AMERICAN RADIO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 March 1939, Page 8

AMERICAN RADIO

FREE SPEECH UNDER FIRE.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN RIGHT ' AND LEFT.

The right of free speech has become a Question whether the guarantee of live issue in this “land of the free over the Constitution applies without abridgment to broadcasting, stated the New York correspondent of the ‘‘Sunday Times” recently. Twice within the past month the right to broadcast has been denied to prominent persons, once to Father Coughlin and another time to Representative Dies, a member of the Congress. In the case of the priest, he was refused facilities when he declined to submit in advance a copy of his address. A speech by Mr Dies did not go on ’the air because the owners of the broadcasting stations decided that his subject was of too controversial a nature. , Father Coughlin, under the banner of “social justice,” has for the past five years been holding forth most Sunday afternoons on economics, politics and reforms. He has much of the demagogue, and many Roman Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, are out of sympathy with him. He became involved in his present controversy through a speech in which he not only condemned the anti-Jewish riots in Germany, but also incorporated an attack upon the Jews as the prime movers in the Bolshevik revolution and in world Communism. The .broadcasting station took the unprecedented steps of immediately following his address with another, in which the speaker, a Jew, pointed out what he claimed to be misstatements and untruths in the priest’s remarks. The following week an advance copy of his talk was asked for.

Mr Dies, a Democrat from Texas, is chairman of a Congress committee officially appointed to investigate unAmerican organisations and their activities. He has been under constant attack by the Administration, attacks in which members of the Cabinet, such as Miss Perkins and Mr Ickes and even the President, have participated. Mr Roosevelt was provoked because the Dies Committee investigated Governor Murphy’s actions in the sit-down strikes in Michigan, and the others have been angered by evidence which has been collected against the Leftists. So, when Mr Dies came to New York to make a speech in which he had some criticism of Miss Perkins and Mr Ickes, there was no radio time to be purchased by the society sponsoring his address. Broadcasting being a private industry in the United States, time is purchased. Father Coughlin pays for his. During a political campaign the party with the heaviest purse speaks the most. The one general exception is that members of the Administration get free time. That’s the rub. Held over the heads of the owners of broadcasting facilities is 'a club —the Federal Radio Commission—which issues licences and has the power of suspending or revoking them. As a result a situation has developed wherein agents ofthe Administration use the air waves for dissemination of propaganda, for attacks on individuals and classes, and for giving the Administration’s side of controversial subjects. And they do so without payment. Others must pay for the privilege of speaking and be subject to the censorship of the owners of the broadcasting stations. The procedure is best illustrated by an actual case which occurred. A representative of the newspapers was asked to take part in a symposium talk on the business outlook. He was to sneak for two minutes. He prepared 500 words to the effect that the outlook was poor, and would continue so till freedom of enterprise had been restored. He refused to tone down his text when the station requested. He was then told that if he persisted in his remarks the station would have to‘but on a member of the Administration to counteract him. He persisted, and none other than the Secretary of Commerce, Mr Roper, spoke for ten minutes before him. Today, the Coughlin-Dies incidents have dragged this state of affairs into the open, and have made it a part of the general struggle going on between the Right and the Left.