Marks

By Sam Marks

On 2 November 1920, the first commercial radio station in the United States was established. That same evening, from a factory rooftop in Pittsburgh, Albert Sindlinger of KDKA read aloud the results of the 1920 U.S. Presidential Election. ‘Nobody had any comprehension of the significance of what was going on’, said Sindlinger when recounting the evening. The ‘couple hundred listeners’ to Sindlinger’s broadcast would lead the trend on what would become, by the end of the decade, the first electronic mass medium.

Broadcast radio took off in the United States throughout the 1920s. Six months after the foundation of KDKA, radios were in both high demand and in high supply. By 1922, there were 500 AM radio stations operating across the country and a future 1947 survey showed that more than 80 per cent of Americans were radio listeners. News and entertainment were never so easily accessible to the wider public. As consumption of radio grew significantly throughout the 1920s, a “Golden Age of radio” emerged, stretching from the 1930s to the 1950s. Radio’s golden age brought about new types of programming that would reach the demands of the wider, more expansive audience. Play adaptations, mystery serials, quiz shows, comedies, sports, cooking shows, soap operas, variety hours, kids programming, and weather broadcasts all accompanied the news as staple aspects of daily programming. When President Calvin Coolidge’s second inaugural address was broadcast over radio on 6 December 1925, politics also became a staple in American radio. Across the country, Americans could now enjoy a shared, common experience.

Prior to the radio boom of the 1920s, the only significant regulation of radio was the Radio Act of 1912 which required radio stations to be licensed to broadcast legally, but which did not anticipate the popularity radio would gain throughout the next decade. Following the rise of broadcasting, the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) was established. Stations were now required to act ‘in the public interest, convenience, or necessity’ to obtain broadcasting licenses. In 1934, the Federal Communications Commission superseded the FRC, taking on the federal powers of regulating radio. Throughout the 1930s, the Great Depression ravaged the country economically. The debilitated economic climate gave rise to broadcast evangelism: the practice of Christian preachers using the radio, and later television, to spread their faith. These broadcasts became extremely 33

popular, especially in the Midwest and South, where listeners flooded evangelists with donations to keep their programs on-air. In addition to religious views, notorious televangelists often espoused anticommunist, antisemitic, and segregationist views. Many also funded their programming by selling so-called “miracle cures” for a variety of ailments, despite the lack of any scientific evidence to back up their claims. The influence of these broadcasters led to the FCC implementation of policies to curb the polarizing climate of modern radio. This regulation culminated in the Fairness Doctrine.

In 1938, Lawrence J. Flynn challenged the licenses of Boston stations WAAB and WNAC. Flynn argued these stations aired one-sided editorial attacks towards politicians that the owner, John Shepherd III, opposed. Though Flynn failed to gain the licenses for these stations, the FCC banned radio editorials in the 1941 Mayflower Decision. In 1949, the FCC repealed the Mayflower Doctrine in favor of the Fairness Doctrine. Two key regulations were now placed on radio stations. The first was the “fair coverage rule”: radio stations needed to ensure coverage of controversial issues was sufficient and gave fair representation to opposing views on those issues. The second regulation was the right to reply: citizens must be given airtime to reply to issues aired on the radio. These regulations raised the standards stations had to follow, significantly hindering the power of both preachers and biased programmers.

The regulations under the Fairness Doctrine carried over to television as it gradually overtook radio as the mass media in the 1950s. In a similar fashion to 1920s radio, television brought a new wave of communication that was heavily popularized across the country. The prominence of television in America is still present today, with a 2011 survey showing that 97 per cent of American households own a television set. With the general expansion of mass media, including the explosive popularity of the internet as a broadcasting tool, more polarizing broadcasters utilizing these new communication technologies followed. Democratic Party affiliates used the Fairness Doctrine to try and combat farright viewpoints. The goal of these attacks was to make it too costly for right-wing broadcasters to be aired, so stations would not contract them. Groups like the National Council for Civil Responsibility consistently took the spearhead against far-right

broadcasters. The increased use of the Fairness Doctrine drew political attention to the way that it could be challenged as legislation.

The most prominent challenge to the Fairness Doctrine came during the 1969 Supreme Court case Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC. The case originated from a dispute about on-air personal attacks without response time. Billy J. Hargis, an evangelical and segregationist broadcaster, discussed the work Goldwater: Extremist of the Right by Fred J. Cook on his Christian Crusade broadcast from WGCB in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. Cook sued the company, arguing that he had the right to respond to any attacks on his work. Red Lion in turn sued the FCC over the Fairness Doctrine, which they argued violated First Amendment rights of freedom of the press. The Fairness Doctrine was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court, arguing that it was essential to creating an “informed public” envisioned by the First Amendment. However, this ruling did not argue in favour of the Fairness Doctrine’s continued usage, nor did it prohibit its repeal.

Throughout the 1970s, the US witnessed another recession that rivaled the great depression, causing a rise of “televangelists” through TV broadcasting. The efforts to suppress more right-wing views failed, as the country had turned to politicians of that ideology to alleviate the woes citizens felt. When more politicians with right-wing views came to power, government regulation of the airwaves decreased significantly. In 1987 and under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the four FCC commissioners unanimously abolished the Fairness Doctrine under the Syracuse Decision, arguing that the doctrine hurt public interest by violating free speech. While Congress attempted to codify the Fairness Doctrine before it could be abolished, its attempts were vetoed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The unfiltered atmosphere that had been created by the repeal of the doctrine led to the explosive rise of Conservative Talk Radio: an incredibly popular and current form of broadcasting in America.

In 1988, ABC Radio executive Ed McLaughlin signed Rush Limbaugh, who became the premier conservative voice in America for over two decades. Discovered in a small station in Sacramento, Limbaugh was aired on stations for free where he trafficked conspiracy theories, far-right politics, and divisiveness. It was the most consistently listenedto radio show in America and the highest rated talk radio show in the country. Since Limbaugh’s passing in 2021, other right-wing commentators such as Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, and Mike Gallagher have all made it to the top ten most listened-to radio broadcasts in the country. In addition to radio, other forms of media content came under partisan influence. In 1996, both FOX News and MSNBC launched as TV channels. FOX, currently the most watched news network in the US, emerged as a competitor to the major news networks and primarily voices conservative-leaning biases. Its primetime presenter Tucker Carlson has become the most watched news personality in the country. The most prominent progressive-leaning news channel, MSNBC, is the second most watched channel in the country. Rachel Maddow, a progressive pundit, has appealed to the more left-leaning bases in the country. Both have significantly aided the increase in polarization and division in the American political climate. The emergence and domination of partisan broadcasting in America has led to debates over the potential return of the Fairness Doctrine.

Supporters of restoring the Fairness Doctrine have argued that it provides people with what they need to hear. Despite this, the several attempts in Congress to restore the Fairness Doctrine have received minimal effort. A current bill, Restore the Fairness Doctrine Act of 2019, was introduced in the House of Representatives with only one sponsor.

Opponents of restoring the Fairness Doctrine have argued that it restricts people’s access to what they want to hear. Public opinion polls conducted in 2008 show only 47 per cent of voters support government regulation in a similar fashion to the Fairness Doctrine. In addition, the prevalence of partisan content on social media has desensitized many of the viewers to such content on the news.

As it stands today, the Fairness Doctrine is largely overlooked in US history. With current polls showing a strong public distrust in the media, the ramifications of repealing the Fairness Doctrine have been heavily felt. Broadcasting once served as a way of expressing the facts of a situation; now it is used to debate what the facts are. Unless a change is made to the structure of media, the current trajectory is looking to continue, all of which was never foreseen by Sindlinger back in that small factory rooftop shack in Pittsburgh.

By Grace Volante

Scholars of animal studies have emphasised the ubiquitously pervasive presence of non-human animals in human lives and culture – it is not surprising that European colonialism in Africa provides no exception. Animal history attempts to introduce animals as actors and subjects in history, placing animals within narratives where they have been previously ignored. This article will explore the crucial place of animal bodies in the propagation and reception of European imperialism on the continent of Africa, with an eclectic approach focusing on a range of examples from scholarship and primary sources. When it comes to the physical aspect of this conflict for control of animal bodies, the article will primarily touch upon dogs and livestock, but will also explore wider symbolic themes concerning ‘wild’ animals generally. In doing so, the article aims to highlight the often overlooked significance of the conflict over non-humans, and the inscription of lasting symbolic meaning onto animal lives as major features of the colonial struggle in Africa.

Why attempt to singularly treat such a large and various place as ‘Africa’ in this article, you might ask? The continent is diverse in its very categories of diversity: landscape, culture, history, etc. My response would be that, firstly, colonialism in Africa is often treated generally in scholarship due to European approaches to colonialism there sharing many themes and patterns. Any study with greater length and a more specific argument would of course be forced to take a narrower focus; however, for the purposes of merely demonstrating the importance of the often overlooked conflict over non-human animals symbolically and physically in interactions with colonialism, the area will suffice. My intention is not to homogenise the place in any way shape or form, merely to use it as a diverse geographical area through which we can demonstrate the variety of ways in which the colonial struggle entails a struggle over animal lives and relationships.

To begin by discussing a basic justification for the imperial mission itself, and an undercurrent which ran throughout the colonial endeavour, the logic of colonialism was inseparable from biological and zoological ideas of racial inferiority and social Darwinism. Sujit Sivasundaram shows that questions for European scientists surrounding race and boundaries between human and non-human animals were followed via the same lines of enquiry and material specimens, for example, through the collection of human and animal skulls alongside each other. This was accompanied by background cultural theories of biological and social Darwinism asserting that “Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes”, inextricably tied up with assumptions of racial superiority.

This racism of Darwin’s work is fairly widely known today; an impact that is less touched upon is the attempted wielding of colonial power through subsequent ‘racialisation’ of animal bodies: the attempted realisation of human racial constructions through the bodies of non-human animals. One form of racialisation which still leaves a physical imprint on the world today is the creation of dog breeds for the protection and service of colonials and settlers, including the breeding of German Shepherds, known to be a global symbol of imperial aggression, and of Boerboel dogs and Rhodesian Ridgebacks as non-human representatives of ‘settler nativism’, in the words of Lance van Sittert and Sandra Swart. In a time in which animal and human eugenics was on the rise, such breeds were specifically engineered to perpetrate aggression against Black Africans, as well as to represent what white settler communities perceived as their own strength and pure heritage. Doble explores how, on the flipside of this, racialisation was also attempted through the colonial construction of “Native dogs”, designated as dangerous and diseased vagrants who needed regulation in white urban spaces. In this way, European ideas about the inferiority of Africans were projected onto dogs viewed as ‘African’ or Africanowned, causing their culling and condemnation by Europeans.

Relatedly, Nancy Jacobs’ study on the Bophuthatswana donkey massacre reveals a similar condemnation of animals viewed as defined by their ownership by indigenous Africans. Jacobs’ paper finds that animals and owners were blamed by the colonial government for the alleged negative environmental and societal impacts of donkeys, particularly pertinent because of the value of donkeys for those who could not afford more expensive livestock. This targeting and neglect of animal bodies belonging to economically-

marginalised people in Bophuthatswana was part of a wider trend of imperial efforts to destroy and appropriate African wealth and livelihoods, and to force indigenous people into exploitative European wage-labour. Similarly, Richard Waller expounds ideas of “dirty” and “clean” areas within Kenyan Highland reserves pertaining to supposed tickridden African-owned cattle, causing the deliberate economic marginalisation of Kenyans, and social as well as livestock segregation. All of this derived from an attempt to protect and maintain economic and political separation between white settlers and Africans in Kenya, in addition to ideas about the natural inferiority of African and African-owned animals. Such efforts are representative overall of a key part of colonial power: attempted control over who could use and relate to which animals for which purposes. As well as the economic element, these actions by European powers employ a crucial ideological project of depicting themselves as righteous custodians of non-human animals, and “Africans” (a homogenised group in the European imagination, with the same nature and characteristics) as irresponsible custodians.

Unsurprisingly, many of the communities marginalised by these bovine machinations responded in kind, seeming to envisage colonial power and its effects through the bodies of their livestock. Direct resistance to colonial power over African-owned animal bodies took the form of a fifteen-year refusal of colonial veterinary services by Meru cattle-owners, and failed colonial attempts at mass-immunisation in North Nyanza. A missionary record of a Basotho song relating to rinderpest – a cattle plague brought to Africa by European livestock – and the destruction of economic and social life illustrates well the devastation of the zoonosis, each line beginning with “No more cattle”, naming a cultural or economic loss as a result of rinderpest, then asking how crucial practices can continue, such as marriage and food consumption. This source suggests that the dispossession of animal bodies resulting from colonialism was a fundamental kind of dispossession for the Basotho, demonstrating the essential nature of animal bodies and their uses for this dispossessed community. It would make sense, then, for understanding of and resistance to colonialism to pertain to these lost, altered and “colonised” animal bodies. Indeed, Jeffrey Peires attributes the Xhosa cattle-killing movement of 18567 to frustration at the new colonial situation; this movement advocated purging the community of its “impure” cattle and crops, which would later be replaced by a new generation of Xhosa people, cattle and grain. In this event, the remaining or killed

animal bodies were the focal point of how the overall situation was understood.

There are many smaller-scale ways in which animal bodies comprised part of the understanding and subversion of colonial power, interesting and unique understandings of the colonial situation which challenge the European endeavour to dominate animal symbolism. One example is the account by Charles Muhoro Kareri, an influential moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Africa, of his father forbidding him to go to the local European mission school when he was a child due to European practices surrounding animal bodies, transgressive from a Kikuyu perspective and manifest in their practice of eating “wild” animals, implying that missionary colonisation of the human body would entail unacceptable practices relating to animal bodies. This illustrates how basic aspects of life such as the consumption of animals served as part of the politics of colonial complicity and cultural transgression for Kenyan communities; this is also expressed through the humorous statement in the Muthirigu, a dance at Meru missions and schools protesting colonial intervention in female “circumcision”, that an “uncircumcised” pregnant woman would give birth to dogs. Here, colonial interruption of initiation practices is jokingly said to cause the birth of a being that is not human, a common theme in the understanding of births by “uncircumcised” women, this time framed in relation to non-human animals. From these examples, it seems that envisioning the effects of colonial power entailed for some communities a prediction of an altered and inverted relationship with wildlife and non-human bodies.

Ultimately, just as theories of race and animality fuelled the colonial mission in the first place, this logic was turned on its head by some indigenous intellectuals attempting to demonstrate the cruelty of European colonialism. Sol Plaatje, South African journalist and polymath, attempted to have British audiences understand the injustice of colonial power through discussing the wrongs that animal bodies suffered as a result of colonial policies. Plaatje played on British sentiments around kindness to non-humans, writing “We… wondered if the animals were not more deserving of pity than their owners”, and tried to harness the European likening of Africans to animals, urging that animal-like people should also be treated kindly. Moreover, the way in which Jomo Kenyatta, the first Prime Minister of Kenya, chose to describe to British audiences the injustice of colonialism, was to describe the situation of white settler land-ownership through a Gikuyu story about wild animals. In this story, a man is gradually displaced from his hut in the jungle because of his kindness in letting an elephant share his hut during rain, only to continue to be homeless as all the animals of the jungle take the elephant’s side. In this story, the elephant (European) prioritises his bodily safety and comfort in the man’s (Gikuyu’s) own home and deliberately displaces him, despite knowing this bodily and psychological discomfort. Why this particular story is used to make Kenyatta’s point is an interesting question, and it is equally interesting to speculate on the significance of perhaps switching the “civilisational” narratives of “Africans” as animal-like and Europeans as civilised, especially in the context of a violent and devastating action such as deliberate displacement of Kenyans from their homes, which hardly fits with the European “civilised” narratives.

Through these disparate examples, we can see the great extent to which animal bodies were a crucial part of the operation of colonialism and colonial power, both through their deliberate use during the attempted assertion of colonial power, and as a way to understand and react to colonialism and colonial power. Historians have often focused on the economic importance of colonial power and its use of animal bodies, but the pervasiveness of animals in human lives and culture means that animals can be found everywhere in ideas about colonialism and its social effects. Colonial power was wielded not just through the targeting of indigenous-owned animal bodies and biopolitical control of animal and human populations, altering and eradicating indigenous human and non-human bodies; it was in itself predicated on European biological racist discourse surrounding an idea of “Africans” and non-human animals. Indigenous communities’ and individuals’ imagination of and resistance to colonial power through animal bodies was naturally diverse, often with the effects of colonial power conceived in relation its transgression of accepted treatment and practices of humans and non-humans. As such, the impact on and creation of animal bodies due to colonialism was unprecedented, and a struggle for dominant and righteous action and meaning involved a fundamental revelation of how humans relate to non-human animals.