were turned and such speech came out of the mouth of someone critical of the government.”

Earlier: Thug radio: Are Jason Lewis and KTLK now in the jihad business?

Strib Letters editor Tim O’Brien acknowledges he knew of Brehm’s history with Coleman, but including Brehm’s title “fell through the cracks.” While he takes full responsibility, he says everyone on the paper’s editorial page have been spread thin after recent buyouts, firings, and Dave Hage’s resignation announcement. “We’re really earning our paychecks.” He said he doesn’t think Brehm was trying to sidestep the paper’s ethical guidelines about letters. “I’m kicking myself about this,” he added, and joked, “This is not how I want to get in your media column.”Web Smackdown? MPR’s “In the Loop” wonders who’ll “rule the future of journalism,” MinnPost or The Daily Mole. While the sites will compete for audience, they don’t seem to be vying for the same turf. “MinnPost seems to be flaunting an all-star cast (names like Doug Grow, Jay Weiner, Britt Robson…it reads like the manifest of lifeboats from the ‘Titanic’ that appears to be the Twin Cities’ newspaper industry),” writes Jeff Horwich of former Strib publisher Joel Kramer’s endeavor. “[T]he Mole has attitude and a vibe of actual fun that is yet to emanate from the pages of MinnPost. And while the MinnPost is spending some ink justifying what is is not going to do, the Daily Mole looks less afraid to dwell in territory that, let’s face it, online audiences want to wallow in.”

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In the Twin Cities, Clear Channel owns seven stations — K102, KFAN, SCORE 690-AM, KOOL 108, Cities 97, and KTLK. Cities 97′s music director, Thorn, says the Fox report is “hogwash”: “First, corporate never tells us what to play, and second, we’re playing it already.” The station is currently having a ticket giveaway for Springsteen’s upcoming concert here.

He says the title track is the most biting, but he doesn’t see why it wouldn’t get played on his station. “Yeah, it’s critical of the administration: Yay! Most of the country is critical of the administration.”

If any song could be deemed less-than-Clear-Channel-worthy, it might be the first single from the album, “Radio Nowhere.”

“That song is kind of talking about how bad radio is,” he said, “and it’s it’s getting a quarter of its play from Clear Channel.”

“This story is nothing more than a plant by a website run by a bunch of angry lesbians and radical pacifists,” Lewis said. “They hate America and they hate Bachmann. They hate western tradition. They hate capitalism.” Black’s blog partner, right-leaning politics team leader Doug Tice, said Lewis has a “naïve misunderstanding of how journalists do their work.” Lewis turned down Black’s request for an on-air discussion on the topic. Listen to Lewis here or download his 2/23 podcast here.

Why isn’t it a story? So, why didn’t St. Cloud Times legislative reporter and podcaster Larry Schumacher write a story on Bachmann’s unexpected assertion that Iran had made an “agreement” to create a named “Iraq State of Islam”? He blogged his rationale, which, considering the massive audiences Black’s coverage of the story brought to the Times, seems a tad thin: “my Fridays are pretty booked up with other things”; “our policy with the podcasts so far have [sic] been not to write print stories to accompany them”; and “I did do a story. My story was the podcast.” Perhaps the spike in site traffic will prompt Times management to reconfigure Schumacher’s  job description to make room for such coverage, but in the meantime, he said the paper will review the podcasts-as-web-only-content policy.

Media Monitor continues…Dude, who bogarted journalism? Let’s hope the first byline by Kevin Hoffman, Steve Perry‘s replacement as City Pages editor, doesn’t presage the new spirit