Agitation Radio

Mr. Shackleford put up an interesting post on talk radio, which linked to a series of reports on CNN on the phenomenon. It’s a favorite subject of mine.

Different media affect us in different ways. Television is a guest in our home, usually right in the middle of our family rooms, and so TV hosts usually have to be charming. Maybe that’s old school – Glenn Beck certainly doesn’t fit that bill, but over the years, TV anchor spots have generally gone to the likes of Brian Williams and Katie Couric. They are pretty, vapid, and likable. Dan Rather even went so far as to wear a sweater under TV lights, thinking it would make him appear more comfortable to viewers, and therefore more trustworthy.

Radio is different. The channel of communication in radio is one talker, one listener. Rush Limbaugh may be reaching 13 million people, but it’s a one-on-one medium.

Radio hosts do not have to be charming. Most aren’t. Radio is inflammatory – that one talker has that one listener by the testicles, and can implant all kinds of ideas and really make him angry. (Most talk radio listeners are men.)

Marshall McLuhan called radio “the tribal drum”.

Radio is provided with its cloak of invisibility, like any other medium. It comes to us ostensibly with person-to-person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magical power to touch remote and forgotten chords. …Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber. … The only medium for which our education now offers some civil defense is the print medium.*

Ellul wrote about radio in his 1965 book Propaganda:

[Paul] Lazarsfeld, in his [1942] survey of radio broadcasts, cites the case of programs designed to acquaint the American public with the value of each of the ethnic minority groups in the American population. The point was to demonstrate the contribution each group was making, with the purpose of promoting mutual understanding and tolerance. The survey revealed that each broadcast was listened to by the ethnic group in question (for example, the Irish tuned in the program about the Irish), bur rarely anybody else. …

What happens? Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified, thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group.

Last summer’s Tea Parties and Town Halls all had the tenor of talk radio. People yelled, talked over one another, but most importantly, they were angry. Talk radio made them that way. Talk radio controls the right wing, and sets the tenor of our debates, the content of signs at rallies, and the comments on blogs.

And the right wing is angry, my friend. Angry and unreachable. It is characteristic of victims of propaganda to exist in a bubble, to reject opposing views without regard to content or carrier. Tea Parties demonstrated to me both the power of radio and of agitprop itself.

Left wing talk radio is very similar, I might add. There just isn’t much of it out there.

Ronald Reagan did away with the Fairness Doctrine, and Rush Limbaugh hit the airwaves around the same time. Right wing talk radio owes its existence to Reagan. Were it necessary to give more than one side of an issue, to grant use of our airwaves for rational debate allowing expression of all sides of any issue, there would be no Rush. What he is doing is as old as radio itself – he is agitating.

Now I hate to say this, as the natural conclusion is that I am drawing parallels, and what happened in post-Wiemar Germany will never repeat, but the Nazis did make effective use of radio to advance their agenda. It’s an effective tool for propaganda – one-on-one, captive listener, one-side only.

Then there is the odd and precisely symmetrical case of Father Charles Edward Coughlin. He had a radio audience of forty million back during the time of FDR. He spewed antisemitism and became an apologist for Hitler and Mussolini. (To be fair, he also supported the New Deal before he turned against it.)

So this is not a new phenomenon by any means. The larger point is that the medium is what agitates, and not the message. Any propagandist could encapsulate his views in talk radio format and make people angry.

I don’t listen to right wing talk radio. I do like a healthy exchange of views, so I listen to Thom Hartmann on my Ipod while exercising or driving. Hartmann drives me a little batty with his high-energy – he overwhelms callers and guests. (He admits to being ADD.) But he does allow opposing viewpoints on and treats those who carry those views with respect.

There are others on the left – Randi Rhodes is offensive to me, so I avoid her. David Sirota has a local morning show here in Denver, and tries to get interesting guests. Stephanie Miller is a comedienne, and a very funny one, so I give her leeway for not knowing very much. She’s entertaining. Air America is fading into the shadows, and is apparently trying to reinvent itself yet again.

But mostly, talk radio is a right wing phenomenon, and I think that it is the anger of that side that drives it. The right is angry about liberals, taxes, the media, Vietnam, abortion … so radio is a natural fit for them. It’s agitation.

But it’s more than that – there are stations aplenty, but Clear Channel, a right wing corporation, owns 1200 radio stations, 58 of them “blow torches”, or 50,000 watt behemoths. That has a lot to do with why right wing dominates the airwaves. Clear Channel dominates station ownership.

The problem is that our airwaves are dominated by one view only, the mother’s milk of propaganda. In addition, we have allowed a few companies to take control of too many stations. The result: we are swimming in agitprop.

The answer: Reduce the number of stations any one company can own to a very low level, say fifty, and no more than one in any market.

And: Return the Fairness Doctrine. It’s far more important to have free expression than “free markets”.

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*Marshall McLuhan, Radio: The Tribal Drum, 1964