page_title: Politico-media complex
section_title: History of political radio
hierarchical_section_title: Politico-media complex / Radio / History of political radio
caption_attribution_description: English: Willis Conover jazz producer and broadcaster on the Voice of America radio program for over forty years.
context_page_description: The politico-media complex is a name given to the close knit, systematized, symbiotic-like network of relationships between a state's political and ruling classes and its media industry. It may also encompass other interest groups, such as law, corporations and multinationals. The term PMC is often used as a pejorative, to refer to the collusion between governments, individual politicians, and the media industry, in their attempt to manipulate rather than to inform the general public.
  The idea that the media has profound impacts on the polity of the nation state, democratic or otherwise, is not a new one and hardly controversial. Election campaigns spend significant sums in the media and oppressive regimes nearly always seek to control the media as it is a very powerful means of persuasion. Prior to Chomsky's propaganda model, George Orwell noted: "All the papers that matter live off their advertisements and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over the news."
context_section_description: The early American radio industry was composed of commercial shipping companies that used radio for navigation, and amateur radio enthusiasts who built radios at home. This mixture of military, industry, and community went unregulated until the Radio Act of 1912, which required all ships to use radio communication and keep a constant radio watch, amateur users to be licensed, and began regulating the use of wavelengths for radio transmissions. This act represents one of the earliest interactions between the government and the radio media and also set a precedent for later radio legislation, including the Radio Act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission and added further regulation to radio users, both commercial and amateur. Government regulation increased again with the American entrance into World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson ordered naval control of all radio stations and ordered that amateurs cease all radio activity. Jonathan Reed Winkler, a noted WWI historian, said: “It was only during World War I that the United States first came to comprehend how a strategic communications network-the collection of submarine telegraph cables, and long-distance radio stations used by a nation for diplomatic, commercial and military purposes- was vital to the global political and economic interests of a great power in the modern world.” After World War I radio was introduced to broader civilian audiences when Westinghouse released the Aeriola Jr. in 1919, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released the Radiola in 1920. The Aeriola Jr. and Radiola helped established a new channel for the politico-media complex to enter into thousands of American homes. By 1919 the oldest licensed American radio station, KDKA, from Pittsburgh, PA began broadcasting regular music shows, and soon music, educational programming, sports coverage and eventually news coverage became popular. Coverage of politics quickly caught on across the countries as stations began covering elections and reporting news of government actions. The close politico-media complex between government and radio was finalized in 1924 when the Republican and Democratic National Conventions were covered, and candidates made the eve of election speeches, the first instance of radio broadcasting that was meant to affect the American political process.
  The numbers of radio users exploded. By 1935 about 2 in 3 American homes owned a radio. Politicians quickly learned to reach these huge audiences. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Fireside Chats are an example of the politico-media complex. In his series of informal broadcasts from 1933 to 1944, Roosevelt developed a comforting rapport with the American public. The Fireside Chats enabled the President to communicate directly to the public through one of the most popular media outlets of the time. Politicians would continue to use the radio in World War II, in which the radio was used primarily for news transmissions and the spread of propaganda. One example of radio propaganda came from Iva Toguri D'Aquino, Ruth Hayakawa, June Suyamawho, and Myrtle Lipton collectively known as Tokyo Rose. These women hosted anti-American programming intended to lower American soldiers' morale and illustrate the use of governments' use of the media to influence the public or their enemies. However, many people, such as Iva Toguri D'Aquino and Allied prisoners of war, were forced against their will to participate in these programs and worked hard to help Allied forces.
  After WWII and throughout the Cold War era, Democratic nations used long-range radio waves to broadcast news into countries behind the Iron Curtain or otherwise information-compromised nations. The American international radio program, the Voice of America, founded during World War II, became a critical part of the Cold War era "public diplomacy," which aimed to spread democratic values and popularize American policies abroad. In 1950, President Harry S. Truman described the Cold War conflict as a "struggle, above all else, for the minds of men," which the Ameri
caption: Willis Conover, host of the VOA's Music USA program, 1969.
exif: {}