Journalism History and Conservative Erasure

Abstract

Journalism history's object of analysis has been increasingly politicized from without, eclipsed by a modern conservative movement that has successfully mobilized around a belief in a “liberal media.” The elision of right-wing forms of journalism and media criticism has been a constitutive feature of the field to date, as evidenced by gaps in the critical interventions of James Carey. Narrating the long history of conservative news media criticism from the 1930s through the emergence of Accuracy in Media in the early 1970s serves to historicize the contemporary conservative “echo chamber” and demonstrates the historiographical value of an expanded conception of “journalism” as a culturally embedded and politically contested category, simultaneously defined from within and without the profession.

Notes

1 For an overview of these debates, see John Nerone, “Genres of Journalism History,” Communication Review 13, no. 1 (2010): 15–26.

2 See Amber Rosessner, Rick Popp, Brian Creech, and Fred Blevens, “‘A Measure of Theory?’: Considering the Role of Theory in Media History,” American Journalism 30, no. 2 (2013): 260–278.

3 See John Nerone, “Does Journalism History Matter?” American Journalism 28, no. 4 (Summer 2011): 7–27.

4 For sociological studies, see especially Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), and Ronald Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley, “The Hermeneutics of Hannity: Format Innovation in the Space of Opinion after September 11,” Cultural Sociology 8, no. 3 (September 2014): 240–257. For a rare exception from the field of journalism history, see James Brian McPherson, The Conservative Resurgence and the Press: The Media's Role in the Rise of the Right (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008).

5 James W. Carey, “The Problem of Journalism History,” Journalism History 1, no. 1 (Spring 1974): 3–5, 27.

6 Carey resisted credit for this broadening. In a 1985 interview with Journalism History founding editor Tom Reilly, Carey attributed the democratization of journalism history to broader historical forces empowering historians of traditionally marginalized communities. See “‘Putting the World at Peril’: A Conversation with James W. Carey,” in James Carey: A Critical Reader, edited by Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 95–116: 107.

7 A search of American Journalism yields three hits for Lewis, all three passing references—one critical (Krompak, 1987), one neutral (Simpson, 1995), and one referring to his archived papers (Bratslavsky, 2015). A search of Journalism History yields seven hits—two referring to archival papers or recordings (Allen, 1996; Hoffman, 1999), one neutral passing reference in an article (O'Rourke, 1982), and four passing references in book reviews from the 1970s and 1980s.

8 See Giraud Chester, “What Constitutes Irresponsibility on the Air?: A Case Study,” Public Opinion Quarterly (Spring 1949), 73–82; Sidney Reisberg, “Fulton Lewis, Jr.: An Analysis of News Commentary” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1952).

9 For one of the few accounts of Fulton Lewis Jr. by a journalism historian, see David H. Culbert, News for Everyman: Radio and Foreign Affairs in Thirties America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976). Culbert was an early collaborator on a documentary film project that was critical of US media coverage of the Vietnam War, a film that was ultimately titled Television's Vietnam and distributed by conservative media watchdog Accuracy in Media. For accounts that nevertheless depict Lewis more as a reactionary propagandist than journalist, see Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), and Matthew Cecil, Hoover's FBI and the Fourth Estate: The Campaign to Control the Press (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014).

10 Seldes, who published an influential journal of media criticism called In Fact, first criticized Lewis in the May 11, 1942, issue. The first major coverage of Lewis by Seldes came in the July 12, 1943, issue of In Fact, which devoted two pages to exposing his connections with the National Association of Manufacturers and the DuPont campaign for “Free Enterprise.” For more on the role the DuPont campaign, and NAM, played in fostering the modern conservative movement, see Kim Philips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 3–25.

11 “Fulton Lewis, Jr., RIP,” National Review, September 6, 1966, 872–873.

12 For an extremely hagiographic and promotional biography of Lewis, see Booton Herndon, The Story of Fulton Lewis, Jr.: Praised and Damned (Washington, DC: Human Events, 1958). For a more critical contemporary biography, which takes into account George Seldes's criticisms, see Edwin A. Lahey, “Bedside Manner in Radio,” in Molders of Opinion, edited by David Bulman (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1945), 71–81.

13 The term conservative throughout this essay refers not to a general support for maintenance of the status quo, but rather to affiliation with groups or tendencies associated with the modern conservative movement, a distinct if sprawling political project against Keynesian liberalism (often equated with leftism or socialism among movement activists), which has come under increased investigation by historians in the past two decades. For an overview of the literature this essay draws from, see especially Kim Phillips-Fein, “Conservatism: A State of the Field,” Journal of American History (December 2011): 723–743. In it, Phillips-Fein notes, “The role of mass media in the creation of the Right also has not yet received full attention from historians” (735). Journalism historians ought to play a central role in remedying this historiographical oversight.

14 See Nerone, “Does Journalism History Matter?,” 16, 18.

15 Raymond Williams, “Structures of Feeling,” in Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 128–135; 129, 132. Williams coined the phrase “structures of feeling” in The Long Revolution (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961), which Carey cited in his 1974 essay, but Williams would more fully elaborate the concept in an eponymous essay published as part of Marxism and Literature in 1977.

16 The history of conservative media criticism has recently become a focus of a growing number of journalism historians. See especially William Gillis, “The Anti-Semitic Roots of the ‘Liberal News Media’ Critique,” American Journalism 34, no. 3 (2017): 262–288; Julie B. Lane, “Positioning for Battle: The Ideological Struggle over Senator Joseph McCarthy and the American Establishment,” American Journalism 33, no. 1 (2016): 61–85; and Christopher Cimaglio, “‘A Tiny and Closed Fraternity of Privileged Men’: The Nixon-Agnew Antimedia Campaign and the Liberal Roots of US Conservative ‘Liberal Media’ Critique,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 119. See also Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

17 James W. Carey, “Journalism and Criticism: The Case of an Undeveloped Profession,” Review of Politics 36, no. 2 (April 1974): 227–249.

18 Ibid., 241.

19 Ibid., 240.

20 Ibid., 244.

21 Ibid.

22 Carey's vision of a shared community between the press and its public reflected his desire for public discourse to take the shape of a rational public sphere like that idealized by Jürgen Habermas. For a fuller reflection of Carey's vision for how the press and public ought to interact, see especially James Carey, “The Press, Public Opinion, and Public Discourse: On the Edge of the Postmodern,” in Munson and Warren, 228–257. Carey was not wrong to see conservative media criticism as a threat to this ideal, but this essay contends that historical understanding is better served by a broader conception of “criticism.”

23 The use of the term imagined throughout this essay is not to be equated with the term imaginary. Rather, akin to the term's use by nationalism theorist Benedict Anderson, it is intended to refer to the sense of communion between spatially diffuse political actors in spite of the fact that they are unlikely to ever meet one another. The proliferation of publications and commentators promoting the notion of a left-biased media infused conservative print culture with a sense of belonging to an imagined media critical community. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006 [1983]), 6.

24 For an excellent account of the emergence of “propaganda consciousness” as it relates to liberal anxieties about the capacity of the public to govern, see Brett Gary, The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War I to the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). For a thorough institutional history of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, see J. Michael Sproule, Propaganda and Democracy: The American Experience of Media and Mass Persuasion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

25 See “Wartime Espionage Agents Being Organized by Private Outfit to Spy on ‘Subversives,’” In Fact, vol. 17, no. 3 (April 19, 1948), 3.

26 For Seldes's account of the founding mission of In Fact, see “For Summer Activity, We Suggest: In Fact,” In Fact, vol. 1, no. 3 (June 17, 1940), 4.

27 “Why Headlines?” Headlines, and What's Behind Them, vol. 1, no. 1 (July 30, 1938), 4; emphasis in original.

28 The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, which attempted to mask its progressivism with scientistic rhetoric, described the American public as “beset by a confusion of conflicting propagandas” and pledged to offer pedagogical methods designed to help the public “recognize propaganda, to analyze, and to appraise it.” See “Announcement,” Propaganda Analysis, vol. 1, no. 1 (October 1937), 1. The group's primary funder, progressive merchant Edward A. Filene, described this approach as teaching the public “how to think,” as opposed to “what to think.” See untitled proposal by Edward Filene, May 13, 1937; box 87, folder “Edward A. Filene (1936–38); Dr. Alfred McClung Lee Collection; Brooklyn College Archives.

29 “Warning!” Headlines, and What's Behind Them, vol. 1, no. 1 (July 30, 1938), 7.

30 Seldes himself chronicled this phenomenon. See “Wartime Espionage Agents Being Organized by Private Outfit to Spy on ‘Subversives,’” In Fact, vol. 17, no. 3 (April 19, 1948), 2–4.

31 Victor Pickard, America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 124–135.

32 Counterattack often criticized the New York Times’s coverage of international communism and its putative unwillingness to cover its domestic machinations. See, for example, the January 23 and April 9, 1948, issues. It also made sure to offer praise where its editors saw praise due—for example, congratulating the Times for refusing to run an advertisement by an alleged communist front organization in the newsletter's October 7, 1949, issue. Counterattack, in its July 1, 1949, issue, accused CBS of being the most communist-friendly radio network.

33 Both de Toledano and Lyons honed their media criticism skills at New Leader, which seemed to fixate on discrediting the media criticism of George Seldes in the 1940s. See especially Ralph de Toledano, “‘In Fact’—Dope Sheet for the Masses—New Masses Style,” New Leader, May 3, 1941, 4; James A. Wechsler, “The Facts about In Fact,” April 22, 1944, 9; Eugene Lyons, “I Expose Another ‘Fascist’: One ‘Red-baiter’ Debunks Another,” June 23, 1945, 9. In addition to these full articles, Seldes was mentioned unfavorably in the pages of New Leader no fewer than fifteen times between 1940 and 1951.

34 Memorandum from T. C. Kirkpatrick to Alfred Kohlberg, John G. Keenan, William F. Higgins, Rev. John F. Cronin, and Isaac Don Levine, December 13, 1946, 1; box 19, folder 37; TAM.148, Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York University (TAM).

35 “Subject: George Seldes,” July 25, 1946; box 5, folder 30; TAM.148, Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack, TAM. Further research materials attempting to expose Seldes's personal foibles and political affiliations can be found in box 5, folder 31.

36 Telegram from Isaac Don Levine to Fulton Lewis Jr., March 15, 1947; Part I, box 81, folder “‘In Fact,’ 1947”; Fulton Lewis Jr. Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University (SU).

37 Letter from Isaac Don Levine to Fulton Lewis Jr., May 3, 1947; Part I, box 81, folder “‘In Fact,’ 1947”; Fulton Lewis Jr. Papers, SU. Plain Talk’s circulation was reportedly 9,700 in 1950, its third and final year of publication. See Ronald Lora and William Henry Longton, eds., The Conservative Press in Twentieth-century America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999), 469.

38 For a thorough study of the press's role in promoting and resisting McCarthyism, see Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).

39 In her comprehensive edited collection of McCarthy-era primary sources, preeminent McCarthy-era historian Ellen Schrecker excerpts the Lillian Hellman, Lena Horne, and Joe Julian entries from the report's index of names but does not quote from the introduction. See The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1994), 217–222. The list appears to have outweighed the introduction from the start. Within a matter of months, the report's authors found themselves on the defensive and “urged” subscribers of their newsletter to “reread the introduction to RED CHANNELS” for clarity as to the report's intentions. See Counterattack, letter no. 172, September 13, 1950, 3.

40 American Business Consultants, Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television (New York: Counterattack, 1950), 1.

41 Red Channels, 2–3.

42 These early theories were used as a foil by later media reception theorists. See especially “Between Media and Mass,” the introduction to Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications (New York: Free Press, 1955). For a helpful account of that introduction's outsized influence in the field of mass communications, see Jefferson Pooley, “Fifteen Pages That Shook the Field: Personal Influence, Edward Shils, and the Remembered History of Mass Communication Research,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 608 (November 2006): 1–27.

43 Likewise, the so-called magic bullet theory never fully conveyed the substantially more nuanced media reception assumptions of early progressive media critics. See J. Michael Sproule, “Progressive Propaganda Critics and the Magic Bullet Myth,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6, no. 3 (1989): 225–246.

44 Red Channels, 1. Within a matter of months, placed on the defensive by scathing critiques in the press, the authors relied on this rhetorical loophole to escape responsibility for the blacklisting of television actress Jean Muir. Writing in their weekly newsletter, “NO individual should have the right to ‘absolve’ or convict anyone, in or out of radio, of pro-Communist leanings… When all the facts are brought out… as they should be… the public will decide such issues. No one else is qualified to do so.” See Counterattack, letter no. 172, September 13, 1950, 2.

45 Alluding to the report's public address, the authors would later argue that the report was never intended to serve as an industry blacklist, while on the very same page stating: “It is Counterattack’s stand that no sponsor of any radio or TV program should have a totalitarian of any kind on the air.” See Counterattack, letter no. 172, September 13, 1950, 5. I am not supporting the authors' contention that the report is not intended as a blacklist—I am only suggesting that it is not merely a blacklist and that it is more than a blacklist.

46 Counterattack, letter no. 172, September 13, 1950, 5.

47 Counterattack, letter no. 166, July 28, 1950, 2.

48 H. L. Hunt, “Famous Wildcatter Finds Word to Help Bewildered World: It Is ‘Constructive,’” Shreveport Times, December 3, 1950.

49 While it might be tempting to see Smoot's FBI connection as further evidence of J. Edgar Hoover's well-documented provision of information subsidies to the right anti-communist movement—see especially Matthew Cecil, Hoover's FBI and the Fourth Estate (2014)—the FBI files of both H. L. Hunt and Dan Smoot reveal that the bureau was highly distrustful of and unwilling to collaborate with both men. Their files, along with those of many other right anti-communists of the era, can be accessed via the Ernie Lazar FOIA Collection, https://archive.org/details/lazarfoia.

50 For Hunt's account of the history of Facts Forum's growth, see H. L. Hunt, “Background of Facts Forum,” n.d., Box 93, Folder 14, Herbert Philbrick Papers, Library of Congress. The national membership figures in 1952 were reported in Worth Gatewood, “‘Richest Man in US’ Publicity-shy Texas Oil Jillionaire Boosts Facts Forum and MacArthur,” Omaha World-Herald Magazine, July 13, 1952, 4, 6.

51 Figures are based on a thorough review of issues of Facts Forum News, which Facts Forum published from February 1952 to December 1956. From 1952 through 1953, the newsletter regularly reported on assorted local activities, with the focus gradually shifting toward transcriptions of the organization's many radio and television programs. In February 1954, the publication underwent a format change, adding color and magazine-style features that would characterize the publication until its final issue.

52 At first, the Facts Forum letter-writing contests offered monetary awards for the top four letters written by forum participants and published in local newspapers. In April 1952, the rules changed to award four letters “espousing the liberal side of Facts Forum questions” and four “advocating the conservation or constructive side” (constructive was H. L. Hunt's preferred term for conservative). Despite this change, no “liberal” letters were submitted for the May 1952 contest, and by June 1952 the experiment with ideological labeling was abandoned: “Since there have been few entries for the liberal side on Facts Forum questions, the contest is being changed back to its former status, without designation as to liberal or constructive point of view.” See Facts Forum News, June 3, 1952, 4.

53 “Facts Forum Plan” (n.d.), 19, back cover; box 204, folder 16, J. B. Matthews Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University.

54 H. L. Hunt, “Background of Facts Forum” (n.d.), 4; box 93, folder 14, Herbert Philbrick Papers, Library of Congress. Emphasis in original.

55 These typical questions were taken from the May 22, 1952, Facts Forum poll. See Facts Forum News, May 12, 1952, 2.

56 Facts Forum News, November 17, 1952, 2.

57 “Facts Forum Poll Results,” Facts Forum News, July 1954, 1.

58 “In the Matter of Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees,” docket no. 8516, 13 F.C.C., 1246–1270.

59 For a helpful reading of Facts Forum's interventions in the broader history of right anti-communist broadcasting during the Cold War, see especially Heather Hendershot, What's Fair on the Air? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

60 For example, see box 59, folder “Facts Forum, January 1954, to December 31, 1956,” File Class 44–3: “Complaints: Individual Name Files (Broadcast),” Federal Communications Commission Office of the Executive Director, General Correspondence, 1947–1956, RG 173, Records of the Federal Communications Commission, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.

61 See “Oil Tycoon Backs McCarthy TV Series,” The Worker, October 4, 1953, 6; Arthur R. Main, “McCarthy's Windfall: Robert E. Lee and the F.C.C.,” The Nation, December 12, 1952, 546–548.

62 The Providence Journal-Bulletin ran Ben H. Bagdikian, “The Facts about Facts Forum,” in eight parts from December 27, 1953, through January 4, 1954.

63 James Devlin, “Texas Tycoon's Radio-TV Forum Subject of Heated Controversy,” Associated Press, printed in Joplin News Herald, March 2, 1954, 2; “More and More,” New Republic, March 29, 1954, 4; “Facts-Forum Facts,” Time, January 11, 1954, 52.

64 Hunt, “Background of Facts Forum,” 9.

65 Both examples are drawn from the April 1955 issue of Facts Forum News.

66 Transcripts of the episode were published in Facts Forum News, April 1955, 28–29, 41; 28. The first issue of National Review was published on November 19, 1955.

67 Ibid., 41.

68 “Regular Features,” National Review, November 19, 1955, 6. Buckley initially assigned libertarian Karl Hess to write a regular column on liberal bias in the media, and the magazine's first issue included a media criticism essay by Hess titled “The Printed Word.” While the Hess column did not become a regular feature, as promised, allegations of press bias became a mainstay of the magazine.

69 The circulation of National Review increased from 7,500 in 1955 to 30,000 in 1960. See Lora and Longton, The Conservative Press in Twentieth-century America, 525. For sake of comparison, by 1959 National Review claimed a circulation of 29,000, making it more widely circulated than such progressive and liberal competitors as The Nation (24,000) and New Republic (27,000). See William F. Buckley, “Can a Little Magazine Break Even?” National Review, October 10, 1959, 393–394, 407.

70 Robert Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (Belmont, MA: Western Islands Press, 1959), 64–73.

71 Ibid., 68.

72 See, for example, Eric Sevareid's 1962 CBS News special, Thunder on the Right, a documentary that depicted as fringe the right anti-communist activities of the Minutemen, H. L. Hunt, and Christian Anti-Communist Crusade founder Dr. Fred Schwarz. Robert Welch subsequently framed the broadcast as evidence of CBS News's left-wing bias in his 1962 John Birch Society pamphlet, “The Story of a Hoax.”

73 Buckley repudiated Welch for his penchant for conspiracy theory and intemperate tone, while praising the patriotism of the Birch Society members he mobilized, in “The Question of Robert Welch,” National Review, February 13, 1962, 83–88.

74 Paid circulation figures drawn from statements of ownership, management, and circulation published in Review of the News; see vol. 2, no. 41 (October 19, 1966), 24; vol. 10, no. 41 (October 9, 1974).

75 For an extensive list of Firing Line episodes, see http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6m3nc88c/. The first episode devoted to the issue of media bias was episode seven, an interview with liberal commentator David Susskind on “The Prevailing Bias.” For a transcript, see Program Number 7, “The Prevailing Bias,” transcript box 159, folder 10, Firing Line Broadcast Records, Collection no. 80040, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Also accessible via Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QBKMMW.

76 As historian David Greenberg has noted, from the 1960s onward this gap was increasingly framed in racial terms, as white audiences bristled at increasingly sympathetic coverage of the modern civil rights struggle. See David Greenberg, “The Idea of ‘The Liberal Media’ and Its Roots in the Civil Rights Movement,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 1, no. 2 (2008): 167–186.

77 Lloyd L. Harkins, official reporter, Official Report of the Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Republican National Convention (San Francisco: Republican National Committee, 1964), 185.

78 Walter Cronkite and Don Carleton, Conversations with Cronkite (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 168–169.

79 Transcribed by author from archival footage featured in Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater. DVD. Directed by Julie Anderson; New York: Zeitgeist Films, 2006.

80 See, for example, Mark Feldstein, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010).

81 See Mark Major, “Objective but Not Impartial: Human Events, Barry Goldwater, and the Development of the ‘Liberal Media’ in the Conservative Counter-sphere,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 34, no. 4 (2012): 455–468.

82 Spiro Agnew, “Address on Television News Coverage,” delivered on November 13, 1969, in Des Moines, IA, p. 7, emphasis in original. Transcribed by Christopher P. Cox and Michael E. Eidenmuller, 2010. Accessible at AmericanRhetoric.com.

83 Ibid., 4.

84 Ibid., 5.

85 Copies of Irvine's early (pre-AIM, mostly from 1967 to early 1969) letters to the Washington Post, New York Times, CBS, and NBC can be found in folders 64–67, carton 6, Accuracy in Media Papers, MSS 2194, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT (BYU).

86 Memo from Reed Irvine to Abe Kalish et al., January 25, 1970; folder “AIM Copies of Material Sent to Sam Jones,” carton 94, Accuracy in Media Papers, BYU; letter from Reed Irvine to Anne W. Branscomb, May 23, 1978, folder 104, carton 7, ibid.

87 Reed Irvine, “A Proposal,” 6; folder “AIM 1969,” carton 114, Accuracy in Media Papers, BYU.

88 For a full account of AIM's activities during this period, see AIM Report, a newsletter that AIM began publishing in 1972.

89 For a firsthand account of these efforts to leverage alternative and new media forms to foster and capitalize on the conservative disposition toward the press, see Richard Viguerie and David Franke, America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power (Chicago: Basic Books, 2004).

90 For examples, see Elaine Donnelly, One Side versus the Other Side: A Primer on Access to the Media (Washington, DC: Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund, 1981); Tim LaHaye, The Hidden Censors (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1984); William A. Rusher, The Coming Battle for the Media: Curbing the Power of the Media Elite (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988).

91 “Counterattack on Dissent,” Time, November 21, 1969.

92 Michael Massing, “Who's Afraid of Reed Irvine? The Rise and Decline of Accuracy in Media,” The Nation, September 13, 1986, 200–214.

93 For a historical account of the politics behind this policy change, including the conflict it produced among conservative media activists, see Juanita “Frankie” Clogston, “The Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the Irony of Talk Radio: A Story of Political Entrepreneurship, Risk, and Cover,” Journal of Policy History 28, no. 2 (April 2016): 375–396.