Episode 3 - The Divided Dial

On the Media

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you discovered this series through Apple podcasts, or because you heard that we won a Peabody Award for our work; WELCOME! For our longtime listeners who have heard these episodes before, your weekly dose of On the Media will be available as ever, on Friday afternoon. Enjoy!

Episode 3: The Liberal Bias Boogeyman How did the right get their vice grip of the airwaves, all the while arguing that they were being silenced and censored by a liberal media? In this episode we look at the early history of American radio to reveal that censorship of far-right and progressive voices alike was once common on radio. And we learn how, in the post-war and Civil Rights period, the US government encouraged more diverse viewpoints on the airwaves — until it didn’t.

The Divided Dial is hosted by journalist and Fulbright Fellow Katie Thornton. Her written articles and audio stories have appeared in The Atlantic, 99% Invisible, The Washington Post, BBC, NPR, WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio, The Guardian, Bloomberg’s CityLab, National Geographic, and others. She is a lifelong radio nerd who got her start in media as a teenager, volunteering and working behind the scenes at radio stations for many years. You can follow her work on Instagram or on her website. The Divided Dial was edited by On the Media's executive producer, Katya Rogers. With production support from Max Balton and fact-checking by Tom Colligan, Sona Avakian, and Graham Hacia. Music and sound design by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Art by Michael Brennan. Special thanks this episode to Tianyi Wang. With support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fourth of July 1973 in Philadelphia was hot as hell.
0:11.2	But that didn't deter the 50 or so protesters who gathered outside Independence Hall for
0:16.1	a makeshift funeral.
0:18.4	Dressed to the nines as the founding fathers, powdered wigs and all, they were there to
0:22.5	mark the end of an era.
0:24.4	They were there to mourn.
0:27.2	The leader of the group, a fundamentalist preacher named Carl McIntyre, approached a homemade
0:32.4	coffin adorned with the words, Freedom of Speech.
0:36.6	And into it he placed a replica antenna of his radio station, WXUR.
0:42.1	WXUR died tonight.
0:44.1	There's one issue, Freedom of Speech, free exercise and religion.
0:49.2	My religious and liberal opponent was successful in securing the aim of the federal government,
0:54.5	the silence of voice and the religious minority.
1:00.2	On WXUR, Carl McIntyre repeatedly broadcasts scathing screeds against the civil rights movement.
1:06.2	Then let the guilt lie squarely upon such philosophers as Martin Luther King and President Joe.
1:11.8	What did the Negro apologists of our time expect?
1:15.6	He espoused paranoid ideas of communist penetration into the US government.
1:19.7	Despite the Americans, what the world ought to see is that the communists are so wicked and so evil that men have...
1:27.5	And trumpeted anti-Semitic ideas.
1:29.7	The Jews at the present time are in darkness, are going back and unbelief.
1:35.2	But all of that was legal.
1:37.5	What did his station in was his lack of ideological balance.
	...

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