Sure, but wartime censorship was not the framework I meant. Standards of decency and professional standards for reporting facts were more what I had in mind. Such standards are hard to craft and difficult to administer, but they aim to promote responsible use of powerful media.
Sure, but wartime censorship was not the framework I meant. Standards of decency and professional standards for reporting facts were more what I had in mind. Such standards are hard to craft and difficult to administer, but they aim to promote responsible use of powerful media.
Coughlin was before the war, but getting him off the air was part of the commercial transformation of radio. Before licensing, anyone could set up a transmitter. In fact, that's how it started, with some amateurs broadcasting music to patients in hospitals. Even after radio spectrum was licensed and regulated, radio was still pretty wide open. As radio became more commercially important, it developed a different style, especially once the big networks dominated programming. A certain style of radio, like that of Coughlin, was suppressed, though not always by such dramatic means. I gather that's when the FCC started adding value to the community to the criteria for holding a license.
Sure, but wartime censorship was not the framework I meant. Standards of decency and professional standards for reporting facts were more what I had in mind. Such standards are hard to craft and difficult to administer, but they aim to promote responsible use of powerful media.
Coughlin was before the war, but getting him off the air was part of the commercial transformation of radio. Before licensing, anyone could set up a transmitter. In fact, that's how it started, with some amateurs broadcasting music to patients in hospitals. Even after radio spectrum was licensed and regulated, radio was still pretty wide open. As radio became more commercially important, it developed a different style, especially once the big networks dominated programming. A certain style of radio, like that of Coughlin, was suppressed, though not always by such dramatic means. I gather that's when the FCC started adding value to the community to the criteria for holding a license.
Thanks for the additional detail.
I also learned his name was pronounced Cawg-lin. That's what Fortune magazine claimed in an article on him back in the 1930s.