4.6 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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? This week, 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 reporter Katie Thornton explains how, in the post-war and Civil Rights period, the US government encouraged more diverse viewpoints on the airwaves — until it didn’t. Plus, the technological and legal changes that led to conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh taking over the airwaves.
This episode is an adaptation of our latest series, The Divided Dial. You can listen to the full series here. The Divided Dial is reported and hosted by journalist and Fulbright Fellow Katie Thornton. 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. With support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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0:00.0 | On this week's on the media, 17 of the nation's top 20 most listen to talk radio hosts are conservative. |
0:07.5 | Only one is progressive. |
0:09.2 | How did the public airwaves come to be so politically lopsided? |
0:13.9 | If you turn the country station on and you hear Beethoven's death, |
0:18.0 | you're going to be confused. Radio techists think that people feel the same way about talk. |
0:21.8 | Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program, a program exclusively designed for rich conservatives |
0:26.4 | and right-minded Republicans and those who want to be either or both. |
0:29.5 | We sold it as news from a biblical worldview, but it was funny how that biblical worldview |
0:36.0 | seemed to line up with Republican party politics. |
0:39.3 | Why would we want to have any Democrats on the right losers? |
0:41.9 | They come never going to speak. |
0:43.4 | I am a working mother. |
0:44.9 | Yeah. |
0:45.7 | And I kids are fine. |
0:47.2 | They are not. |
0:48.1 | Who's raising them? |
0:48.8 | You don't have them. |
0:50.0 | The babysitter's gone. |
0:51.2 | If you ain't no mama, get off my program. |
0:53.7 | You liberal. |
0:55.4 | It's all coming up after this. |
1:00.2 | From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. |
... |
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