Radio Rights

Ministers should make large and frequent use of the radio. They should feel free to say anything they like so long as they do not slander or libel. If they offend some hearers, stations are many and dials are easy to twiddle. But--"The radio, as administered by the present Federal Commission, is a class agency, a political agency, and an agency without any real freedom."

So last week editorialized The Christian Century, liberal Episcopal weekly which gave its benedictions to an odd trio of broadcasting preachers--a noisy, crusading Methodist, a famed Roman Catholic, a mildly radical Evangelical. Though The Christian Century was far from agreement with any or all their principles, it presented their cases as an argument for Freedom of Speech on the air.

Censorship. Last summer Columbia Broadcasting System announced it would no longer sell its time to preachers, would instead put on its own "Church of the Air." Many people believe that this change of policy was caused by the broadcasts of Rev. Charles E. Coughlin from the Shrine of the Little Flower of Jesus near Detroit. Father Coughlin organized his own chain, has since broadcast to a large audience. Last week The Christian Century, while calling Father Coughlin "erratic, illogical, cheaply sensational," expressed alarm at continued attempts to have him excluded from the air.

"I am a Socialist." Last month Buffalo Broadcasting Corp. (Columbia affiliate) announced it would have no more of Rev. Herman J. Hahn of Salem Evangelical Church, whose members were paying Station WGR $49 per week for 15-min. broadcasts. Day or so before a scheduled address on "Jesus' Way Out," a station official asked Broadcaster Hahn to delete "certain unfortunate phrases," to keep the talk within the bounds of "conventional religion." Many letters, said the official, had been received protesting against previous addresses as "Communistic" and "utterly pro-Russian." Broadcaster Hahn refused to make any changes, was barred from the station.

Last week Mr. Hahn was to speak in Toronto. At the border an immigration agent asked him his political beliefs. "I am a Socialist," said Mr. Hahn. "I'm sorry," replied the agent, "but I can't let you in. I'm under orders from higher up." Wrathful Toronto citizens held a mass-meeting.

Slain Microphone. For Dr. Robert Pierce ("Bob") Shuler, famed Los Angeles preacher, The Christian Century has no love, but it urges that he. too, has a right to be heard.

Born in a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Bob Shuler worked his way through a Methodist college, preached in Virginia, Tennessee, Texas. Twelve years ago he went to Los Angeles Trinity Church, whose congregation numbered

900. His hot excoriations of liquor arid vice and his genius for publicity built up his congregation to some 50,000, made him politically potent in Los Angeles. He could preach a rip-roaring sermon on high-school girls who had themselves photographed naked, on millionaires who seduced stenographers, on local corruption and his audience shivered with delight. The public helped him crusade. One admirer supplied him with a private detective, another with a whole corps of spies for digging up evidence of graft. In 1926 a devout spinster gave him radio station KGEF. Bob Shuler played heavily on civic graft, built up one of the nation's largest radio audiences.

Fearless, indiscreet, embarrassing, Bob Shuler's station fairly screamed against Roman Catholicism, religious and social liberalism, pacifism. He succeeded in discrediting a district attorney, a city prosecutor, two chiefs of police. He was sued for libel by the Knights of Columbus for a pamphlet, "The Rise of Beastism," and by onetime Mayor George Edward Cryer whom he accused of graft. Twice found guilty of contempt of court, he was jailed once, had himself photographed, staged a great celebration when he got out. By vilifying a whole field of candidates, he helped elect Los Angeles' Mayor John Clinton Porter. When the Federal Radio Commission last November ordered suspension of KGEF (in a telegram sent collect: $4.77), everybody knew why. Bob Shuler appealed his case which is now pending in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Meanwhile he held a funeral service for KGEF as a dummy with a microphone head in a flower-banked coffin and a slab reading: "Slain by the administration it fostered and the government it sought to serve."

Said The Christian Century: "He was a blatant and obnoxious personality, to many nice people, but he dared to shout what the public had a right to know and what nobody else dared to whisper. . . . People and papers who have not an idea in common with him have begun to defend Bob Shuler's right to be heard."

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