Alan Berg and Charlie Kirk; the Old Media and the New

In June 1984, Alan Berg, a talk radio host, was gunned down while getting out of his car outside the building where he lived in Denver. He was fifty. The next day, a report in the New York Times described Berg as “outspoken” and as a practitioner of what “some have called ‘insult radio,’” which “appears to be a growing phenomenon”—though “unlike some of the insult entertainers,” Berg’s “attacks were usually on the intelligence of his callers and guests or their ideas on serious issues rather than on their sex, race or nationality.” (In an interview prior to his death, Berg himself said “I stick it to the audience and they love it.”) In the immediate aftermath of his murder, the police said they had “zero” idea who had killed Berg, or why. Richard Lamm—the governor of Colorado, who regularly appeared on Berg’s show—said it was a “societal tragedy” that people too often respond to views they dislike with violence. Others in Berg’s line of work suggested that living with this reality was par for the course. “I think if there’s nuts out there, it doesn’t matter what kind of format you have,” Wally George, a conservative talk show host in California, said. “Everyone in this line gets threats.”

Last Wednesday, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and media personality, was gunned down while debating with students at Utah Valley University. He was thirty-one. A report in the Times described Kirk as “outspoken” on “a variety of hotly contested topics—race, gun control, abortion—in ways that often stoked controversy,” and also as a “critic of gay and transgender rights.” (Kirk frequently invited his critics to, in the name of a recurring feature of his events, “Prove Me Wrong.”) In the immediate aftermath of his murder, the police didn’t seem to have any idea who had killed Kirk, or why. Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, decried a “tragic day for our nation,” and said that he was praying that “all of us will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans.” Other content creators expressed fears for their own safety. The socialist streamer Hasan Piker described the attack as a “wake-up call.” As Yona TR Golding noted in CJR, the right-wing streamer Adin Ross said, of the political left, “I’m not going to bait these motherfuckers anymore. I don’t want smoke.”