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Recently, Uri Berliner, longtime senior business editor and reporter at National Public Radio, wrote an essay criticizing NPR’s absence of viewpoint diversity in that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.” Nothing is intrinsically wrong with that except that NPR receives a significant portion of its budget from federal government sources. A firestorm emerged from the essay, and Berliner resigned, but the episode raises a question: What should the relationship between the media and the state be?
There is nothing new nor particularly improper about a publication or news organization having an ideological or political slant. In the 1800s, political parties started many, if not most, American newspapers. A 1937 study revealed that 60 U.S. newspaper mastheads included the word Democrat, 45 included Republican, and 22 included Independent. Likewise, no one expects the “Nation” and “National Review” magazines to have the same political slant.
In August 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, Thomas Grandin, a journalist and future war correspondent, wrote a short book titled “The Political Use of Radio.” It outlined the impact the then-newfangled medium had on national political discourse. In totalitarian Germany, Italy and Soviet Russia, the state monopolized radio transmissions. Radio receivers were widely distributed in “cafes, schools and public squares” and meant to be ever present to disseminate government propaganda. Listening to unauthorized radio transmissions was a punishable offense.
French radio was partially privately owned and partly state-run. Nevertheless, all news broadcasts were subject to government “verification.” The British Broadcasting Corp. monopolized airwaves in the United Kingdom, although Grandin characterized state censorship as “extremely gentle.”
American radio was privately owned. In 1937, some representatives in Congress worked to establish a U.S. government-owned radio station to counter anti-democratic short-wave transmission to Latin America from fascist powers. American radio executives strongly objected to a government-owned radio station. An industry spokesman denounced it as “suggesting a Nazi philosophy” and insisting that private facilities would always be at the disposal of the ruling administration. Interestingly, the United States’ Federal Communications Commission, which controlled all domestic short-wave licenses, adopted a rule requiring all American transmission to promote “good will” among nations and declared itself the judge of what constituted such “good will.”
Government and news media will always be connected, as they have an inherently symbiotic relationship. We tend to share the American prejudice of 85 years ago for private ownership.•
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Bohanon and Horowitz are professors of economics at Ball State University. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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