Have media historians largely ignored conservative forms of journalism and media criticism? That is the provocative question that A. J. Bauer addresses in his article, “Journalism History and Conservative Erasure.” Citing examples of right-wing media criticism starting in the 1940s, including Headlines, Facts Forum, Review of the News, and Accuracy in Media, he argues that journalism history has “maintained a stubborn blind spot for reporters and media critics exhibiting right-wing ideological bias.” While these critics on the right often lack the professional credentials some see as necessary, he believes they nonetheless deserve consideration because their work helps explain how conservatives have historically understood their relationship with the mainstream media.
James C. Foust explores the battle over so-called booster stations that were used to broadcast the signals of urban television stations into isolated western towns, starting in the 1950s. The Federal Communications Commission initially sought to shut the stations down but ultimately approved their operation, illustrating the power that viewers were able to bring to bear on the policy-making process by working through state officials and congressional representatives. In her article, Erika J. Pribanic-Smith examines how the newspapers of Texas reported the republic's four presidential elections. The newspapers of Texas were unquestionably political, but rather than focusing on party principles, they opposed or supported political candidates, with two-term President Sam Houston as the central figure. Kevin Grieves writes about the US government-run radio station, RIAS (Radio in the American Sector, Berlin), which was broadcast into East Germany during the Cold War. RIAS initially was viewed by East Germany as a competitor to its own stations, but by the early 1950s the communist regime had become fearful of RIAS as an ideological weapon, to the point of seeking to shield the populace from the broadcasts entirely and to ostracize RIAS listeners.
In Professional Notes, Richard Fine recommends The Vietnam War, the ambitious ten-part documentary by Ken Burns and Lyn Novick, as a teaching tool for media historians. The filmmakers rightly do not focus on the news media's role in the controversial war, he notes, and journalists appear only occasionally in the eighteen-hour series. Nonetheless, The Vietnam War can provide a springboard for a classroom discussion of the history of American war reporting, and the moment when media–military relations, in his words, “ran off the rails, never entirely to get back on track.” It can also be a means to discuss the historic relationship between the media and authority in general.