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This chapter narrates Carl McIntire’s struggle, and eventual defeat, against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 1973, McIntire faced another great defeat after being removed by the American Council of Christian Churches: his long legal battle against the FCC had drawn to a close, and it ruled that his station, WXUR, has lost its license to operate. The Supreme Court had even declined to review the case, and upheld the FCC’s decision. This catastrophic defeat had a massive impact on his devoted followers all over the country. What brought the station down was its defiance of the Fairness Doctrine, since the station programs did not provide an equal opportunity to create rebuttals for the issues that the conservatives faced. For the conservatives, this doctrine served as a symbol of persecution by liberals.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, leadership of the counter–Radio Right censorship campaign passed to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). DNC Chairman John Bailey recruited operative Wayne Phillips to take charge of a team that would intimidate conservative broadcasters who either supported Barry Goldwater or attacked Lyndon Johnson during the 1964 election. By Phillips’s own estimations, the project was a remarkable success, garnering hundreds of hours of free airtime via Fairness Doctrine complaints. They were aided by a new front organization—secretly created by the DNC—called the National Council for Civic Responsibility. As a bonus, the campaign also generated a court challenge from journalist Fred Cook against conservative radio station owner John Norris. The resulting court case, Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC, went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld the Fairness Doctrine.

Under orders from President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tightened the regulatory screws on conservative broadcasters. The IRS launched the “Ideological Organizations Project” to challenge the tax-exempt status of conservative broadcasters and to stem the flow of donations. The FCC strengthened its “Fairness Doctrine” rules, which required radio stations to ensure politically balanced discussion of public policy and to give free response time to victims of personal attacks made on the air. The United Auto Workers financed the creation of an opposition research clearing house, Group Research Inc., that compiled dossiers of damaging information on conservative broadcasters and politicians. The White House also organized a front organization, the Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban, to gain free, pro-administration airtime from radio stations that aired conservative critiques of the proposed treaty.

The Federal Communication Commission required broadcast stations, both radio and TV, to renew their licenses every three years. Before Helms arrived at WRAL, license renewals were routine, but his editorials and changes at the FCC meant scrutiny of the station’s political activity. The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine required stations to seek out opposing opinions when they editorialized on controversial issues, and the Equal Time rule obliged stations to offer response time to individuals they criticized. Helms’s political intentions at WRAL meant he pushed what the station could get away with to the limit. His use of WRAL to advance the conservative movement meant challenges to license renewals in 1963 and 1966. North Carolina’s moderate Democrats recognized Helms’s intentions. The FCC investigated the station and issued warnings. WRAL adopted new policies, but little changed. Helms chose whose dissent to air and shaped what they could say. In many cases he managed to use the opposition to conservatism’s advantage.

The deregulation of the airwaves by the Jimmy Carter administration, combined with the advent of cable broadcasting, allowed the resurgence of politically conservative radio in the late 1970s and 1980s. A new generation of religious broadcasters—including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—used radio and television to become household names. Indeed, it was while organizing to protect broadcasters from the Fairness Doctrine that the idea to create the “Moral Majority” came to Falwell. Also, radio broadcasting was the preferred way that former California Governor Ronald Reagan kept up his political brand as he prepared to run for president in 1976 and 1980. In the four decades since, right-wing talk radio has profoundly influenced national politics, but those tempted to call for a return to Fairness Doctrine–style regulation would do well to bear in mind Donald Trump’s expressed desire to challenge broadcasting licenses for critical journalistic outlets like NBC News.

This chapter focuses on Carl McIntire who is an outspoken Nixon hater that saw the president’s rapprochement with China as nothing more than high treason. McIntire used his radio station, WXUR, his weekly newspaper, the Christian Beacon, and his nationally broadcast program, the Twentieth Century Reformation Hour, to attack his wide-assortment of enemies: the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, the AFL-CIO, the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, the Pope, Billy Graham, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). McIntire hated the FCC the most as the government commission succeeded in dismantling his radio station in 1973, using the Fairness Doctrine as a basis. Historians and religious scholars have generally viewed McIntire as a distasteful icon of the old-fashioned fundamentalism, and media scholars ignored him entirely.

Chapter 3 explores the First Amendment implications of government support of the news industry. It challenges the assumption that the Constitution bars any governmental role in the news media by analyzing First Amendment decisions by courts and legislatures, including historical shifts in First Amendment interpretations. The analysis identifies a range of constitutionally permissible tools for government actions to strengthen or save news industries and advances a positive conception of First Amendment rights that both sanctions and motivates new approaches to sustain the free press. First Amendment values strongly support government action to protect the generation, production, and distribution of news.

This chapter, which examines the history of the conflict between news and science television broadcasting in the United States, discusses the role of television news in reframing science's public image and cites a survey result which reveals an increase in mass media coverage of science, technology, and personal health stories. It explains that communication about risks identified by or related to scientific research posed special challenges for television, particularly with the passage of the Fairness Doctrine. The chapter also considers the link between declining enrollments in science courses and the state of science on television.