mass-communication-theory

company to have a monopoly on supplying these needed services. In return for the
grant of that monopoly, the company accepted government regulation of prices
and services. In this way, public utilities were created with government commissions
to oversee their operation. Could a government commission be used to regulate
radio as a public utility? The answer was yes. In fact, Secretary of Commerce
(later President) Herbert Hoover himself was moved to remark that this was one
of the few instances in history where the country—industry and public alike—was
unanimous in its desire for more regulation (Barnouw, 1966).
In the debate over the establishment of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC),
Secretary Hoover championed one especially important philosophy—the airwaves
belong to the people. If airwaves are public property like other national resources
(national forests, for example), then privately operated stations can never own
them. Instead, they must be licensed from the people and used in the public interest.
If license holders violate the public trust, their licenses can be revoked. The
FRC was created to act on behalf of the public. But some historians claim that the
“compromise solution” between Populist demands for freedom and technocrats’
calls for control produced a somewhat limited definition of the “public interest.”
In fact, they argue, the intent of the legislation creating the FRC, the Radio Act of
1927, was not to encourage an open forum for public debate because such a freewheeling
discussion was considered a threat to the very “public interest, convenience,
and necessity” that Congress wanted broadcasters to serve. Congress
specifically designed the 1927 act to “deny the public access to the ideas of their
enemies, such as unions, socialists, communists, evolutionists, improper thinkers,
non-Christians, and immigrants…. Broadcasters could have free speech as long as
they served the public interest by denying access to speakers who did not serve the
public interest as they [Congress] defined it” (Goodman, 2001).
Nonetheless, the relative success of the FRC encouraged efforts to regulate
other media industries. Government censorship of movies was widely advocated,
especially by religious groups. Over time, the movie industry adopted various
forms of self-censorship in an effort to avoid government regulation. As the threat
of propaganda grew, even regulation of newspapers was seriously considered. In
1942, for example, the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press was established
to weigh the merits of and necessity for newspaper regulation (we’ll say
more about this later).
PROFESSIONALIZATION OF JOURNALISM
Chapter 5 Normative Theories of Mass Communication 109
As pressure for government regulation of media mounted in the 1920s, industry
leaders responded with efforts to professionalize. As noted in Chapter 3, Joseph
Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst established professional awards. Leaders in
the newspaper industry lobbied for and occasionally subsidized the establishment
of professional schools to train media practitioners. Rather than cede control of
media to a government agency, media managers went on record with pledges to
serve public needs. In 1923, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE)
adopted a set of professional standards entitled The Canons of Journalism (which
were replaced in 1975 by the ASNE Statement of Principles). Since then, virtually
every association of media practitioners has adopted similar standards. In doing
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