Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t After You

Under orders from President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tightened the regulatory screws on conservative broadcasters. The IRS launched the “Ideological Organizations Project” to challenge the tax-exempt status of conservative broadcasters and to stem the flow of donations. The FCC strengthened its “Fairness Doctrine” rules, which required radio stations to ensure politically balanced discussion of public policy and to give free response time to victims of personal attacks made on the air. The United Auto Workers financed the creation of an opposition research clearing house, Group Research Inc., that compiled dossiers of damaging information on conservative broadcasters and politicians. The White House also organized a front organization, the Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban, to gain free, pro-administration airtime from radio stations that aired conservative critiques of the proposed treaty.

Seven Days in May

President Kennedy’s concerns over the Radio Right grew throughout his term in office. At the time, the administration worried about the prospect of a right-wing military coup led by someone like recently cashiered Army General Edwin Walker, especially after he headlined a campaign-style national tour called Operation Midnight Ride with conservative broadcaster Billy James Hargis. The final straw was the wave of conservative attacks on the president’s proposed Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1963. Kennedy responded to the rise of the Radio Right by commissioning a strategy document from labor union leaders Walter and Victor Reuther. This “Reuther Memorandum,” as it became known, called for targeting conservative broadcasters with extra regulatory scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Communications Commission.

The Radio Right in Decline

As the National Council of Churches’ Fairness Doctrine campaign accelerated, US Senate Democrats on the Commerce Committee announced an investigation into the Radio Right. That one-two punch convinced hundreds of radio station owners to drop conservative programs altogether. The cost of paying for free response time combined with the risk of losing their station license was too much. Carl McIntire appealed for help to Richard Nixon, but the administration was much more interested in the ways it could use the Fairness Doctrine to intimidate the major television networks into giving the president and the war in Vietnam more favorable coverage. With no help forthcoming and the loss of station WXUR in 1974, Carl McIntire’s program declined precipitously, although not without one last protest action from McIntire involving a World War II surplus minesweeper blasting a pirate radio signal off the shore of Cape May, New Jersey, in defiance of Federal Communications Commission rules.

“The Red Lion Roars Again”

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, leadership of the counter–Radio Right censorship campaign passed to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). DNC Chairman John Bailey recruited operative Wayne Phillips to take charge of a team that would intimidate conservative broadcasters who either supported Barry Goldwater or attacked Lyndon Johnson during the 1964 election. By Phillips’s own estimations, the project was a remarkable success, garnering hundreds of hours of free airtime via Fairness Doctrine complaints. They were aided by a new front organization—secretly created by the DNC—called the National Council for Civic Responsibility. As a bonus, the campaign also generated a court challenge from journalist Fred Cook against conservative radio station owner John Norris. The resulting court case, Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC, went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld the Fairness Doctrine.

Introduction

The advent of mass right-wing radio in the early 1960s fueled the rise of modern conservatism and provoked the most successful government censorship campaign in America of the past half century. That episode should encourage a reevaluation of John F. Kennedy’s presidency; even more significantly, the story of the Radio Right should transform the scholarly debate over the origins of the New Right. Instead of trying to explain the uptick in activism by looking to sudden changes in the demand for conservative ideas, this work emphasizes shifts in the supply of those ideas. Furthermore, in contradiction to self-serving mythologizing by conservative institutions and intellectuals, it centers the role played by radicals and grassroots activists in conservative movement formation.

Conclusion

The deregulation of the airwaves by the Jimmy Carter administration, combined with the advent of cable broadcasting, allowed the resurgence of politically conservative radio in the late 1970s and 1980s. A new generation of religious broadcasters—including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—used radio and television to become household names. Indeed, it was while organizing to protect broadcasters from the Fairness Doctrine that the idea to create the “Moral Majority” came to Falwell. Also, radio broadcasting was the preferred way that former California Governor Ronald Reagan kept up his political brand as he prepared to run for president in 1976 and 1980. In the four decades since, right-wing talk radio has profoundly influenced national politics, but those tempted to call for a return to Fairness Doctrine–style regulation would do well to bear in mind Donald Trump’s expressed desire to challenge broadcasting licenses for critical journalistic outlets like NBC News.

Outsourcing Censorship

After the election of 1964, the Democratic National Committee stopped its involvement in the censorship campaign, but the Fairness Doctrine rules remained a tool for any interest group smart enough to imagine the potential uses. The National Council of Churches, which had a long history of conflict with broadcaster and fundamentalist clergyman Carl McIntire, launched a wave of Fairness Doctrine complaints against stations airing the offending broadcasts. In particular, the National Council of Churches wanted the Federal Communications Commission to deny radio licenses to two stations: WXUR, which Carl McIntire had recently purchased, and WLBT, which had a history of defending segregation on the airwaves.

Polish Ham and the Southern Strategy

Rapid growth of right-wing radio in the early 1960s sparked a wave of grassroots activism. One such example is the Polish ham boycott of 1962, in which a Miami chiropractor’s protest was amplified by the Radio Right until it became a nationwide movement dominated by suburban housewife protestors. Their boycott “card parties” convinced the biggest retailers in the country to stop selling goods imported from Communist countries in Eastern Europe, giving a black eye to the John F. Kennedy administration, which had organized the trade deal. The stories of some of the individual women involved epitomize the power of housewife populism in post–World War II consumer culture and show the mobilizing power of radio. In addition, while the Radio Right had an audience among suburbanites across the nation, it grew most rapidly in the Deep South, playing an important role in convincing white segregationists to switch parties from Democrat to Republican.