SAY NO TO THE LIBERAL MEDIA: CONSERVATIVES AND CRITICISM OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN THE 1970S William Gillis Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Journalism, Indiana University June 2013 ii Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee David Paul Nord, Ph.D. Mike Conway, Ph.D. Tony Fargo, Ph.D. Khalil Muhammad, Ph.D. May 10, 2013 iii Copyright © 2013 William Gillis iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank the helpful staff members at the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, the Detroit Public Library, Indiana University Libraries, the University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library, the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center, the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, the Wayne State University Walter P. Reuther Library, and the West Virginia State Archives and History Library. Since 2010 I have been employed as an editorial assistant at the Journal of American History, and I want to thank everyone at the Journal and the Organization of American Historians. I thank the following friends and colleagues: Jacob Groshek, Andrew J. Huebner, Michael Kapellas, Gerry Lanosga, J. Michael Lyons, Beth Marsh, Kevin Marsh, Eric Petenbrink, Sarah Rowley, and Cynthia Yaudes. I also thank the members of my dissertation committee: Mike Conway, Tony Fargo, and Khalil Muhammad. Simply put, my adviser and dissertation chair David Paul Nord has been great. Thanks, Dave. I would also like to thank my family, especially my parents, who have provided me with so much support in so many ways over the years. Sadly, my father passed away in October 2012. I will miss him. Finally and most of all I thank my wife Carrie. Hi honey. v William Gillis SAY NO TO THE LIBERAL MEDIA: CONSERVATIVES AND CRITICISM OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN THE 1970S “Say No to the Liberal Media: Conservatives and Criticism of the News Media in the 1970s” examines the significance of news media criticism among conservative opponents of liberalism in the 1970s. Critiques of the mainstream news media were levied by a wide array of conservatives of the 1970s, ranging from Republican party centrists to the racist and anti- Semitic Far Right. Conservatives criticized a wide range of news media organizations, including the three TV news networks; nationally influential publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek; and local newspapers such as the Boston Globe, Louisville Courier-Journal, and Detroit Free Press. Criticism of the news media was often motivated by anticommunist ideology, class-based resentments of liberal elites, and racially motivated opposition to civil rights. I demonstrate that criticism of the local news media was vital to grassroots conservative movements of the 1970s, particularly in movements against court-ordered busing for school integration in cities such as Boston, Louisville, and Detroit. I also show that criticism of the news media was an integral component of the antiliberal activism of conservatives including white supremacist members of the Citizens’ Councils of America, opponents of feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment, Christian anticommunists of the 1970s, and anti-Semites who argued that the “Jewish news media” were active participants in a communist conspiracy. “Say No to the Liberal Media” also demonstrates that a thriving network of conservative publications was active during the 1970s. Such publications were crucial in disseminating the idea of liberal news media bias, and they often positioned themselves as pro-American, anticommunist truth-telling vi alternatives to the allegedly distorted and biased news provided by major newspapers and magazines and the three television news networks. ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ vii William Gillis SAY NO TO THE LIBERAL MEDIA: CONSERVATIVES AND CRITICISM OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN THE 1970S Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Antibusing Activists and Backlash against Louisville’s Daily Newspapers 39 Chapter 2 “The Only Honest Paper in Detroit”: Northeast Detroiter, a Newspaper for White Conservatives 80 Chapter 3 “The Voice of the No Longer Silent Majority”: The St. Louis Citizens Informer, Liberal News Media Bias, and Busing in Boston 114 Chapter 4 Antifeminism, the News Media, and “Women’s Lib Propaganda” 151 Chapter 5 Christian Crusade Weekly, Christian Anticommunism, and the Liberal Press 184 Chapter 6 Anti-Semitism and Criticism of the News Media 213 Conclusion “We Have Destroyed the Liberals’ Media Monopoly” 252 Bibliography 260 Vita 277 1 Introduction In a November 1969 speech before the Chamber of Commerce of Montgomery, Alabama, Vice President Spiro Agnew declared, “The day when the network commentators and even the gentlemen of the New York Times enjoyed a form of diplomatic immunity from comment and criticism of what they said is over. And the time for naïve belief in their neutrality is gone.” Agnew’s speech in Montgomery marked the second time that month that he accused the country’s major television and print news media of liberal bias. A week earlier in Des Moines, Iowa, Agnew had launched a scathing attack on the alleged liberal sympathies of network television news producers, commentators, and reporters.1 Agnew’s Des Moines and Montgomery speeches were condemned by prominent members of the news media, including some of the news media outlets he singled out for criticism. On the other hand, the vice president’s uncompromising criticism of the “liberal” news media was greeted enthusiastically by conservatives, who agreed that the nation’s most powerful electronic and print news media outlets offered Americans biased, distorted news produced by a small group of East Coast liberals out of touch with the views of the majority of Americans. The vice president was applauded by conservative news media across a broad spectrum of conservative opinion, including influential daily newspapers such as the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader; smaller daily and weekly newspapers such as the Tulsa (Okla.) Daily World and Peoria (Ill.) Journal-Star; television stations such as WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina; conservative news digests such as Human Events; stridently right-wing monthlies such as Independent American and Free Enterprise; and newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets produced by the racist and anti-Semitic Far Right including Thunderbolt and Common Sense.2 2 Spiro Agnew was not the first conservative to accuse the news media of liberal bias. In fact, some conservatives argued that the vice president was an opportunist who had arrived late to the media-criticism game. Indeed, the same wide spectrum of conservative news media that agreed with Agnew’s criticisms of the liberal news media had already been voicing the same kind of critiques for at least a decade. And though Agnew’s widely publicized comments did much to disseminate the idea of liberal news media bias, his speeches alone do not explain why criticism of the allegedly liberal media became an essential element of the political rhetoric of conservatives of the 1970s, a rhetoric that helped galvanize conservatives who argued that they were victims of a powerful liberal establishment that included the news media.3 In this dissertation I seek to understand how and why a wide range of conservatives criticized the allegedly liberal news media in the 1970s. I argue that ideas about liberal news media bias were fundamental to the political and cultural worldview of conservatives in the 1970s. Criticism of the mainstream news media became an essential element of conservative rhetoric during that decade, and the liberal news media critique was important across the broad spectrum of the Right, ranging from Republican party centrists to anti-Semitic white supremacists, and the vast number of conservatives in between. Conservatives who criticized the news media often did so because they believed the majority of the nation’s news media provided Americans with biased and distorted news that amounted to liberal propaganda. News media criticism was also used by conservatives tactically, in order to position conservative ideas as credible and truthful. To date, historians have paid little attention to the news media criticism of conservatives during the Cold War era, while media scholars have focused largely on the contemporary debate about news media bias. This dissertation makes a contribution to the 3 historiography on postwar conservatism, particularly conservative resistance to liberalism and civil rights, and it offers mass communication scholars an exploration of how and why conservatives criticized the news media in the recent past. Among the conservatives of the 1970s who criticized national and local news media outlets were Republican party leaders; grassroots conservatives fighting court-ordered busing for school integration in cities such as Boston, Detroit, and Louisville, Kentucky; Christian anticommunists who believed the news media were agents in a communist conspiracy to destroy the Christian United States; “pro-family” activists opposed to the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; white supremacists who believed the news media unfairly favored African Americans over whites; and anti-Semites who believed that communist Jews controlled