“News is a Weapon”: Domestic Radio Propaganda and Broadcast Journalism in America, 1939–1944

Abstract

On the morning of December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The United States Congress immediately reciprocated. Later that afternoon, President Roosevelt asked his press secretary, Stephen Early, to initiate actions assuring government control over one of America's existing commercial radio networks. Using material from the Roosevelt Library, the NBC Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Office of War Information papers, this article analyzes Roosevelt's request in the context of domestic radio propaganda planning at the start of the Second World War. It presents the first detailed account of the manner by which network executives successfully derailed the attempt to establish a domestic government radio network. Ultimately, the Roosevelt administration elected not to operate a domestic network for propaganda purposes because the commercial networks effectively performed that function. And the chief vehicle for conveying government-sanctioned (and censored) war-related information over the airwaves turned out not to be government propagandists, but rather the first generation of broadcast journalists.