Uncommon Stories of History

In the 1920s, radio emerged as a new and extremely popular form of mass communication. Soon, all kinds of content - much of it uncouth - began filling the American airwaves. This included programming from quack doctors.

The Federal Radio Commission shut these doctors down. However, they fled to Mexico, where the American government could not reach them, and broadcast back to the United States. Their stations had controversial programming, and - to make matters worse - created static on important domestic outlets.

What could the American government do? Or, perhaps the more interesting question is, should they have censored speech at all?

Citations:

Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002)

National Archives and Records Administration, RG 173

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Music:

https://sessions.blue/ (Blue Dot Sessions)

Revolutionary America produced the First Amendment. It also, however, included something we hear less about – printers under attack for the things they published.

Citations -

Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1927)

Stephen Botein, “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press: The Business and Political Strategies of Colonial American Printers,” in D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (Eds.), Perspectives in American History (Volume IX) (pp. 125-225) (Cambridge, MA: Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, 1975)

Benjamin Franklin, “Apology for Printers,” The Pennsylvania Gazette, June 10, 1731

Kara Pierce, “A Revolutionary Masquerade: The Chronicles of James Rivington,” Journal of History for Binghamton University (spring, 2006), https://archive.is/20070712184335/http://www.binghamton.edu/history/resources/bjoh/A%20Revolutionary%20Masquerade%20The%20Chronicles%20of%20James%20Rivington.htm (retrieved online)

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-1776 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958)

Francis G. Walett, “Gazetteer Hated by Patriots,” Dixon Evening Telegraph (Dixon, Illinois), August 20, 1975, found on Newspapers.com

Music from https://www.sessions.blue/ (Blue Dot Sessions)