un-abashed

Martha Zoller

Martha Mitchell Zoller (born 1959) is a columnist, author, and radio personality on WDUN AM 550 located in Gainesville, Georgia.

Personal

Born on August 23, 1959 to Frank and Juanita Mitchell, Martha Zoller's father was a veteran of World War II in Europe and a POW escapee, while her mother worked with the Rich's company. The youngest of four children, Zoller attended Columbia High School in DeKalb County, Georgia before going on to graduate from the University of Georgia in 1979 with a degree in journalism. Martha began her talk radio career in 1994 after being a regular caller to WDUN AM 550. Her first call to the station was prompted by Hillary Clinton's lament that "she could have stayed at home and baked cookies." Martha now does a daily talk radio show, two weekly television shows and writes on issues of interest around the corner or around the world

Broadcasting

Zoller began broadcasting in 1994 as co-host of the Mid-Day program on WDUN AM 550 in Gainesville, and today hosts the self-titled Martha Zoller Show weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The show has an un-abashed right-wing focus as was made clear following the 2006 live broadcast of her show from the White House lawn when she said ""You know, what I say is, use me!".

According to her website Zoller makes regular appearances on Fox 5 Atlanta's The Georgia Gang and frequent guest appearances on cable channels such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, on programs including TalkBack Live, Hannity & Colmes, and Larry King Live, and Zoller-penned opinion pieces have been published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Zoller was named one of Talkers magazine’s "250 Most Important Radio Talk Show Hosts in the Country" in 2005, 2006 and 2008, and claims on her website to have been named to the 2005 Georgia Trend Magazine "Most Important Media People" list and the 2005 and 2006 James Magazine "Most Influential Georgians" lists. Zoller also cites on her website a "2005 feature in The New York Times", although a search for Zoller in The Times' online archive reveals only a brief letter to the editor published August 10, 2005.

CNN Appearance

On May 2, 2006 Zoller appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight program following Stephen Colbert's performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Zoller and Dobbs asserted that the media, who harshly criticized conservative Don Imus's 1996 performance, were overly generous in their critiques of noted-liberal Colbert's performance and that this constituted evidence of a liberal bias in the media. Media Matters for America illustrated the ludicrousness of the assertion by pointing out that both Zoller and Dobbs ignored multiple newspapers in which Colbert was attacked for not being funny and being too disrespectful towards the president, while pointing out that many major networks chose not to broadcast Colbert's skit at all.

An otherwise typical "talking-head" appearance on the show was made notable by Zoller's rambling commentary and stunning example of a conservative tendency to cite the September 11, 2001 attacks whether relevant or not. When asked by Dobbs if the coverage of Imus versus Colbert showed on-going liberal bias in the media, Zoller replied "Well, certainly there is a liberal bias, and he is picking on George Bush, who the media doesn't like, versus Imus, who was picking on Clinton, who the media loved, OK? And so, you really see a little bit of a bias." Without pausing Zoller continued, saying: " What came to mind after seeing flight -- United 93 this weekend is 9-11 was a Tuesday, so that was -- and he probably didn't even think about that, but for me, having lost friends in the World Trade Towers (sic), that was the first thing I thought of."

Military

In 2005, Zoller visited Baghdad, Iraq with the "Voices of Soldiers" Tour and participated in the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference (JCOC), a United States Department of Defense program for "America's leaders interested in expanding their knowledge of the military and national defense".