FL Radio: Lawmaker Calls For Removal Of iHM Talk Host

Bill Mick

Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine is accusing a an iHeartMedia talk show host of anti-Semitism, racism, and white nationalism. The Brevard County lawmaker called for his removal in a letter he sent to the chairman and chief executive officer of the station’s corporate owner.

Fine sent his letter Monday to Bob Pittman, leader of iHeartMedia Inc. of New York, which owns News/Talk WMMB in Melbourne, FL. In it, Fine spelled out his accusations against local talk show host Bill Mick.

In an email response to Florida Politics, Mick declined comment at this time, both on his own behalf and as program director for WMMB.

Fine’s concerns focus on comments he said Mick made on the air in late March about Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings and last week about Fine; his HB 741, which seeks to include anti-Semitism in Florida’s hate crime statute and require public schools, colleges and universities to recognize that; and Jewish college students. Fine said Mick’s comments variously were racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic, and consistent with previous things Mick had said both on the air and to him personally.

“You have an obligation to not allow that platform to be used to promote white nationalism,” Fine wrote to Pittman. “I am writing you on behalf of my Jewish and African-American constituents — and all those who oppose racism and anti-Semitism in our community — to ask that you remove Bill Mick, your only local radio talk host, from your WMMB station.”

Fine said in an interview Monday that he does not listen to Mick’s show but received complaints from constituents who were deeply offended. Mick’s shows are recorded and available for later listening on the station’s website.

Fine wrote that on March 25 a constituent told him that Mick said on the air that Demings, who is African-American and a former Orlando Police Chief, “was made the Orlando Police Chief … ‘because she is a black female, period.’ To ensure that his listeners understood that she had no redeeming qualities whatsoever beyond her gender and her race, he stated that she was ‘stupid’ and ‘dumb as a box of rocks.’ But still I kept my tongue.”

Then in a broadcast last Thursday, Fine wrote, Mick spent much of his show dismissing HB 741, Fine, and Jewish students, mocking the students, according to Fine’s letter, with, “We don’t want the Jews to feel bad that somebody might say something about them.”