WLOX The Butt Of Phone Pranksters

By JEAN PRESCOTT
May 5, 2004

BILOXI - Was the word "cheeks" or "cheese"? Viewers of Monday's 10 p.m. newscast on WLOX are probably still
asking themselves the question.

What the local ABC affiliate had teased as a live telephone conversation with the mayor of Macon, Dottie
Baker-Hines, ended up an irreverent prank about shock-jock Howard Stern's nether regions - his backside, his
bum, his keister.

The comment verbatim (or close to it): "Do you like Howard Stern's butt cheeks?"

The fake mayor, who didn't even bother to feign a Southern accent, injected the comment into answers about
the return to Macon of civilian contractor Thomas Hamill, who escaped Iraqi captors Sunday.

Viewers identified the voice as "gender neutral" and sounding Midwestern. Anyone who actually heard Mayor
Baker-Hines on Mississippi Public Broadcasting on Monday knows her voice is decidedly feminine with the
unmistakable lilt of the Magnolia state.

Newscaster Jeff Lawson, who took the telephone interview on the air, said Tuesday, "I've never had anything
quite like that happen to me before," but the startled newsman recovered quickly. He apologized to viewers, and
the consensus seems to be that he handled the situation well.

How does something like this happen?

Any explanation would be pure conjecture, since questions directed to Lawson were handed off to WLOX news
director Dave Vincent, who handed off to general manager Leon Long, who left for the day Tuesday without
returning calls.

Josie Harvey, Mayor Baker-Hines' secretary, said Tuesday that the mayor's office has been inundated with
requests for interviews but in no instance has the mayor made calls to offer herself for an interview of any kind.
"We wouldn't even know how to contact all these news people if we wanted to," Harvey said.

One possibility is that Stern seems to incite pranksters with his willingness to air tapes of such calls. But Stern's
agent Don Buchwald, responding to an e-mail Tuesday, wrote: "Howard neither encourages nor directs his
audience in any way. There are those who take it upon themselves to call in to programs - some are funny,
some are not. He might play something funny."

Among those purveyors of news pranked are CNN, ABC News, even the "Rosie O'Donnell Show." All of them
have taken it on the chin from fans of Stern who himself has taken it on the chin recently. Clear Channel
dropped his show from a number of its stations around the country this spring, and the FCC has fined him for
using the kind of language that draws listeners to his show in the first place.

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