Controversial former talk show host Don Imus reportedly has a new deal with Citadel News/WABC New York to return to radio in December.

The Drudge Report, citing “top sources,” reported that Imus would be subject to an industry standard 40-second delay and that the host was “rested, humbled and ready for war!”

Imus’ simulcast show was dropped by CBS Radio and cable partner MSNBC in April following a public outcry after he referred to the members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy headed ho’s.”

The National Association of Black Journalists and the National Organization for Women, who called for Imus’ dismissal in the spring, had urged Citadel Chairman and CEO Farid Suleman not hire Imus.

Citadel, a publicly held company, owns ABC Radio Networks, including WABC.

Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said Monday that Suleman has expressed interest through an intermediary of meeting with her.

Ciara told BlackAmericaWeb.com she would seek “assurances, meaning what kind of delay are we working with and what is the edict you’re giving your audio engineers about when they can cut him off? What line does he have to come up to before you yank him back? All of these things that speak to filtering him.”

Asked if she would speak directly with Imus, Ciara said, “I’ve tossed that around, and I’m not sure.”

The announcement just six months after his dismissal “was the equivalent of placing a child in time-out and then saying, ‘Okay, it’s dinnertime; you can come out,’” Ciara said. “And after a multimillion dollar settlement, it’s almost a reward.”

Imus settled with CBS in August, preempting a threatened $120 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the network. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Just before his dismissal, Imus had signed a five-year, $40 million contract with CBS.

“NABJ is concerned because it looks like a slap on the wrist,” said Eric Deggans, a media critic for the St. Petersburg Times.

Deggans, who is also an NABJ member, said beyond the short turnaround between Imus’ departure from and return to radio is a question of whether the radio personality is willing to acknowledge that he has had a long and successful career based on humor that denigrates women and people of color.

Deggans told BlackAmericaWeb.com it’s more than what Imus said in April that is so problematic.

“People really focus a lot on the details of what was said, but the reason why somebody like Imus generates so much controversy is he has such a long history … of racist joking. MSNBC and NBC have had to apologize to gay people and to black people and to others for the things that he has said,” Deggans said. “This is someone who deliberately went into this area because he thought that was funny. If he’s not willing to own up to that, he’s not going to produce a show that is different from that."

Without such an admission, Deggans said, Imus should not be allowed back on the air. If he were to acknowledge his history, “then I would say, okay, let him on and let’s see.”

Asked if Imus has refused such acknowledgement because he didn’t believe that form of humor was wrong, Deggans said he thought just the opposite.

“On some level, he must believe it’s wrong because he won’t even acknowledge doing it. People have had to dig up transcripts and tapes to prove it,” Deggans said. “I think he’s gotten away with it for so long that he was surprised that he got caught” in April.

Imus was a heavyweight in the broadcast industry, Deggans said, because his show was watched or heard by powerbrokers and the political elite and those same people sought opportunities to be on Imus’ show because of the influence that it wielded.

“When you talk about politics, when you talk about books, you’re not going to get a younger audience; you’re going to get older, richer, the movers and shakers and the very powerful,” Deggans said. “Don Imus had a clout that was, maybe, beyond what another broadcaster might be able to do.”

The Women’s Coalition for Dignity and Diversity in the Media, which includes the National Organization for Women and the National Council for Negro Women, sent a letter Monday to Citadel CEO Suleman “calling on him not to make this decision,” said Latifa Lyles, membership vice president for NOW.

Lyles said the coalition hopes to talk to Citadel and other networks as well “to start a conversation with the networks or the corporations that own the networks” to address not only the issue of Imus returning to the airwaves, but all programming that denigrates women and people of color.

Imus, Lyles told BlackAmericaWeb.com, “is not the worst offender, by any means.”

“We did send out a press release last week in the wake of this Citadel prospect,” Lyles said of NOW. “What we really wanted to do was put pressure on the networks, say this is a bad business decision.” In meetings with the networks when the original incident erupted in April, Lyles says, “We said to them, ‘Other than profit, what other reasons would you have for keeping him on the air?’”

Like NABJ’s Ciara, Lyles said NOW believes Imus’ punishment was much too little to have a strong impact on his behavior.

“The notion that he paid the price is a joke,” Lyles said. “A six-month vacation, $10 million (in the lawsuit settlement) and a new contract -- we don’t consider this punishment at all.”

“He did something wrong,” Citadel’s Suleman told the New York Times. “He didn’t break the law. He’s more than paid the price for what he did. I think he should be evaluated by what he does going forward.”

Lyles said people interested in protesting Imus’ return to the airwaves, or any programming they find offensive, can go to www.now.org and click on the media link and get an address, e-mail address and phone number to contact Citadel or other media outlets with their concerns. 

Deggans agreed that networks bear a large share of the weight.
 
“These networks are very cynical about how they use this kind of programming,” Deggans said. “As long as the prestige and the personality outweighs the negatives, they’ll keep doing it. Imus had made inroads in the ratings against CNN; the powerful elite liked it.”

In essence, Deggans said, the networks don’t mind offending black people, women, the gay community and other groups if people keep watching, listening and that kind of programming keeps bringing in money.

He pointed to CNN’s Lou Dobbs and his anti-immigration campaign and the staying power of Fox Network’s Bill O’Reilly and Premiere Radio Network’s Rush Limbaugh, despite their rants about any number of subjects.

“They outrage people, and that’s what they’re supposed to do,” Deggans said.

“These broadcasters have set the tone for what has to happen,” Deggans said. “They’ve basically said, ‘We’re not getting rid of these people until there’s such an uproar from the community that we have to get rid of them.’ They’ve created this situation where activists have to go out and target advertisers and get an activist like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton to get in their face.”

Some have argued that most people understand that personalities like Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Imus are simply entertainers, don’t take the hosts’ shtick seriously and know to hold traditional journalists to a higher standard.

Deggans said that argument doesn’t hold water.

“There are surveys out there that have said that Bill O’Reilly is listed as one of the most trusted names in journalism,” Deggans said. “He wraps himself in the trappings of journalism.

“People know the difference between talk shows and news shows. O’Reilly uses an anchor desk, kicks to stories done to illuminate the issue he’s discussing, and he appears as a newsman while giving his opinion.”

Deggans said that in the recent flap over O’Reilly’s remarks after dining at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem, in which O’Reilly said he was trying to dispel stereotypes about black people when he described how well behaved diners at the restaurant were, that O’Reilly basically created the problem he claimed he was seeking to dispel.

“What Bill failed to mention is one of the reasons people think that (black people are generally unruly) is because he holds up this stereotype of what black people do. Some people may think it’s comedy, but there are a lot of viewers who accept what (O’Reilly, et al) say as fact because they present it that way.”

An even deeper problem, he said, is the way prejudicial images are spoon-fed to Americans.

“The problem with prejudice is sometimes it’s very funny, sometimes it’s seductive, sometimes there’s a kernel of truth. It’s so very easy because it can be very entertaining. But for black folks, I feel like it’s a matter of life and death.”

Lyles said the coalition of women’s groups would like to see a woman, perhaps a woman of color, replace Imus and to see more women hosting broadcast programs.

Imus’ return to radio, she said, “is such a clear marker of a bigger problem. About 15 percent of radio personalities are women. It’s not that women are only 15 percent of the population or that women don’t listen to radio. What is that about? We really have to bring to light there is a problem here.”