Surrendering Freedom

Casualties of 9/11: Part Four

By Greg Guma

As the US entered World War I in 1917, Hiram Johnson, a US senator from California, issued a warning that went to the heart of the country’s predicament. "The first casualty when war comes is truth," he explained. Although he didn't mention it, the second casualty is just as obvious: freedom. After 9/11, both were offered up eagerly as the national media stoked primal fears, setting the stage for the most dangerous rollback in basic rights since the 1950s.

Consider what followed in the first few months of this "new kind of war": massive secret detentions, curbs on privacy and dissent, media outlets self-censoring their coverage. More than 1100 people were held without criminal charges, often on the basis of weak evidence. Under the hastily-passed USA Patriot Act, investigators were empowered to monitor talks between detainees -- whose names and alleged crimes were classified -- and their lawyers. Wire-tapping, e-mail surveillance, and secret searches all became easier. Solitary confinement and restrictions on visitors could now be imposed for a year, rather than the previous 120 days.

In Arkansas, an Uzbekistani woman was jailed for 40 days for being in a car with someone whose name was similar to someone on the FBI watch list. A young Egyptian who supposedly had a radio transmitter in his hotel room across from the World Trade Center was held for weeks. He turned out to be innocent, but before his release, he was "persuaded" to confess. Had he been tortured? It was a non-issue, news-wise. Meanwhile, the FBI publicly considered using a "truth serum" to crack recalcitrant suspects, and threatened to deport detained foreigners to countries that used torture.

Tom Ridge, the new Homeland Security Director, talked tough, calling all this "a permanent condition to which Americans must adjust." Equally disquieting, many of the ideas came from ultraconservative groups like the Federalist Society, which seized the chance to turn old wish lists into policy. Basically, the limits placed on the FBI and CIA 25 years earlier were being reversed. Beyond that, the wall between the two agencies was being broken down. Henceforth, the CIA would have an official role in deciding who was targeted inside the US and what information was collected. Other law enforcement agencies were obliged to give the Agency access to their information. Basically, the Bureau and the Agency could now work together on operations, including some against domestic political groups and individuals.

What groups? Officially, they were supposed to have connections to terrorists of foreign intelligence agencies. But Attorney General John Ashcroft clarified that. In December 2001, he explained: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists. They give ammunition to America's enemies." It was clearly a warning: this new security regime could easily be turned against almost any critic of the government.

Despite the signs, debate over how much freedom to sacrifice was little more than a sidebar to the war in Afghanistan, one small part of round the clock disaster coverage. TV shows telegraphed the main message: The War Room, America at War, Region in Conflict. Polls meanwhile reinforced the argument that most people accepted the situation, and trusted government to handle things. There was also the usual excuse: we'd better be safe -- that is, just accept the creeping implementation of police state tactics -- than sorry.

Many of these developments were mentioned by the press corps. But at the same time, they were explained away as part of a minimal and absolutely necessary response to the new terrorist threat. More to the point, major news outlets openly debated whether the public was being told too much.

Taking the cue, CNN Chair Walter Isaacson ordered his staff to "balance images of civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban harbors murderous terrorists," saying it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan." In a memo, he admonished reporters covering civilian deaths not to "forget it is that country's leaders who are responsible for the situation Afghanistan is now in," suggesting that journalists lay responsibility at the Taliban's door, not the US military's.

As Fairness and Accuracy in Media put it, if anything was perverse, "it's that one of the world's most powerful news outlets has instructed its journalists not to report Afghan civilian casualties without attempting to justify those deaths." CNN had essentially mandated that pro-US propaganda be included in the news, while rationalizing its decision to ignore excesses. The story was the same at Fox News, where news anchor Brit Hume wondered why journalists bothered covering civilian deaths. "The question I have," he said, "is civilian casualties are historically, by definition, a part of war, really. Should they be as big news as they've been?"

NPR's Mara Liasson and US News & World Report's Michael Barone went further, arguing that civilian deaths weren't news at all. What was? Apparently, rampant speculation on every imaginable catastrophe, keeping viewers in a permanent state of anxiety -- and hopefully, glued to the tube for the next live disaster.

An epidemic of self-censorship and convenient reality distortion spread across the country. In Panama City, Florida, a News Herald memo warned editors: "DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the US war on Afghanistan. Our sister paper in Fort Walton Beach has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails and the like. DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from the US war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT. The only exception is if the US hits an orphanage, school or similar facility and kills scores or hundreds of children."

The fact that truth had taken a back seat was not even disguised. As Hume told the New York Times, "Look, neutrality as a general principle is an appropriate concept for journalists who are covering institutions of some comparable quality." But, he added, "This is a conflict between the United States and murdering barbarians."

Hollywood also jumped on the bandwagon. Stars and heads of production companies conferred with government officials on how best to spread the official line. At the Institute for Creative Studies at the University of Southern California, Hollywood talent consulted with military brass to speculate about future attack scenarios.

At the same time, "inappropriate" comments brought a reprimand or worse. When Bill Maher, then host of TV's Politically Incorrect, said the World Trade Center terrorists might be more brave than the US military, several affiliates dropped the show and ABC boss Michael Eisner threatened to fire him. Eight months later, his show was abruptly canceled. As Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer warned, in times like these, "people have to watch what they say and watch what they do."

A new McCarthyism – call it fascism-lite – was on the rise. Following several incidents in which academics were reprimanded for expressing allegedly unpatriotic views, the American Association of University Professors pleaded for an end to an atmosphere where thinking out loud was considered subversive. But who was even listening? Well, clearly the government, which invoked the "national emergency" to violate even one of the most basic legal rights – attorney-client confidentiality. "If we can't speak with a client confidentially," warned Irwin Schwartz, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "we might not speak with him at all."

The new anti-terrorism law gave the government sweeping new powers to conduct searches and tap phones with only a suspicion of crime, rather than the old standard, probable cause. Government agents could now seize medical and student records, or track credit-card purchases and large cash transactions. Military tribunals could be used to try and sentence suspects without a jury or public access to the process. Any US attorney could get the FBI to launch its Carnivore Internet surveillance system to monitor a suspect's Internet surfing. "It's a very serious shift in policy and in American culture," noted Ken Gude, an analyst with the Center for National Security Studies. "We're getting to the point where it's guilt by association."                 

"If we give up our freedom, the terrorists have already won." That became the cliché of the moment. But the reality was much more unsettling: People were surrendering much of their freedom without seriously taking note -- and, as usual, the early winners were the US national security elite and their media enablers.

This is the conclusion of an essay adapted from Greg Guma’s 2003 book, Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization and What We Can Do.

Nexus of Infamy

Casualties of 9/11: Part Two

By Greg Guma

*****

On September 10, 2001, it looked like there was more than enough time to prepare for whatever came next. The next day, of course, many things changed. Like a volcanic eruption, predictable and yet inevitable, murderous assaults on symbols of US military and economic power shattered the landscape, rocked institutions, and altered how we would live for years to come. Some compared the September 11 attacks to Pearl Harbor, a day that would "live in infamy." Others pointed to the date itself -- 9/11 -- and called it an emergency wake-up call.

In less than an hour, on a sunny Tuesday, two commercial airline flights were hijacked, diverted, and crashed into the World Trade Center in the heart of New York's financial district. A third slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed before reaching its target, most likely the White House. Hundreds died immediately, and thousands more were killed in the fires and destruction that followed. As TV networks beamed images around the world, political leaders expressed outrage, pledging to track down the perpetrators and "bring them to justice." 

That night, the world mourned, and million prayed for salvation from the cycle of violence. No one took "credit" for the carnage, but the initial evidence pointed to the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden. The urge to go after so-called "rogue states" and their accomplices around the world was irresistible. The Bush administration expressed outrage and shock, claiming the attack could not have been predicted. 

Though not much noticed at the time, this was not the first September 11 that had left its mark on world history. In fact, the date marks crucial and revealing turning points in several US military engagements, as well as Islamic history and the development of Israel. That provided little consolation, but did suggest a curious historical nexus.

September 11, 1814, for example, was the day the US effectively secured its northern border by defeating the British in the Battle of Plattsburgh. Twenty-eight years later, it also marked a turning point in the US campaign to annex part of Mexico: San Antonio was captured by Mexican forces (they later retreated). In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt picked the same date to issue an attack order directed at German and Italian ships in US waters, one more step toward World War II.

The 1973 Chilean military coup, welcomed and secretly backed by the US, also climaxed on September 11. And, in 1990, President George Bush I chose the date to tell Congress that Iraq was threatening Saudi Arabia, thus expanding support for his decision to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

In more recent times, 9/11 played a role in the Middle East conflict. Exactly a year before the suicide attacks on the US, Jordanian authorities selected the date to bar the mayor of Um El Fahem, a Palestinian village, from entering Jordan, despite a valid entry visa. A member of the Palestinian Legislative Council was also banned, for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, the Saudi Ministry of Pilgrimage issued restrictions on visits by overseas groups to Mecca and Medina, important sites for followers of Muhammad.

If that isn't enough, the date also pops up in relation to nuclear weapons. September 11, 1996, was the day the UN approved the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, ending test explosions. Exactly 51 years earlier, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote a fateful letter to President Harry Truman. Noting that the atomic bomb, which had been used for the first time a month before, represented a dangerous "first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature," he warned that US superiority might not last. "If so," he wrote in 1945, "our method of approach to the Russians is a question of the most vital importance in the evolution of human progress." The Cold War was straight ahead.

Tomorrow: Warning Signs

This essay is adapted from Greg Guma’s 2003 book, Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization and What We Can Do.

Casualties of 9/11: Truth and Freedom

When the powerful feel they are under an effective attack and can find a convincing pretext, they rarely hesitate to use virtually any tactic to recapture hearts and minds.

***********

Part One

By Greg Guma

Late in the last century, those in charge of the "new world order" faced a mounting challenge to their planetary management. Whether it began with the disruption of a World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in late 1999, with the Zapatista rebellion -- launched on the very day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, or with the numerous local uprisings in bloom around the world, the message was obvious: The corporate-dominated Pax Americana promoted with the end of the Cold War was not "the end of history" or anything else. Superpower rivalry might be a thing of the past, but that did not mean the US would have an open-ended term as global CEO.

   By early 2001, the struggle had entered a new stage. Uprisings challenging privatization, low wages, structural adjustment, and other "globalization" policies were mounting throughout Central and South America. When leaders from the Western Hemisphere gathered in Quebec City to iron out details for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), massive protests on the street combined with widespread dissent inside the summit to derail the negotiations. Meanwhile, back in the US, doubts grew that President-select George W. Bush would soon succeed in winning "fast track" -- recently renamed "trade promotion authority."

     Unable to continue ignoring demands for change, the establishment was forced to respond. In June, at a G8 Summit of industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy, leaders professed concern -- or at least shed crocodile tears -- about poverty, debt, and environmental threats. Even Bush, still shopping for a mandate in the wake of his contested election, urged rich nations to give more grants to poorer ones. 

     At the same time, however, Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and other nervous cheerleaders for one world under free market capitalism went on the offense. Blair called the protesters who converged in Genoa "an anarchist traveling circus." Bush added that their anti-globalization crusade was actually hurting the poor. The predictable clash between activists and police also escalated to a new level: a direct assault on the Italian city's Independent Media Center, and the movement's first fatality. 

     Still, both responses -- the carrot and the stick -- betrayed a growing apprehension in the corridors of power. Well-laid plans were being placed in jeopardy. Regional cracks were also deepening, especially once Bush took office. In the first six months of his term, Europe broke with the US on missile defense, trade rules, the "war on drugs" in Colombia, and global warming. After shooting down a US spy plane -- and getting away with it -- China signed a treaty of friendship with Russia, including agreement on military policies that directly challenged the new administration. In the UN, the US was ejected from the Human Rights Commission. Global trade deals were going nowhere and NATO's future was up for discussion again.

     As summer waned, events suggested that the next months would be critical. In late September, for example, the anti-globalization movement was planning to converge again, this time on Washington, DC for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. But as history illustrates, when the powerful feel they are under an effective attack and can find a convincing pretext, they rarely hesitate to use virtually any tactic, from disinformation and agents provocateur to repression and premeditated violence, in order to recapture hearts and minds. 

Tomorrow: Nexus of Infamy
This article is adapted from Greg Guma’s 2003 book, Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization and What We Can Do. 

TV Time: Nixon and the Early Magic of the Tube

Although television had been around for decades, sets weren’t widely available until after World War II. At that point at least 70 new stations immediately went on the air. But the Federal Communications Commission quickly realized that the 11 available TV channels on the VHF band wouldn’t meet the expected demand and therefore put a four year freeze on new station licenses until it could sort things out. As a result, TV remained an infant medium until the FCC authorized dozens of ultra-high frequency (UHF) channels and lifted the freeze in 1952. 

By then, 15 million TV sets were in use and manufacturers were rushing to get more inexpensive models into as many private homes as possible.

The impacts were rapid, widespread and profound, breaking down social barriers, giving children an early glimpse of the adult world, demystifying relations between the sexes, and changing entertainment habits. But TV also posed a serious economic threat to radio and put hundreds of movie theaters out of business.

Combining visuals and sound, it was a highly effective way to shape public opinion with persuasive messages, misleading images, and outright propaganda. One person who exploited this potential early was Richard Nixon, by 1952 an ambitious and opportunistic anti-communist Senator embroiled in a fund-raising scandal after receiving the Republican nomination for Vice-President.

The GOP’s standard bearer, General Dwight Eisenhower, demanded that the political striver later known as Tricky Dick offer a public explanation over TV. He had been assured by his advisors that Nixon wouldn’t garner much support through such an appeal. But Nixon’s September 23 chat with the American people instead worked to his advantage, giving him an opportunity to reshape his persona and communicate his values.

Taking a page from radio evangelist Father Coughlin (see “When Radio Mattered”), Nixon was one of the first people to make political use of television to appeal directly to the public. Accused of accepting $18,000 in illegal campaign contributions, he gave a live address to the nation in which he revealed the results of an independent audit, provided a financial rundown of his assets and debts, openly solicited support, and cleverly protested that his wife wore a "respectable Republican cloth coat" rather than a fur. The one contribution he did acknowledge came from a Texas traveling salesman who gave his family a Cocker Spaniel. His daughter named the dog Checkers.

"The kids, like all kids, love the dog,” Nixon announced defiantly, “and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it." Simulcast on radio, the speech was a huge success, and Nixon, whom many expected to be dropped from the ticket, gained enough sympathy to remain Eisenhower’s running mate and ride the war hero’s coattails into the White House.

Under harsh TV lights, in black and white, his wife sitting uncomfortably in the background, Nixon projected the image of a hard-working, responsible and efficient realist, unafraid of opposition -- in fact, reconciled to it -- aggressive and clear-headed. At the very least he came across as committed, though the exact nature of the commitment was unclear. The style was self-important, even awkward. But it worked. He looked and sounded like a “man of the people,” an average guy, a believer in hard work and homespun values. 

Nixon instinctively understood that television is a showcase for values, which are even more important than the content itself. He knew that more than ideas or facts, how things appeared determined the support one could generate through mass media, especially television. It was basic advertising logic; making the sale depended on the product’s attractiveness, enhanced by the seller’s ability to sustain attention, build rapport and promote interest.

As a sales pitch, Nixon’s “Checkers” speech offered viewers a sincere and slightly offended candidate, an average middle class family man valiantly holding up under the stress of attacks by mean-spirited forces, someone the viewers could trust or perhaps even admire. Nixon made the sale that night and became one of the first public figures to reinvent himself through the new medium.

***

I was five at the time of Nixon’s first rehabilitation – remarkably, he managed the feat several more times during his tumultuous public life, plus once after his death -- and watched “Checkers” with my parents. They were loyal Republicans who collected “I like Ike” buttons, volunteered for local candidates, and warmly embraced the American Dream. Words like pacifism weren’t in their vocabulary, and the notion that something might be amiss with capitalism and the prevailing political system never came up. Despite any setbacks – the wartime draft that delayed dad’s legal career by five years, for instance, or the gangster-dominated textile unions that made things tough for my grandfather, who was part-owner of a clothing factory – as far as my folks were concerned the system worked well enough.

At that point I wasn’t paying much attention to politics. Nixon was just some guy on the tube, marginally interesting simply because he was there, somewhat sympathetic because he sounded so earnest, and yet, in the end, considerably less riveting than the average animal act on Ed Sullivan’s weekly revue. As a child of the emerging electronic age, what really grabbed me was TV’s seemingly endless supply of fantasies and personalities – Ernie Kovaks’ weird visual tricks and Jackie Gleason’s oversized hamming, Milton Berle’s egotistical swagger, the overdressed cowboy virtue of Hopalong Cassidy and outlandish mishaps of Lucy and Desi, Jack Webb’s “just the facts” deadpan, and Howdy Doody’s freckle-faced puppet enthusiasm. When the Lone Ranger and Tonto brought simple justice to TV’s squeaky clean Old West, I’d strap on my miniature gun belt and ride along.

One of the first shows that made an impression was called Winky Dink and You, a combination of animation and live action that may have been the first attempt at interactive video. To get involved, your parents had to buy a "Magic Screen" – AKA sheet of sticky acetate -- and a set of crayons from the producers. At several points in each episode, narrator Jack Barry would explain that Winky, a cartoon hero with a star-shaped head, needed help to get out of some fix. If you had the equipment, you could solve his problem by drawing a few lines. 

The show was a clever innovation by Barry and Dan Enright, who had been partners on radio and made an early jump to TV. Later, the duo would produce quiz shows classics like Tic Tac Dough, Concentration and Twenty One, the latter leading to a media scandal when it was discovered that some contestants got the questions in advance.

Years earlier, Barry and Enright had come up with a hit kids radio show called Juvenile Jury, originally aired on WOR radio in New York. Once Mutual Broadcasting took it national in 1946, Juvenile Jury became the first commercially sponsored network series and later, on NBC, one of the first programs to make the transition to TV. 

The premise was disarmingly simple: Barry, a quick-witted bachelor with an easy smile, would question and spar with a panel of five kids on topics submitted by the studio audience, selected viewers, or, on the TV version, other kids who described their “problems” in person. In that innocent time, questions like “should an eleven-year-old girl wear lipstick” or “who should administer a spanking, mom or dad” made for perfect family viewing. Putting the youngsters at ease before the broadcast, Barry could provoke spontaneous, often funny reactions.

In 1953, around the time that philosopher Alan Watts was beginning a sophisticated, philosophical talk show on KPFA in Berkeley, recruiters for the unabashedly lowbrow Juvenile Jury came to my elementary school in New York City looking for kids who were comfortable in public and had practical, easy-to-solve “problems.” A few weeks later I made my television debut.

As Barry introduced the five young jurists, each sitting behind a microphone-equipped tape dispenser (CIA take note), I waited nervously in the wings. It was one thing to talk about myself in private, and quite another to do it in front of an audience and cameras on live TV. But my desire for attention trumped my fears. I was six years old and ready for my close up.

After introducing the jury, five “adorable” children between four and ten years old, and a brief pitch by the Scotch girl, a perky blonde holding a tape dispenser and wearing a plaid kilt, Barry got down to business. First, he fielded a question from a member of the home audience. The answers were less important than the comic possibilities provided by kids trying to sound like adults. 

Barry had hosted the show for more than six years by this time and knew how to maintain the right tone, letting each kid have a say, conducting relaxed discussions, accepting their suggestions with mock seriousness, and summing up with a wholesome lesson. Most of the time, the jury’s verdict was some variation on themes like “be yourself” or “wait a while.”

Next, he explained that a regular feature of the show was to “let our younger listeners present their problems in person.” This was my cue. As Barry announced my name, I stepped out through the huge tape dispenser into glaring studio light and took my place on the witness stand. It was like Alice going through the looking glass. I was no longer just passively watching what happened on the other side but actually becoming part of an alternative, electronic world.

During the audition, I’d presented a simple problem. I am an excellent golfer, I complained, but my father won’t let me play with him on the adult course. At six, of course, my expertise was limited to the putt-putt variety, but that’s what made it funny. To enhance the comic possibilities, the producers decided to have me appear with a pint-sized golf bag and clubs slung across my shoulder. The plan was that Barry would ask me to demonstrate my swing.

So, there I was on live TV, talking with someone famous whom I’d been watching and hearing for years, amusing the studio audience and magically connecting with thousands of people in their homes across the country. It was like a drug that made you instantly high and incredibly self-confident. At that moment, an obsession with mass communication took hold.

When the cue came, I pulled out a club and took my stance, oblivious to the lights and cameras, completely into the experience. Up to that point it felt like a public audition to enter dad’s adult world. But the show was really about comedy, kids saying and doing amusing things, a primitive form of reality TV, and it was my turn to do the amusing.

I took a swing and almost whacked Jack Barry.

The audience roared. Seeing the dapper MC almost get his head used as a golf ball by a kid was apparently even funnier than the usual “mouths of babes” platitudes. Once again, live TV had delivered something spontaneous – and borderline dangerous. For an instant I was worried. After all, I’d almost beaned the master of ceremonies. But it quickly became obvious that the audience reaction was positive, and Jack wasn’t too upset, so I relaxed and enjoyed the attention. Completely by accident I’d turned my simple demonstration into a moment of physical comedy. 

I’d missed the host but hit the target and my life would never be the same.

NEXT: Managing Pacifica - How the Journey Began

To table of contents: Planet Pacifica 

From Dialogue to Division: When Radio Mattered

Lew Hill, founder of Pacifica Radio, was the son of an Oklahoma millionaire. Attending Stanford University, he studied Kierkegaard and Gandhi, became a conscientious objector, and conceived the idea for a pacifist-controlled radio station while working at a remote, church-funded Civilian Public Service camp in Coleville, California, one of many set up for those refusing to fight in World War II. KPFA, the first Pacifica station, went on the air in April 1949, initially reaching relatively few people in the San Francisco Bay Area on the FM dial.

These were the boomer years, a time of anticommunist fever, later renamed the McCarthy era after the unscrupulous Wisconsin Senator who claimed in 1950 that 205 Communists infested the State Department (and that was just his warm up act), a time when Hollywood screenwriters were jailed for refusing to discuss their political activities with red-hunting congressmen. In fact, during KPFA’s first months on the air, union leader Harry Bridges was imprisoned for lying about his ties with the Communist Party, and a dozen California Communist leaders were convicted for violating the Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government. 

But for Hill and other early Pacificans the purpose of the new station was dialogue not revolution, and the Pacifist ideology that had inspired its birth played a marginal role as it struggled to establish itself in Berkeley’s then relatively insular university community.

By this point, commercial broadcasting had been around for almost thirty years. Lee DeForest, the controversial “father of radio,” who spent millions in court trying to validate his patents, conducted the crucial tests on trains and boats, and finally began distributing news and opera in 1916 from an experimental radio station located in the High Bridge section of New York City. He later moved his transmitter to San Francisco and installed it in the wings of the California Theatre to broadcast orchestra performances, then took his fledgling station to Berkeley, where it lasted less than a year.

American Telephone & Telegraph was another early entrant, transmitting signals across the Potomac River for the US Navy, while the Marconi companies used a low-powered vacuum-tube transmitter to send audio from Aldine in New Jersey to David Sarnoff aboard the Bunker Hill off the coast of New York. Thirteen years later Sarnoff would become president of the Radio Corporation of America.

The early experimenting ended abruptly on April 6, 1917, when the United States entered World War I and all stations not needed for the war effort were shut down. It remained illegal for the general public to hear radio transmissions until the fighting ended. During this period, the industry was placed under government control and the Navy Department tried to convert it into a permanent public monopoly, quietly purchasing Federal Telegraph and Marconi stations. When the US Congress found out about that after the war, the Navy was ordered to return the stations to private owners. 

Government pressure also led to the sale of the British-managed Marconi stations to General Electric, already a big US electrical firm and poised to dominate international radio communications. It soon formed a new company for that precise purpose. GE’s patriotically named Radio Corporation of America, soon known worldwide as RCA, made its debut on July 2, 1921 with the broadcast of a heavyweight boxing championship, Jack Dempsey’s defeat of Georges Carpentier in Hoboken. Within a year, RCA was building a national consumer market fueled by advertising.

For a while most programming contained no commercials and many entertainers performed for free. But the next decade featured a battle for dominance by some of the largest companies in the United States that eventually turned radio into a vehicle for superficial comedy, big bands, and often unprincipled advertisers. In 1931, the father of radio publicly voiced his disgust, describing commercial broadcasting as a “national disgrace.” But DeForest was also conservative Republican and fervent anticommunist who called Franklin Roosevelt the “first fascist president,” lobbied Congress against “socialized medicine” and federally subsidized housing, and, in 1953, cancelled his subscription to The Nation magazine on the grounds that it was “lousy with treason.” In any case, the public flocking to radio didn’t much care what its cranky “father” thought.

By 1941, more than 13 million radios a year were being sold – that is, until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December and a World War II ban on non-essential electronic manufacturing drastically reduced production. After the war, of course, the industry grew like a teenager on steroids; Manufacturing exploded, automakers installed millions of sets, and the number of AM stations doubled to 2000 in less than three years. By 1949, radio’s advertising income reached $200 million, over 90 percent of all US households had receivers, and a poll reported that two thirds of the American people regarded the medium as their primary source of news.

From the start, the US government resisted proposals designed to require balance and accuracy on the air, even though prominent figures recognized the danger of monopoly and the power of propaganda. In 1922, no less than the president of GE warned Europe about the downside of radio, urging nations to stop hurling insults at each other "in furious language." Five years later, the League of Nations passed a resolution opposing "obviously inaccurate, highly exaggerated, or deliberately distorted" news, urging the press not to undermine international peace. By the early 30s, the International Federation of Journalists had established a tribunal to deal with broadcasting that promoted hate and violence. Still, the prevailing argument in the US was that only private-sector ownership could protect the so-called "free marketplace of ideas.”

Fundamentalist Christians took early advantage of the opening, jumping into broadcasting even before federal regulation could be developed. By 1925, more than 10 percent of all stations were licensed to religious organizations. Starting with radio evangelism, these media radicals subsequently perfected the use of each new technology to influence opinion, win elections, and hammer home their theology. One of the first was Aimee Semple McPherson, who pioneered the approach on a powerful Los Angeles' radio station. Broadcasting from her temple, McPherson styled herself a modern-day Joan of Arc in a titanic struggle against communism.

Her crusade reached the boiling point in 1934 during the insurgent Democratic gubernatorial campaign of Upton Sinclair. The socialist author of The Jungle and other novels about the excesses of capitalism had pledged to "end poverty in California," but the evangelist, in an alliance with Republican leaders, Hollywood propagandists and political consultants, redefined the race in apocalyptic terms. "Someone has cast in the poison herb," McPherson bellowed on the Sunday before Election Day, "and if we eat thereof we shall all perish and the glory of our nation as it has stood through the years shall perish with us." 

Sinclair, at first the front runner in an era of mass unemployment and hard times, became the target of the nation’s first full-fledged "media campaign" and ultimately lost by 200,000 votes. McPherson had effectively seized on growing fears of revolution, convincing her flock – many of them poor – that the real enemy was satanic communism and its Democratic messenger.

First appearing on CBS stations in 1930, Father Charles Coughlin built a similarly ardent following with his volatile mixture of populism and nationalism. When CBS management insisted that he stop railing against “international bankers,” the evangelist appealed directly to his listeners, who sent more than a million letters of protest to the network. CBS responded by replacing all paid religious broadcasts with Church of the Air, a show that offered free, rotating air time to speakers from the three “major” faiths. 

This became a standard media approach with religious groups. But it didn’t deter Coughlin, who created his own network and turned even more political, eventually drifting toward fascism. Along the way – until he lost favor in World War II -- he suggested that “Christians suffer more at the hands of the Reds than Jews do in the Third Reich” and that Nazi Germany had to protect itself from Jewish communists who were influencing radio, journalism and finance. Attempts to censor him were often decried as “Jewish terrorism.”

For Lew Hill, interest in launching a radio station dated back to his time at the Coleville Public Service Camp in California, but was further stimulated by a stint announcing on the air at WINX in Washington DC toward the end of the war. Working there also brought him together with Joy Cole, a kindred spirit from an old American family who shared his anti-war sentiments and desire to create a better world. They married in 1944. But Lew couldn’t abide the restrictions and distortions that had become commonplace in commercial radio by this time, and his qualms ultimately became intolerable in May 1945, when he was handed a story about “the people at Tule Lake.”

He knew what that euphemistic phrase really meant. Tule Lake was the site of one of the most infamous internment camps for Japanese Americans during the war, a so-called "segregation camp" in northern California that warehoused more than 18,000 people for several years. In all, about 120,000 US citizens of Japanese ancestry were taken from their homes and imprisoned in remote detention centers. The Tule Lake camp had just closed but Lew, who knew about it from working as a war resister 300 miles away, refused to read what he considered a misleading report and turned in his resignation.

A year later, shortly after the Hills moved to San Francisco, he submitted his proposal for a radio station to the Federal Communications Commission and wrote an initial fundraising prospectus. The basic idea was that people who were committed to nonviolence could reach beyond the choir, beyond ivory tower intellectuals and pacifist war resisters, and reach the “average man” by bonding with the community through a station. “Pacifica Foundation has been organized to begin this job,” his description proclaimed. In what became the single most important document in Pacifica history, he outlined the purposes of the new educational foundation in a series of bold, idealistic statements that remained central to its self-image for the next six decades.

At the core, Lew Hill’s vision was that KPFA would “engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and color.” It would “gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all such groups,” he wrote, “and promote the study of political and economic problems, and the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms.” 

And how would this happen? Through dialogue – diverse groups openly communicating with each other on the air. The objective, he explained, wasn’t to discover and convey indisputable truths but rather to nurture an open exchange of ideas that could help people come to know each other as human beings, dialogue that demonstrated the possibility of peace in practice.

By the time I became CEO more than half a century later Pacifica had evolved into something different: progressive radio, a source of “alternative” news and left-wing viewpoints, a platform for local constituencies, identity politics, and too often “politically correct” wisdom, as well as the site of angry and endless internal bickering over process, ideology, air-time and assigning blame that effectively prevented what had become a national network from making an impact on public discourse or, as Lew Hill more modestly hoped, creating constructive connections between people.

Despite altruistic intentions, there was ambiguity from the start. The goals, at least when Lew put them in writing, tended to shift with his audience. For instance, in pitches to the Ford Foundation and a 1952 book, Voluntary Listener Sponsorship: A Report to Educational Broadcasters on the Experiment at KPFA, he dropped words like “pacifism” and “peace” and replaced them with “personal freedom” and “imagination.” Rather than bonding with the community by discussing the local and familiar, he proposed that the station offer “serious cultural broadcasting” in order to secure the support of two percent of the area’s total FM audience. This two percent formula became central to his theory of sustainable listener “sponsorship” through voluntary subscriptions. For the first five years, however, not nearly enough listeners sent in money and the station depended mainly on wealthy benefactors and major foundations.

As Matthew Lazar explained years later in Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network, early Pacifica announcers would boast often that, as an advertisement-free station, KPFA didn’t need to appease commercial influences. “But this freedom did not protect Lew Hill and his band of utopians from the strict ideological requirements of the liberal corporate state,” Lazar wrote. “Nor did it inure Pacifica from the influence of the class able and willing to pay for commercial-free radio.”

Neither was the Bay Area radio experiment protected from the impact of television, which would soon transform communication and human consciousness itself.

NEXT IN THE SERIES: Rise of the Tube

To table of contents: Planet Pacifica