William Fisher gives a decent historical overview on the use of media by hysterical reactionary forces throughout our history, serving as a reminder that there really isn’t anything new under the sun.reminder about the history.

People who are too young to remember the 1930s, 40s, and 50s may not know that the airwaves were filled with hysterical, fear-mongering voices long before we ever heard of Bill O’Reilly.

Back then, the airwaves were radio waves. Nightly, millions of families gathered before their Radiolas and Emersons to listen to the news. There were such “commentators” as Lowell Thomas, Gabriel Heater and H.V. Kaltenborn, whose notion of news consisted largely of reading press releases from the Republican National Committee. On Sunday evenings, there was Walter Winchell, a gossip columnist turned world affairs authority, who always began his program with the greeting, “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.” Winchell’s rabid anti-Roosevelt and anti-New Deal views were barely concealed in his staccato delivery.

But then, as there remains today, a need for voices of reason and enlightenment in the public discourse. American hero Edward R. Murrow served as an influential one during some tenuous times…

In 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era paranoia, Murrow produced the program that, more than any other single broadcast, has come to define him: A televised critique of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy.

There’s a reason I cite all this old radio-days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio “news.” Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests - owners and sponsors.

The impact of today’s TV and radio “news” has been well-documented. The nightly news programs of the major broadcast networks are caricatures of the cult of “objectivity,” in which anchors feel obliged to present the views of “both sides” of an issue, even when they know one side is peddling falsehoods. In both broadcast and cable outlets, the line between news, commentary and entertainment is no longer decipherable.

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