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Title details for The Radio Right by Paul Matzko - Available

The Radio Right

How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement

by Paul Matzko
ebook
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In the past few years, trust in traditional media has reached new lows. Many Americans disbelieve what they hear from the "mainstream media," and have turned to getting information from media echo chambers which are reflective of a single party or ideology. In this book, Paul Matzko reveals that this is not the first such moment in modern American history. The Radio Right tells the story of the 1960s far Right, who were frustrated by what they perceived to be liberal bias in the national media, particularly the media's sycophantic relationship with the John F. Kennedy administration. These people turned for news and commentary to a resurgent form of ultra-conservative mass media: radio. As networks shifted their resources to television, radio increasingly became the preserve of cash-strapped, independent station owners who were willing to air the hundreds of new right-wing programs that sprang up in the late 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1960s, millions of Americans listened each week to conservative broadcasters, the most prominent of which were clergy or lay broadcasters from across the religious spectrum, including Carl McIntire, Billy James Hargis, and Clarence Manion. Though divided by theology, these speakers were united by their distrust of political and theological liberalism and their antipathy towards JFK. The political influence of the new Radio Right quickly became apparent as the broadcasters attacked the Kennedy administration's policies and encouraged grassroots conservative activism on a massive scale. Matzko relates how, by 1963, Kennedy was so alarmed by the rise of the Radio Right that he ordered the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Communications Commission to target conservative broadcasters with tax audits and enhanced regulatory scrutiny via the Fairness Doctrine. Right-wing broadcasters lost hundreds of stations and millions of listeners. Not until the deregulation of the airwaves under the Carter and Reagan administrations would right-wing radio regain its former prominence. The Radio Right provides the essential pre-history for the last four decades of conservative activism, as well as the historical context for current issues of political bias and censorship in the media.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 1, 2020

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780190073244

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780190073244
      • File size: 11654 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      March 1, 2020
      A scholarly but accessible account of how John F. Kennedy's administration's battle against right-wing critics paved a path for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and their ilk. Censorship is widely understood to be something that right-leaning institutions and corporations do to left-leaning critics. However, as Cato Institute staffer Matzko writes, in the case of radio bloviators such as Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis, the roles were reversed. The story turns on the opening of the AM spectrum to syndicators at a time when formerly dominant networks such as CBS switched their attention to TV. Into the gap came right-wing commentators who set to work denouncing liberalism, Cold War accommodationism, and Kennedy's Catholicism--all of which required payback. Matzko attributes the rise of these nationally syndicated programs, in part, to the ability to take local protests national: A Miami boycott of Polish (and therefore communist) ham went nationwide almost overnight thanks to relentless promotion by McIntire, a New Jersey-based fundamentalist preacher who, over several years in the 1960s, "averaged $2,040,000 in annual receipts"--about $16.8 million today, chump change compared to what his modern counterparts earn but still substantial. The Kennedy administration employed tools such as IRS audits and FCC regulations to crack down on right-wing dissent, guided by the Reuther Memorandum. The selective use of the since-abandoned Fairness Doctrine, which required stations broadcasting McIntire's "20th Century Reformation Hour" to devote equal time to opposing viewpoints, helped bring down that syndicated program. (When it ended, McIntire attempted to broadcast offshore, which lasted a single day.) Apart from telling this little-known story, Matzko argues, reasonably, that the actions of the Kennedy administration helped reinforce grievances "about the perceived liberal domination of the mainstream media," complaints about which are the bread and butter of the right even today. Students of modern American politics and the sociology of communication will find this provocative, worthy reading.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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