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‘Fellow Traveler of the Air’: Rod Holmgren and leftist radio news commentary in America's Cold War

2004; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0143968042000223727

1465-3451

Nathan Godfried,

Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Edwin Levin, ‘Heard and Overheard’ column, PM, 17 August 1945, p. 17. PM, 17 September 1947, p. 21. Any review of the historical literature on mainstream broadcast journalists should begin with David H. Culbert, News for Everyman: radio and foreign affairs in thirties America (Westport, 1976). Other relevant works include Irving E. Fang, Those Radio Commentators (Ames, 1977); Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, The Murrow Boys: pioneers on the front lines of broadcast journalism (Boston, 1996); Joseph E. Persico, Edward R. Murrow: an American original (New York, 1988); Donald I. Warren, Radio priest: Charles Coughlin the father of hate radio (New York, 1996). Studies exploring journalists who critiqued American society and its myths during the Cold War include: Paul Milkman, PM: a new deal in journalism, 1940–1948 (New Brunswick, 1997); Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Harvey O'Connor and Susan M. Bower, Harvey and Jessie: a couple of radicals (Philadelphia, 1988); James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War (New York, 1990); Robert C. Cottrell, Izzy: a biography of I. F. Stone (New Brunswick, 1992). Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: the laboring of American culture in the twentieth century (London, 1996). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: the politics of freedom (Boston, 1949), p. 125 (first quote); William L. O'Neill, A Better World: Stalinism and the American intellectuals (New York, 1982), p. 233 (second quote); David Caute, The Fellow‐Travellers: intellectual friends of Communism (New Haven rev. edn, 1988), p. 7. See also Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: the rise and decline of the anti‐Stalinist left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, 1987), p. 129. David Roediger, Foreword, in O'Connor, et al., Harvey and Jessie, pp. vii–xv, x (quote). Daniel Horowitz's biography of Betty Friedan incorporates Roediger's call to re‐evaluate fellow travelers. Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: the American left, the Cold War, and modern feminism (Amherst, 1998). Caute, The Fellow‐Travellers, p. 8. See Culbert, News for Everyman. Although broadcasting officials sometimes differentiated between the concepts of commentator and analyst, these terms will be used interchangeably throughout the text. Elizabeth A. Fones‐Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: the business assault on labor and liberalism, 1945–60 (Urbana, 1994); Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half Century: United States foreign policy in the Cold War and after (Baltimore, 1995, 2nd edn). Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, 1998), p. 369 (first and second quotes), 370 (third quote). Lynn D. Gordon contends that the many controversies surrounding political columnists during the 1940s signified ‘that the American public was treated … to a splendid array of opinion’. Gordon, Why Dorothy Thompson lost her job: political columnists and the press wars of the 1930s and 1940s, History of Education Quarterly, 34:3 (1994), p. 301. Mark H. Van Pelt, The Cold War on the air, Journal of Popular Culture, 18:2 (1984), p. 98 (first quote); James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: journalism, filmmaking, and broadcasting in America since 1941 (Baltimore, 1992), p. 19 (second quote). Harrison B. Summers, A Thirty‐Year History of Programs Carried on National Radio Networks in the United States, 1926–1956 (Columbus, 1958; New York, 1971), pp. 86, 90, 118–119, 122; Dixon Wecter, Hearing is believing, The Atlantic Monthly, 175: 6 (1945), p. 54 (quote). For a general examination of politically relevant radio drama during the 1940s, see Howard Blue, Words At War: World War II radio drama and the postwar broadcasting industry blacklist (Lanham, MD, 2002). Charles A. Siepmann, Radio's Second Chance (Boston, 1947), pp. 86 (first quote) and 87 (second quotes). Paul W. White, News on the Air (New York, 1947), p. 206. White, News on the Air, p. 199 (first quote), p. 201 (second quote), p. 206. Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: the life of Edward R. Murrow (Boston, 1969), p. 264; Cloud and Olson, The Murrow Boys, pp. 170–172. Variety, 25 July 1945, pp. 26, 30; PM, 30 July 1945, p. 21; Newsweek, 6 August 1945, p. 87. Variety, 26 September 1945, p. 1, 25 December 1946, p. 29; Summers, A Thirty‐Year History of Programs, pp. 126–127, 129, 144–145, 148; PM, 1 March 1946, p. 16; Norbert Muhlen, The state of American radio today: Red baiters and radio baiters, The New Leader, 15 February 1947, p. 5 (quote). New York Times, 23 April 1947, p. 50 (quotes); Gordon, Why Dorothy Thompson lost her job, pp. 301–302. Survey shows radio nets sell out to big business, 13 October 1947, Federated Press Papers, folder: Radio 1947–1948, Microfilm Reel 9112, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York. Quincy Howe, Policing the commentator: a news analysis, The Atlantic Monthly, 172 (1943), p. 47 (quotes). For an excellent analysis of pro‐corporate and pro‐free enterprise programming over radio, see Elizabeth Fones‐Wolf, Creating a favorable business climate: corporations and radio broadcasting, 1934–1954, Business History Review, 73 (1999), pp. 221–255. Fones‐Wolf, Creating a favorable business climate, pp. 236–238; Culbert, News for Everyman, pp. 155–162; H. N. Oliphant, Fulton Lewis, Jr., man of distinction, Harper's Magazine, 198 (1949), pp. 76–82, 83 (first quote); Sidney Reisberg, Fulton Lewis, Jr.: an analysis of news commentary, unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University, 1952, pp. 2–4, 58–70; Giraud Chester, What constitutes irresponsibility on the air? A case study, Public Opinion Quarterly, 13 (1949), pp. 73–82; Kenneth O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un‐Americans: the FBI, HUAC, and the Red menace (Philadelphia, 1983), pp. 6, 80, 139 (second quote), 332 n. 23, 337 n. 56; Athan G. Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia, 1988), p. 205. Dixon Wecter, Hearing is believing, part 2, The Atlantic Monthly, 176 (1945), p. 40 (first quote); Culbert, News for Everyman, pp. 67–73; Van Pelt, The Cold War on the air, pp. 104–107; David Gillis Clark, The dean of commentators: a biography of H. V. Kaltenborn, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1965, pp. 605–612, 610 (second and third quotes); Giraud Chester, The radio commentaries of H. V. Kaltenborn: a study in persuasion, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1947, pp. 459–465; Louis Liebovich, H. V. Kaltenborn and the origins of the Cold War: a study of personal expression in radio, Journalism History, 14:2–3 (1987), pp. 46–53. Fones‐Wolf, Creating a favorable business climate, pp. 238–243; Clark, The dean of commentators, p. 614 (second quote), p. 615 (third quote), p. 617 (first quote), pp. 618–620; Chester, Radio commentaries of Kaltenborn, pp. 146–148, 177, 180–184, 404–412, 423, 455–459; The Chicago Star, 4 January 1947, p. 12. Fones‐Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise. The information on Rod Holmgren's background comes from Federation News, 29 September 1945, p. 1 [hereafter cited as FN]; Nathan Godfried, WCFL: Chicago's voice of labor, 1926–1978 (Urbana, 1997), pp. 243–245; and Letters, Rod Holmgren to author, 25 February 2002, 5 February 2003, and 8 September 2003. Letters, Holmgren to author, 5 February 2003 (quote) and 8 September 2003; Abraham Lincoln School: fall session 1943, schedule of courses, p. 23, folder 1: Abraham Lincoln School, Victor A. Olander Papers, Department of Special Collections, University Library, University of Illinois at Chicago. FN, 29 September 1945, p. 1; Godfried, WCFL, pp. 243–245; and Holmgren letters to author, 25 February 2002 and 5 February 2003; Abraham Lincoln School, p. 23, folder 1: Abraham Lincoln School, Olander Papers. FN, 29 September 1945, p. 1; Holmgren letters, 25 February 2002 and 5 February 2003. FN, 29 September 1945, p. 1; Holmgren letters, 25 February 2002 and 5 February 2003 (quotes). Erik Barnouw, Media Marathon: a twentieth‐century memoir (Durham, 1996), pp. 69–70, 112–113; John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting: II. Radio‐television (New York, 1956), pp. 43, 45, 143, 144 (quote), pp. 147–151; Letter, Holmgren to author, 5 February 2003; The Chicago Star, 2 August 1947, p. 13; Variety, 23 October 1946, p. 28 and 10 September 1947, pp. 25, 38. Letter, Holmgren to author, 5 February 2003; Abraham Lincoln School, p. 5 and Abraham Lincoln School: winter session 1944, pp. 4, 23, folder 1: Abraham Lincoln School, Olander Papers; Marvin E. Gettleman, ‘No varsity teams’: New York's Jefferson School of Social Science, 1943–1956, Science & Society, 66:3 (2002), pp. 336–359, p. 339 (quote). A. D. Winspear, The Idea of a People's University (Chicago, 1943), p. 5. Holmgren letters, 25 February 2002 and 5 February 2003; Abraham Lincoln School: fall session, 1943, pp. 6, 15, 23, and Abraham Lincoln School: winter session 1944, p. 7 (quotes), p. 15, folder 1: Abraham Lincoln School, Olander Papers. Godfried, WCFL, pp. 230–231; FN, 5 May 1945, p. 3 (quote). On the AFL's strident anti‐Communism, see Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland and the tragedy of American labor (New York, 1999). The New Leader, 30 June 1945, p. 7 (quotes); Letters, Holmgren to author, 25 February 2002 and 5 February 2003; Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals: the rise and decline of the anti‐Stalinist left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, 1987), pp. 5–6. For a sympathetic portrait of the New Leader's Cold War position, see Hugh Wilford, Playing the CIA's tune? The New Leader and the cultural Cold War, Diplomatic History, 27:1 (2003), pp. 15–34. Before leaving WCFL, Scofield and Studs Terkel wrote a powerful one‐hour Labor Day program that dramatized labor's past and recent trials and tribulations. FN, 15 September 1945, pp. 1–2 and 22 September 1945, p. 3. Godfried, WCFL, pp. 243–245. Fred Quincy column, Chicago Star, 27 July 1946, p. 12. Quincy column, Chicago Star, 24 August 1946, p. 12 and 28 December 1946, p. 12; Bill Alexander column, Chicago Star, 1 June 1947, p. 13 (quote). FN, 25 October 1945, pp. 1, 10 and 18 May 1946, p. 10. The following analysis of Holmgren's radio commentaries rests on the 20 talks that were reproduced in the pages of the Federation News. No other copies of the hundreds of commentaries that Holmgren aired over WCFL exist. This collection gives a somewhat skewed viewed of Holmgren's talks because only one touched on foreign policy and all the rest dealt with national or local subjects. Louis Liebovich, The Press and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944–1947 (New York 1988), pp. 87–92. FN, 3 November 1945, p. 2 (quotes). The editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, Freda Kirchwey, as well as noted political columnist Walter Lippmann took similar stands on the atomic bomb matter. Margaret Morley, Freda Kirchwey: Cold War critic, in Lloyd C. Gardner (ed.) Redefining the Past: essays in diplomatic history in honor of William Appleman Williams (Corvallis, 1986), pp. 162–163; Barton J. Bernstein, Walter Lippmann and the early Cold War, in Thomas G. Paterson (ed.), Cold War Critics: alternatives to American foreign policy in the Truman years (Chicago, 1971), pp. 36–37. The argument that workers had a right to participate as workers in determining foreign policy issues had been well developed within the Chicago labor movement. See Elizabeth McKillen, Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy, 1914–1924 (Ithaca, 1995). Leila A. Sussman, Labor in the radio news; an analysis of content, Journalism Quarterly, 22 (1945) pp. 207–214, 213 (quote); Reisberg, Fulton Lewis, Jr., pp. 63–64; Chicago Star, 4 January 1947, p. 12. FN, 20 October 1945, pp. 1, 10 (quote); 1 December 1945, p. 3; 15 December 1945, pp. 3, 9; and 22 December 1945, p. 10. Chester, What constitutes irresponsibility on the air?, pp. 77–78; FN, 17 November 1945, p. 10 and 1 December 1945, p. 3 (quote). Fulton Lewis, Jr., Should the present powers of OPA be restricted?, Congressional Digest, 25 (1946), p. 184 (first quote); FN, 17 November 1945, p. 10; 1 December 1945, p. 3 (second and third quotes); 2 March 1946, p. 3; 9 March 1946, p. 8; 24 April 1946, p. 2; and 29 June 1946, p. 3. FN, 16 March 1946, p. 3. FN, 1 March 1947, p. 2. FN, 22 December 1945, p. 10; FN, 16 February 1946, p. 2 (quote). Holmgren apparently did not comment on the red‐baiting of groups that favored a permanent FEPC or on the rather weak support for the commission that came from the American Federation of Labor. Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. DuBois and the Afro‐American response to the Cold War, 1944–1963 (Albany, 1986), pp. 69–72; Kim Moody, An Injury to All: the decline of American unionism (New York, 1988), p. 59. FN, 27 April 1946, p. 2 (first quote) and 2 February 1946, p. 2 (second quote). For details on the political capitalism that characterized decision‐making during and after World War II, see George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: labor and culture in the 1940s (Urbana, 1994), pp. 57–63. FN, 9 February 1946, p. 10 (quote); Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, p. 58. FN, 20 October 1945, p. 1 (first quote), 22 December 1945, p. 10 (second and third quotes), and 12 July 1947, pp. 8, 11. For analyses of the Taft–Hartley Act, see Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, pp. 157–181; Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: labor relations, law, and the organized labor movement in America, 1880–1960 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 252–316. Letter, Rod Holmgren to author, 29 August 2003; Steven J. Ross, Political economy for the masses: Henry George, Democracy, 2:3 (1982), pp. 125–134; Edmund B. Sullivan, Henry George, in Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas (eds), Encyclopedia of the American Left (New York, 1998, 2nd edn), pp. 264–266; FN, 10 August 1946, p. 12. FN, 9 February 1946, p. 10. FN, 9 February 1946, p. 10. FN, 10 August 1946, p. 12. The professional anti‐Communist hunter J. B. Matthews—at different times on the payroll of the Hearst Corporation, HUAC, and Senator Joseph McCarthy—identified Holmgren as a Communist in congressional hearings on the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in 1952. Holmgren worked as an assistant editor for the union's newspaper. Matthews contended that Holmgren's ‘record of activities’ was such ‘as to constitute a substantial collaboration with the Communist movement and its objectives’. Holmgren was, concluded Matthews, one of the ‘clearest cases’ of being a Communist. At the same hearings, Holmgren took the Fifth Amendment when asked whether he had signed a Communist Political Association card in December 1944 while living in Evanston, Illinois. US Senate, Committee of the Judiciary, Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws: Communist domination of union officials in vital defense industry—International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session, 6–9 October 1952 (Washington, DC, 1952), pp. 5–6, 9, 23–24 (quotes), 262–264, 268–275; Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, pp. 44, 67, 259. In 1944, the Communist Party became the Communist Political Association under Earl Browder. Holmgren letter to author, 25 February 2002 (first quote); Cogley, Report on Blacklisting, pp. 82–83 (second quote). For background on the CFL, see Godfried, WCFL; and McKillen, Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy. Letters, Holmgren to author, 25 February 2002 and 29 August 2003; Curtis D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army, Vol. 3, The Campaign and the Vote (New York, 1965), p. 786; Cedric Belfrage and James Aronson, Something to Guard: the stormy life of the National Guardian, 1948–1967 (New York, 1978), pp. 31, 137, 141; National Guardian, 31 January 1949, p. 11 (quote); 7 February 1949, p. 2; 21 November 1949, p. 3; The Union, 23 May 1949, p. 8. Holmgren's commitment to journalism is reflected in his published work; see Rod Holmgren and William Norton, The Mass Media Book (Upper Saddle, NJ, 1972) and Rod and Alma Holmgren, Outrageous Fortunes: media billionaires and how they change world culture (Carmel, CA, 2001). Robert Shaw, Forms of censorship, Hollywood Quarterly, 1:2 (1946), pp. 199–210, 204 (first quote), 205 (second quote). New York Times, 7 November 1945, p. 25; Robert K. Carr, The House Committee on Un‐American Activities, 1945–1950 (Ithaca, 1952), p. 324; US House of Representatives, Investigation of Un‐American Activities and Propaganda, House Report No. 2233, 79th Congress, 2nd Session, 7 June 1946, pp. 9–13; Chicago Star, 11 January 1947, p. 12 and 18 January 1947, p. 12 (quote). American Business Consultants, Red Channels: the report of Communist influence in radio and television (New York, 1950). Cottrell, A Biography of I. F. Stone, pp. 1–2. Variety, 10 August 1949, p. 34.