IDEOLOGY OF THE AIR: COMMUNICATION POLICY AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN, 1896-1935 A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy by SETH D. ASHLEY Dr. Stephanie Craft, Dissertation Supervisor MAY 2011 The undersigned, appointed by Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled IDEOLOGY OF THE AIR: COMMUNICATION POLICY AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN, 1896-1935 presented by Seth D. Ashley a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. ____________________________________________________________ Professor Stephanie Craft ____________________________________________________________ Professor Tim P. Vos ____________________________________________________________ Professor Charles Davis ____________________________________________________________ Professor Victoria Johnson ____________________________________________________________ Professor Robert McChesney For Mom and Dad. Thanks for helping me explore so many different paths. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I entered the master’s program at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, my aim was to become a practitioner of journalism, but the excellent faculty members I worked with helped me aspire to become a scholar. First and foremost is Dr. Stephanie Craft, who has challenged and supported me for more than a decade. I could not have completed this dissertation or this degree without her. I was also fortunate to have early encounters with Dr. Charles Davis and Dr. Don Ranly, who opened me to a world of ideas. More recently, Dr. Tim Vos and Dr. Victoria Johnson helped me identify and explore the ideas that were most important to me. The work of Dr. Robert McChesney has served as inspiration throughout my education, and I am glad he was willing to serve on my all-star committee. I am grateful to all of the teachers and scholars who have helped me reach this point, and I also owe thanks to my fellow graduate students in journalism and sociology, who served as teachers, colleagues, research partners and friends. I am also thankful for librarians everywhere, especially the ones at Missouri’s Ellis and Journalism libraries, and those working behind the scenes to make interlibrary loans possible. Finally, I dedicate this work to my mom and dad, who have always supported me in every way possible, who provided me with every opportunity, and who encouraged me to pursue paths not taken. I love you both very much. ii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ ii Chapter 1: Media, Democracy, and the Role of the State ...................................................1 Communication Policy Today......................................................................................................4 Understanding Communication Policy ........................................................................................7 Chapter 2: Literature Review.............................................................................................13 The American Approach: Serving the Market ...........................................................................14 The British Approach: “The Brute Force of Monopoly” ...........................................................18 What is the Public Interest?........................................................................................................26 Chapter 3: Explanatory Frameworks and Concepts ..........................................................35 Historical Institutionalism and Path Dependency ......................................................................36 Critical Junctures and Long-Term Processes.............................................................................41 Political Economy and Communication.....................................................................................45 Markets and Society...................................................................................................................47 Positive and Negative Liberty....................................................................................................58 Chapter 4: Methodology....................................................................................................65 Historical Comparative Analysis ...............................................................................................66 Selection of Cases and Time Period...........................................................................................70 Data Collection...........................................................................................................................74 Chapter 5: Communication Policy Before 1896................................................................76 The Rise of the Market Economy ..............................................................................................77 The Press and Commercialization..............................................................................................81 The Post Office and the Telegraph.............................................................................................85 iii Chapter 6: The Origins of Broadcasting Policy, 1896-1920 .............................................93 International Origins ..................................................................................................................94 America: Questions of Control ................................................................................................101 Britain: The First Wireless Act ................................................................................................113 Chapter 7: Chaos in the Ether, 1921-1926.......................................................................122 The Radio Explosion in America.............................................................................................122 Herbert Hoover and the National Radio Conferences..............................................................135 The Birth of the British Broadcasting Company......................................................................149 John Reith and the Theory of Public Service...........................................................................157 The Crawford Committee and the Transformation of the BBC...............................................167 Chapter 8: Modern Forms Take Shape, 1927-1935.........................................................177 America: The Institutionalization of the Status Quo................................................................178 Britain: Building a New National Church................................................................................191 Chapter 9: Conclusion .....................................................................................................198 Why Structure Matters: What Kind of Liberty?.......................................................................202 Communication Policy Today: Market Failure and Public Goods ..........................................206 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................211 Vita ..................................................................................................................................224 iv Chapter 1: Media, Democracy, and the Role of the State In 1922, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover gave an opening address to the First National Radio Conference in Washington, D.C., and described how the new medium of radio was poised to revolutionize public life. “We are indeed today upon the threshold of a new means of widespread communication of intelligence that has the most profound importance from the point of view of public education and public welfare,” he said.1 As Hoover and others foresaw, electronic communication over the past century has proved to be one of the greatest educative and democratizing forces of all time. Radio, television and now the Internet bring news and information to billions of people around the world. Yet paradoxically, these same means of communication in the United States have become subject to limited, oligopolistic ownership and control, which in turn, can deliver a limited diversity of opinion and can have a tendency to marginalize dissenting views.2 Hoover’s promise of the “widespread communication of intelligence” is obscured today in mainstream mass media outlets, which are predominantly commercial operations controlled by a handful of large profit-seeking corporations. As citizens turn to these 1 Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 1920-1933 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1952), 140. 2 See generally Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999) and The Problem of the Media (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004); Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002); Ben Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influence on Mass Media Content 2nd ed. (White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1996); Pamela J. Shoemaker and Tim P. Vos, Gatekeeping