Origins

  Commentary occurred before regular radio news reports had become established. H.V. Kaltenborn was offering opinions (just as he did in his newspaper column) on New York stations in the early 192os-as, more occasionally, did other reporters in other cities. Many were purely local in their coverage and appeal; others became nationally known names.

     The agreement signed in 1933 between the radio networks and press associations to end the "Press-Radio War" served to limit the number of daily newscasts but did not affect daily commentaries "devoted to a generalization and general news situations, so long as the commentators do not report spot news." Furthermore, unlike network newscasts, commentators could be sponsored. Many radio journalists were quickly reclassified as news commentators, and commentary got a new lease on life just as the world political situation cried for informed analysis.

     Americans soon paid close attention to radio commentators, in part because they could identify more readily with the informed voice they could hear than with disembodied words on a newspaper or magazine page. Radio's commentators seemed to be reasoning with their listeners, not lecturing to them as they often seemed to be doing in print.

Determining Commentary's Place

  By its nature, however, commentary deals with matters of controversy. Controversy creates diverse points of view and thus disagreements. The broadcasting industry has never been a particularly active presenter of diverse viewpoints: although they please some listeners, they will by their very nature anger others. So from the beginning, commentators faced unique pressures.

Early on, broadcasters sought a neutral or objective role in providing news and commentary. The National Association of Broadcasters added to its own code of good programming practices in 1939 a recommendation that News shall not be selected for the purpose of furthering or hindering either side of any controversial public issue nor shall it be colored by the opinions or desires of the station or the network management, the editor or others engaged in its preparation, or the person actually delivering it over the air, or, in the case of sponsored news broadcasts, the advertiser News commentators as well as other newscasters shall be governed by those provisions.

  Mutual took the loosest approach to the code, often providing commentators thought too harsh or one-sided by the other networks. National Broadcasting Company (NBC) News called for coverage devoid of all personal feeling, thought, or opinion. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) became the toughest of all when news head Paul White declared in 1943 that "the public interest cannot be served in radio by giving selected news analysts a preferred and one-sided position." He went on to conclude that the news analyst's job is "to marshal the facts on any specific subject and out of his common or special knowledge to present those facts so as to inform his listeners rather than to persuade them.... Ideally in the case of controversial issues, the audience should be left with no impression as to which side the analyst himself actually favors."

     Kaltenborn's response to the CBS directive was that "no news analyst worth his salt could or would be completely neutral or objective. He shows his editorial bias by every selection or rejection from the vast mass of news material placed before him. Opinion is often expressed by the mere shading and emphasis." Walter Winchell on NBC Blue huffed, "Aren't we lucky that Patrick Henry's message didn't have to be reported by the Columbia Broadcasting System."

     Pressures on commentators to tone down their message came from management (which always had a fear of alienating advertisers), from listeners unhappy with the views they heard, and often from politicians or others who were critiqued. Because advertisers paid the bills, they always had a strong say. The networks took different paths to solve the problem of perceived commentator bias. CBS and NBC attempted to stop any political leaning. On the other hand, Mutual and the American Broadcasting Companies (ABC) tried to offset bias (and, as the weak networks, gather both listeners and sponsors) by adding more commentators with differing points of view. Reviewing commentator careers, one notes that many began on CBS or NBC and ended up on ABC or Mutual.

     In 1942 an Association of Radio News Analysts (ARNA) was formed by a group of 31 New York-based commentators as a craft guild. The membership of the organization included most of the leading figures in the business. Kaltenborn was president, Elmer Davis and Raymond Gram Swing were vice presidents, and Quincy Howe became secretary-treasurer. A number of potential members were excluded because of some doubts about whether they were really offering commentary. ARNA fought for such things as a proposal by Swing to eliminate the "middle commercial" as an interruption of the analysis or commentary. On the other hand, some commentators read their own commercials and (it was reported) did so with some enthusiasm. Gabriel Heatter switched from the war against Germany "to the great war against gingivitis-gingivitis, that creeps in like a saboteur." But ARNA's primary concern focused on the right to offer commentary in the first place.

     On behalf of his fellow commentators, H.V. Kaltenborn advised network and station owners to "hire the best men you can get with the money you can pay" and then tell them exactly what you expect, what you are trying to do with your station or network. Then give them their heads. If they get out of line, correct them. If they continually violate what you deem to be an essential policy, fire them. But don't pretend you are going to be able to prevent a commentator worth his salt from expressing his opinion.

     Fang (1977) reports that the number of network news commentators rose from 6 in 19 31 to about 20 when World War II began, whereas perhaps as many as 600 commentators were reporting news and analyzing events for networks and larger stations shortly after the war ended in 1945.

Examples of Radio Commentators

     To supplement those radio commentators discussed in their own entries in this encyclopedia, here are brief summaries of the professional lives of a few more who were active from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Hilmar Robert Baukhage (1889-I976)

     Beginning in 1932 on NBC Blue with a five-minute daily commentary, he identified himself simply as "Baukhage talk­ ing." By the 1940s, Baukhage was providing a 15-minute daily program on ABC, sometimes dealing with several topics but often focusing an extended essay on a single subject. He added part-time broadcasts on Mutual beginning in 1948 and joined that network full-time from 1951 to 1953. He provided a no-nonsense tone to his broadcasts that many listeners appreciated.

Cecil Brown ( I907-87)

     Brown was one of those reporters who seemed at his best when in a struggle with someone else. Hired by Murrow in 1940 to cover Italy, he had a short fuse and thus a short network career. Paul White had trouble with Brown, who in 1943 had just returned from a national speaking tour and had commented on the air that the American people seemed to have lost interest in the war. White questioned why Brown had not qualified his statement with a comment such as "From information I received in those interviews, I gathered that Americans are losing interest in the war." The network was already concerned about Brown, who was losing his sponsors. Brown's response was to resign and to call a news conference to declare himself a victim of censorship. Quite liberal in his views (e.g., he favored racial integration earlier than most), Brown moved to ABC and then NBC and left journalism in 1967.

Boake Carter (I903-44}

     In the mid-193os, Boake (Harold Thomas Henry) Carter was for a period the most popular radio news commentator in the United States. Carter's first chance at broadcasting came in 1930, when WCAU (the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia) wanted someone to broadcast a rugby match. His big broadcast break came with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932. National exposure placed Carter on CBS radio in direct competition with other major commentators. He was soon a favorite with listeners. Carter spoke very fast and used metaphors and cliches to create images in his listeners' minds. He also liked to put himself into his stories. Despite his English background, he was a strong isolationist, developed a bitter dislike for British foreign policy, and accused the British of trying to drag the United States into the war. He increasingly attacked the Roosevelt administration. In April 1938 CBS took Carter off the air as his ratings were declining and his attacks on others had grown too harsh. He continued as a newspaper columnist until his death.

Upton Close (I894-I960)

     Born Joseph Washington Hall, Close became a prominent right-wing commentator on network radio, but that is far from how he began. After early experience in and writing books about China, Close entered radio as a result of extensive public lecturing (much like Lowell Thomas at about the same time). He began offering occasional broadcasts on NBC as a Far East authority. In 1942 he began a weekly Sunday political commentary, also on NBC, called Close-Ups of the News. But he became more conservative and even shrill as the war went on, and NBC, concerned with low ratings, took him off the air at the end of 1944. For another year he broadcast increasingly right-wing commentary for the Mutual network before retiring in 1946 and moving to Mexico.

Floyd Gibbons (I887-I939)

     A traveler and a dashing foreign and war correspondent, Gibbons covered World War I for the Chicago Tribune and lost his left eye reporting on American forces fighting in Belleau Wood. For the rest of his life he wore an eye patch, which added to his adventurous image. He broadcast on the Tribune's WGN in 1926 and then on NBC as the Headline Hunter in 1929, but that program provided more entertainment than hard news. Gibbons became the first network daily newscaster in 19 30 (still on NBC), sponsored by the Literary Digest for six months, but he was soon replaced by Lowell Thomas.

Gabriel Heatter ( 1890-I972)

     Heatter had worked in print journalism for a number of years and had done occasional news broadcasts. As with Boake Carter, his big break came in 1933, when New York station WOR assigned him to both report and comment on the Lindbergh kidnapping murder trial on which public attention was focused at the time. Heatter continued to report and comment on world events as war broke out in 1939. His familiar catch phrase first appeared early in the war when things were not going well for the Allies. After American naval forces sank a Japanese destroyer, Heatter began his evening broadcast saying "there is good news tonight." He continued to use the phrase throughout his career on the Mutual network, becoming known as a morale booster.

Edwin C. Hill (I884-I957)

     Hill was another newspaperman (a feature writer for the New York Sun and King Features Syndicate) who later turned to motion pictures (his was the voice on Fox newsreels beginning in 1923) and in 1932 to radio. His Human Side of the News offered often sentimental features focused on people in the news. He became more politically conservative over time.

Don Hollenbeck (I905-54)

     Hollenbeck worked as a print journalist, radio reporter, and photojournalist before he began broadcasting reports of World War II from London, North Africa, and Italy for the Office of War Information. He was sent to Algiers in time to join the Allied troops for the invasion of Salerno (1943). In Italy he was one of the first correspondents to begin broadcasting from Naples. On one occasion in 1946, Hollenbeck began a newscast following a singing commercial by saying, "The atrocity you have just heard is not part of this program." Not surprisingly, by noon he was on the street looking for another job. Some years later, he lost another job for criticizing Senator Joseph McCarthy. He joined CBS in 1948, but in 1954, ailing and depressed by attacks from McCarthy supporters, especially the Hearst newspapers, Hollenbeck took his own life.

Fulton Lewis Jr. (I903-66)

     Lewis offered conservative commentary on the Mutual net­ work for three decades. He worked for various Washington, D.C., newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s and became a substitute newscaster on Mutual's WOL in Washington in 193-7. He was soon hotly popular on some 500 stations with his evening program touting his conservative and isolationist views, and radio became his primary medium. He led the successful battle to get broadcast reporters admitted to the congressional press galleries. He loved to feature the latest government bo011dog­ gle. He also loved to double up on adjectives to describe those he disagreed with (e.g., "an inexperienced, impractical, theoretical college professor"). He backed McCarthy in the early 1950s. He briefly tried television but was not successful. His audience began to diminish as his politics remained stuck in the far right.

Edward P. Morgan (I9Io-93)

     After an early career in print media (newspapers and magazines), Morgan worked with CBS from 1951 to 1954 as both a broadcaster and producer, then with ABC (1955-75) where he offered commentary on radio and television. Sponsored by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations in what was radio's last regular network evening news program, he began with news and then concluded with what he called "the shape of one man's opinion," commenting on one or more issues in a script he prepared himself. Strongly incisive even when commenting on the media (as few in radio did), he often offered forthright, stinging critiques when he felt strongly about an event.

Drew Pearson (1897-1969)

     Pearson began his journalism career as the diplomatic correspondent for both a magazine and a newspaper, where he gained extensive international experience. He was the co­ author (with several others, for the longest period with Jack Anderson) of the "Washington Merry-Go-Round," a widely syndicated newspaper column, beginning in 19 32, generally taking on most conservatives and supporting liberals, all of this fed by good reporting and many leaks. In 1940 the success of the column led to his being offered a weekly NBC Blue half­ hour Sunday commentary program, which carried the same kind of "hit-em-hard" investigative reporting, often about government mistakes or malfeasance. He fascinated listeners and readers alike with reports based on leaks or informants. Pearson had brief television stints on ABC and DuMont television in the early 1950s.

Howard K. Smith (1914-2002)

     Smith was a Rhodes Scholar (1937-39) and worked for United Press International (1939-41). He was one of "Murrow's Boys" when he joined CBS in Berlin in 1941 and was on the "last train" out in December 1941. Smith was the chief European correspondent for CBS after Murrow. After the war, he provided commentaries on Douglas Edwards' television news in the 1950s on CBS. He resigned from CBS in 1961 over the degree of freedom to comment. ABC gave him a program and the freedom to comment, but the show lost its sponsor and Smith his program; he resigned from ABC in 1979.

Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961)

     Dorothy Thompson began her career as a publicity writer for the women's suffrage movement as well as for advertising agencies. She went to Europe, where she interviewed many world leaders and sold articles to the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the Chicago Daily News, becoming a permanent foreign correspondent for both-one of the earliest female foreign correspondents. She was an outspoken opponent of Nazism, which led to her expulsion from Germany in 1934. She began as a radio news commentator with NBC during the 1936 political conventions and had her own weekly commentary program a year later, which lasted to early 1945. She spoke rapidly-her listeners got used to a torrent of words in her allotted 15-minute program. She was generally liberal but could be independent and sometimes confusing. She continued her newspaper column and speech-giving until the late 1950s.

Decline

     With the decline of radio networks in the 1950s, commentary began to disappear. It had been a rarity on local stations even in the 1930s and 1940s. There was little room for a 15-minute news program (let alone commentary) on rightly formatted stations that tried to retain the same sound appeal at all times. Advertisers, always uncomfortable with riling up listeners with controversy, increasingly turned away from supporting such programs. A few television journalists, including Walter Cronkite, avoided commentary on their primary news medium but did offer it over radio.

     What radio news survived by the 1980s and 1990s was more of a quick "rip and read" nature, "plus traffic and sports," than anything providing in-depth reporting, let alone analysis. Talk shows with opinionated hosts (none of them journalists) replaced reasoned and thoughtful commentary, which could still be found in scattered moments on television but more consistently in the press. The quest for profit, which became stronger in the 1990s with industry consolidation, wiped out any chance that commentary might return.

     Public radio offered an alternative that appealed to small but influential audiences. Daniel Schorr, for example, joined National Public Radio in 1985 after a career on CBS and Cable News Network (CNN) and provided reasoned political and foreign affairs commentary on All Things Considered-thus providing a tiny remnant of what had once been a radio staple.