But Not All Are Fans
Rob Anderson is urging a boycott of John and Ken, based on a sloppy reporting incident during the 2003 California gubernatorial election.

Fight the Right

Resources to Boycott Los Angeles' KFI AM 640's John & Ken Show

John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou are a pair of right-wing talk-radio "shock jocks" whose program airs in Los Angeles in the afternoons.

Although they take up the usual batch of conservative talk-radio causes, in October, 2003, they also eggregiously [sic] slandered a woman named Rhonda Miller in their zeal to promote the gubernatorial bid of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After a link to the original report (see below), Anderson includes a complete contact list for KFI, Clear Channel, and numerous advertisers.

The article below cites one of John and Ken's favorites, Gloria Allred. The article dates from October 12, 2003, and is from a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania newspaper:

Shortly after she became the 16th woman to say Arnold Schwarzenegger had groped, fondled or otherwise sexually harried her, Rhonda Miller was gang raped by politics.

Lawyer Gloria Allred tells the story this way. She got a call from Miller, a 53-year-old stunt double who worked on two of Schwarzenegger's films. Miller told Allred that Schwarzenegger had pulled up her shirt and snapped a photo of her breasts and had groped her during the filming of two of his movies.

Last Monday, Allred parked Miller before a bank of television cameras. Miller read a statement, refused all questions and fled the room.

Then came the payback.

Schwarzenegger's campaign, frantic to deflect the latest sexual harassment allegation on the eve of last week's recall election, issued a memorandum to select California media outlets. Signed by Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh, the memo read:

"It has come to our attention from the media that you can access court documents from the following web site: www.lasuperiorcourt.org/Criminal. You will have to pay a $4.75 online charge to access/search the site. Once you have accessed, the site, type 'Rhonda' in the 'first name' field, and 'Miller' in 'last name' field."

In went Miller's name and out came the record: prostitution, narcotics, forgery. John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, two LA radio talkers whose commitment to fair play has extended to hosting a Schwarzenegger rally, read from the Miller "record."

Matt Drudge, the nation's slanderer general, posted a headline: "ARNOLD ACCUSER'S STORY FALLS APART . . . " It linked to a discussion thread on the FreeRepublic.com Web site....

Through it all, there was a plaintive refrain from a single person on the FreeRepublic site: "Are we sure this is the same Rhonda Miller?"

It was not....

[Sean Walsh's] response was a memo worded with the precision of a booby trap.

"We did not make any allegations," Walsh told me. "I wrote that memo myself. I wrote it very, very carefully."...

"We simply said that this name was available on the web site and encouraged reporters to do their research and do their due diligence," Walsh said.

Drudge deleted his link to the FreeRepublic threads by Tuesday morning. But in Los Angeles on election night, Kobylt and Chiampou were in full throat. Allred phoned the show to tell John and Ken they had slandered her client.

"Yeah, well, you jump in the mudbath, things like that are gonna happen," one of them replied. Allred suggested an apology was due. But John and Ken weren't ready to concede that the Rhonda Miller on the court computers was not her client.

"We are checking that out," he said. Ordinarily, that is what someone does before calling a woman a check-forging hooker, but John and Ken pride themselves in their sense of populist rage and every uprising needs an innocent victim to spice the bonfire....

When Allred went on MSNBCs "Scarborough Country" talk show, conservative talk show host Kim Serafin announced she had learned of Miller's record en route to the studio.

"She has 17 convictions, 16 prostitution convictions, six drug charges convictions. She's been convicted of theft, of felony."

The allegations turned up on Fox News channel. Rush Limbaugh gave passing mention to John and Ken's discovery of the accuser's curious past. All this while John and Ken were "checking out" the allegations they had already broadcast....

L.A. Weekly's account of the episode reads like this:

Miller first surfaced around midday on October 6, the day before the recall election, front and center at a news conference called by Los Angeles lawyer Gloria Allred, California’s pugilistic defender of women’s rights. Miller told the assembled media that Schwarzenegger groped her on two occasions while she was a stunt double in the films The Terminator and True Lies.

Soon after the Miller-Allred news conference ended, an e-mail addressed to “Reporters and Editors” was sent “FROM Sean Walsh/Schwarzenegger Campaign.” The e-mail stated:

“RE RHONDA MILLER & GLORIA ALLRED PARTISAN ATTACK. It has come to our attention from the media that you can access court documents from the followiing [sic] web site http//www.lasuperiorcourt.org/Criminal/. You will have to pay a $4.75 on-line charge to access/search the site. Once you have accessed, the site, type ‘Rhonda’ in the ‘first name’ field, and ‘Miller’ in ‘last name’ field. We have to believe that as a lawyer, Gloria would have thoroughly checked the facts and background of the individual she presented at a news conference today. When one reviews Ms. Allred’s background and her campaign contributions, we will let you in the media decide whether her role in today’s event was yet another attempt to glom onto television cameras, or it was her attempt to support the partisan attacks against Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Immediately, KFI’s high-profile afternoon drive-time host John Kobylt read on the air what he purported to be “Rhonda Miller’s rap sheet.” He claimed she had convictions for prostitution (1990, 1993, 1997, 1999), forgery (1989), drug possession (1989, 1993, 1998), attempted drug possession (2001) and reckless driving (1987), as well as many other arrests....

By following the Schwarzenegger campaign e-mail’s instructions, a rap sheet belonging to a Rhonda Miller does come up in the search. But using a birth date proves that it doesn’t belong to Rhonda Miller the stunt double. In other words, Kobylt and Serafin were duped by Walsh’s e-mail....

Scarborough further noted on the air that when his show called Schwarzenegger’s campaign about the memo’s total inaccuracy, “They told us that it wasn’t their responsibility to confirm the woman’s identity and that they have nothing to apologize for.”

Clear Channel–owned KFI’s John and Ken Show host John Kobylt, who used part of his broadcast time to brutally denounce Miller on the basis of the Walsh e-mail the night before the election, has issued a formal on-air retraction, correction and apology....

Robin Bertolucci, KFI’s program director, issued the following statement to L.A. Weekly: “On Monday, October 6, the John and Ken Show, using information available at the time, discussed allegations that Rhonda Miller had a criminal record. On the evening of Wednesday, October 8, having fully researched the situation, KFI-AM’s talk-show host John Kobylt made an on-air correction, clarifying that Rhonda Miller in fact did not have a criminal record, and apologized for the misinformation that aired.”...

The L.A. Weekly account alludes to an interesting thing about the original accusation. Let me repeat that portion (emphasis mine):

Miller first surfaced around midday on October 6, the day before the recall election, front and center at a news conference called by Los Angeles lawyer Gloria Allred...

So Allred can't exactly claim clean hands in this debate. And here's what finally happened:

Remember Rhonda Miller? The lady who accused Arnold of groping just before the recall election, and who was momentarily confused with a prosititute of the same name? She sued Schwarzenegger over an email from his campaign that had the confused information in it, claiming that she was a private person, libeled out of the blue by a mean-spirited politician.

Well, as expected, a judge ruled Friday that, due to her high-profile comments during an election campaign, she was momentarily a public figure and as such must tolerate a certain level of abuse. Something about kitchens and heat.

P.S. Gloria Allred's campaign contributions are listed here.