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''Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television'' was an
anti-Communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
document published in the United States at the start of the 1950s. Issued by the
right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...
journal ''
Counterattack A counterattack is a tactic employed in response to an attack, with the term originating in "war games". The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy during attack, while the specific objectives typically seek ...
'' on June 22, 1950, the pamphlet-style book names 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others in the context of purported Communist manipulation of the entertainment industry. Some of the 151 were already being denied employment because of their political beliefs, history, or association with suspected subversives. ''Red Channels'' effectively placed the rest on a
blacklist Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...
.


''Counterattack''

In May 1947,
Alfred Kohlberg Alfred Kohlberg (January 27, 1887, San Francisco, California, April 7, 1960, New York City, New York) was an American textile importer. A staunch anti-Communist, he was a member of the pro-Chiang "China lobby", as well as an ally of Wisconsin Senat ...
, an American textile importer and an ardent member of the anti-Communist
China Lobby In American politics, the China lobby consisted of advocacy groups calling for American support for the Republic of China during the period from the 1930s until US recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1979, and then calling for clo ...
China Lobby
-->, funded an organization, led by three former
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
agents, called American Business Consultants Inc., which issued a newsletter, ''
Counterattack A counterattack is a tactic employed in response to an attack, with the term originating in "war games". The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy during attack, while the specific objectives typically seek ...
.'' Kohlberg was also an original national council member of the
John Birch Society The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, or libertarian ideas. T ...
. A special report, ''Red Channels: the Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television,'' was published by ''Counterattack'' in June 1950. Its declared purpose was to "expos the most important aspects of Communist activity in America each week."


''Red Channels''

The three founder members were: John G. Keenan, company president and the businessman of the trio; Kenneth M. Bierly, who would later become a consultant to
Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
; and Theodore C. Kirkpatrick, the managing editor of ''Counterattack'' and the group's spokesman. A former Army intelligence major, Francis J. McNamara, was the editor of ''Counterattack.'' The introduction to ''Red Channels,'' running just over six pages, was written by Vincent Hartnett, an employee of the Phillips H. Lord agency, an independent radio-program production house, or "packager." Hartnett would later found the anti-Communist organization AWARE, Inc. The 213-page tract, released three years after the
House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
began investigating purported
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
influence in the entertainment field, claims to expose the spread – by means of advocacy of civil rights, academic freedom, and nuclear weapons control – of that influence, in radio and television entertainment. Referring to current television programming, the ''Red Channels'' introduction declares that
veral commercially sponsored dramatic series are used as sounding boards, particularly with reference to current issues in which the Party is critically interested: "academic freedom," "civil rights," "peace," the H-bomb, etc ... With radios in most American homes and with approximately 5 million TV sets in use, the
Cominform The Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (), commonly known as Cominform (), was a co-ordination body of Marxist-Leninist communist parties in Europe during the early Cold War that was formed in part as a replacement of the ...
and the Communist Party USA now rely more on radio and TV than on the press and motion pictures as "belts" to transmit pro-Sovietism to the American public.
The introduction to ''Red Channels'' described how the Communist Party attracts both financial and political backing from those in the entertainment industry:
No cause which seems calculated to arouse support among people in show business is ignored: the overthrow of
Francoist Spain Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...
, the fight against anti-Semitism and Jimcrow, civil rights, world peace, the outlawing of the H-Bomb, are all used. Around such pretended objectives, the hard core of Party organizers gather a swarm of "reliables" and well-intentioned "liberals," to exploit their names and their energies.
''Red Channels'' served as a vehicle for the expansion of the entertainment industry blacklist that denied employment to a host of artists it considered sympathetic to "subversive" causes, attempted to forestall criticism by claiming that the Communist Party itself engaged in blacklisting, seeing to it that "articulate anti-Communists are blacklisted and smeared with that venomous intensity which is characteristic of Red Fascists alone."


''Red Channels'' list

''Red Channels'' listed 151 professionals in entertainment and on-air journalism whom it clearly implied were among "the Red Fascists and their sympathizers" in the broadcasting field. Each of the names is followed by a raw list of putatively telling data, with the sources of evidence varying from FBI and HUAC citations to newspaper articles culled from the mainstream press, industry trade sheets, and such Communist publications as the ''
Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were m ...
''. For example, under the heading for
Burgess Meredith Oliver Burgess Meredith (November 16, 1907 – September 9, 1997) was an American actor and filmmaker whose career encompassed theater, film, and television. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" and "on ...
, identified as ''Actor, Director, ProducerStage, Screen, Radio, TV'', the first three of a total of seven data points read:


Impact

Jean Muir Jean Elizabeth Muir ( ; 17 July 1928 – 28 May 1995) was a British fashion designer. Early life and career Jean Muir was born in London, the daughter of Cyril Muir, a draper's floor superintendent, and his wife, Phyllis Coy. Her father wa ...
was the first performer to lose employment because of a listing in ''Red Channels''. In 1950 Muir was named as a
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
sympathizer in the pamphlet, and was immediately removed from the cast of the television sitcom ''
The Aldrich Family ''The Aldrich Family'', a popular radio teenage situation comedy (July 2, 1939 – April 19, 1953), was also presented in films, television and comic books. In the radio series' opening exchange, awkward teen Henry's mother called, "Hen-''reeeee ...
'', in which she had been cast as Mrs. Aldrich. NBC had received between 20 and 30 phone calls protesting her being in the show.
General Foods General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the United States by Charles William Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895. The company changed its name to "General Foods" in 1929, after several corporate ...
, the sponsor, said that it would not sponsor programs in which "controversial persons" were featured. Though the company later received thousands of calls protesting the decision, it was not reversed. Many other well-known artists were named, including Hollywood stars such as
Edward G. Robinson Edward G. Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg; December 12, 1893January 26, 1973) was a Romanian-American actor of stage and screen, who was popular during the Hollywood's Golden Age. He appeared in 30 Broadway plays and more than 100 films duri ...
and
Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
(who by then, due to tax problems, was in Europe), literary figures such as
Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...
and
Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...
, and musicians such as
Hazel Scott Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidad-born American jazz and classical pianist and singer. She was an outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation. She used her influence to improve the representat ...
,
Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...
and
Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...
. Ex-leftist and HUAC informant
J. B. Matthews Joseph Brown "Doc" Matthews Sr. (1894–1966), best known as J. B. Matthews, was an American linguist, educator, writer, and political activist. A committed pacifist, he became a self-described " fellow traveler" of the Communist Party USA i ...
claimed responsibility for providing the listings; he would also work for United States Senator
Joseph McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visi ...
(R-WI). By 1951, those identified in ''Red Channels'' were blacklisted across much or all of the movie and broadcast industries unless and until they cleared their names, the customary requirement being that they testify before the
House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
(HUAC) and name names, which the vast majority refused to do.


Lawsuits

One libel lawsuit was filed against ''Red Channels'', by actor Joe Julian, who charged that ''Red Channels'' was responsible for his income plummeting from $18,000 the year it was published to barely $1,500 three years later. The case was dismissed on the basis of the tract's care in not making overt claims about specific individuals and its brief disclaimer: "In screening personnel every safeguard must be used to protect genuine liberals from being unjustly labelled." CBS radio personality
John Henry Faulk John Henry Faulk (August 21, 1913 – April 9, 1990) was an American storyteller and radio show host. His successful lawsuit against the entertainment industry helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist. Early life John Henry Faulk wa ...
also sued. Faulk was a favorite target of Hartnett, who proudly proclaimed himself a coauthor of ''Red Channels''. In 1953, Hartnett started AWARE, Inc., an anti-Communist organization with its own bulletin focused on the entertainment industry. The bulletin said that, in the 1940s, Faulk had sponsored a pro-Communist peace rally, entertained at pro-Communist clubs, appeared at Communist front activities, and addressed a "Spotlight on enryWallace" event in "'the official training school of the Communist conspiracy in New York'" (p. 232). CBS fired Faulk a bit over a year after he filed his lawsuit. In 1962, a jury awarded Faulk $3.5 million in damages. Although the award was later reduced, the verdict marked the effective end of the blacklisting era.''Red Channels'' profile at Humanities and Social Sciences Online
/ref>


See also

*
Counterattack (newsletter) ''Counterattack'' was a weekly subscription-based, anti-communist, mimeographed newsletter, which ran from 1947 to 1955 and was published by a "private, independent organization" of the same name and started by three ex-Federal Bureau of Investi ...
* The ''Red Channels'' list – a tally of people named in ''Red Channels''


References


Sources

Print: * Bernhard, Nancy E. ''U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947–1960''. Cambridge University Press, 2003 *"By Appointment", ''Time'', September 11, 1950 (availabl
online
subscription required). *Blue, Howard (2002). ''Words at War: World War II Era Radio and the Postwar Broadcasting Industry Blacklist.'' Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. *Cogley, John (1956). "Report on Blacklisting." Collected in ''Blacklisting: An Original Anthology'' (1971), Merle Miller and John Cogley. New York: Arno Press/New York Times. *Doherty, Thomas (2003). ''Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture''. New York: Columbia University Press. *Faulk, John Henry and Don Gardner
''Fear on Trial'' (1964) University of Texas Press, 1983
*Miller, Merle (1952). "The Judges and the Judged." Collected in ''Blacklisting: An Original Anthology'' (1971), Merle Miller and John Cogley. New York: Arno Press/New York Times. *Nizer, Louis. (1966). The Jury Returns. New York: Doubleday & Co. *"Who's Blacklisted?" ''Time'', August 22, 1949 (availabl

subscription required). * Schrecker, Ellen (2002). ''The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents''. New York: Palgrave. *Strout, Lawrence N. (1999). ''Covering McCarthyism: How the Christian Science Monitor Handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950–1954''. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. {{refend Online (authored): *Schwartz, Richard A. (1999)
"How the Film and Television Blacklists Worked"
Part of the Florida International University website. Online (archival):
Guide to the American Business Consultants, Inc. ''Counterattack'': Research Files 1930–1968
– summary and inventory of document holdings in the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives; part of the NYU–Elmer Holmes Bobst Library website

– links to many reproduced pages of the original book; part of the ''Authentic History Center'' website


External links


Complete text of ''Red Channels''
at
HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...
Anti-communism in the United States Hollywood blacklist McCarthyism