Broadcast Regulation and Investigations
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Bates, Stephen. “The Wiz in the Witch Hunt: Milton Stewart, the FCC, and the FBI.” American Journalism 39:1 (2022): 27-50.
Bauer, A.J. “Propaganda in the Guise of News: Fulton Lewis Jr. and the Origins of the Fairness Doctrine.” Radical History Review 141 (October 2021): 7-29.
Baughman, James L. Television’s Guardians: The FCC and the Politics of Programming, 1958-1967. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985.
Baughman, James L. “Minow’s Viewers: Understanding the Response to the ‘Vast Wasteland’ Address.” Federal Communications Law Journal 55:3 (May 2003):449-458.
Benjamin, Louise. “Working it Out Together: Radio Policy from Hoover to the Radio Act of 1927.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 42 (Spring 1998): 221-236.
Benjamin, Louise. M. Freedom of the Air and the Public Interest: First Amendment Rights in Broadcasting to 1935. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.
Benjamin, Louise M. “Regulating the Government’s Airwaves: Creation of the Interdepartmental Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC).” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 51 (September 2007): 498–515.
Bensman, Marvin R. The Beginning of Broadcast Regulation in the Twentieth Century. Jefferson: McFarland, 2000.
Berkman, Dave. “The ‘Blue Book’ and Charles Siepmann- as Reported in Broadcasting Magazine.” American Journalism 2:1 (1985): 37-48.
Beyersdorf, Frank. “Freedom of Communication: Visions and Realities of Postwar Telecommunication Orders in the 1940s.” Journal of Policy History 27:3 (2015): 492-520.
Blevins, Jeffrey Layne, and Karla Martinez. “A Political-Economic History of FCC Policy on Minority Broadcast Ownership.” Communication Review 13:3 (2010): 216–238.
Brinson, Susan L. “Frieda Hennock: FCC Activist and the Campaign for Educational Television, 1948-1951.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 18:3 (August 1998): 411-429.
Brinson, Susan L. “War on the Homefront in World War II: The FCC and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 21:1 (March 2001): 63-75.
Brinson, Susan L. The Red Scare, Politics, and the Federal Communications Commission, 1941-1960. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004.
Bowman, Michael. “Immoral or Otherwise Offensive Matter: Took Gathings’ 1952 Investigation of Broadcasting.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 75:1 (Spring 2016): 47-61.
Cailteux, Karen Sue Byers. “The Political Blacklist in the Broadcast Industry: The Decade of the 1950s.” PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1972.
Caldwell, Louis G. “Principles Governing the Licensing of Broadcasting Stations.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register 79, no. 2 (1930): 113–157.
Coase, Ronald. “The Federal Communications Commission.” Journal of Law & Economics 2 (October 1959): 1-40.
Coase, R. H. “Payola in Radio and Television Broadcasting.” Journal of Law & Economics 22:2 (1979): 269–328.
Dempsey, John Mark, and Eric Gruver. “‘The American System’: Herbert Hoover, the Associative State, and Broadcast Commercialism.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 39, no. 2 (2009): 226–244.
Dempsey, John Mark, and Eric Gruver. “Government Control of Radio Communication: The 1918 Debate.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26:2 (2019): 284-298.
Dennis, Paul M. “Chills and Thrills: Does Radio Harm our Children? The Controversy Over Program Violence in the Age of Radio.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 34:1 (1998): 33-50.
Donahue Carter, Hugh. The Battle to Control Broadcast News: Who Owns the First Amendment? Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.
Dunn, John H. “Government Efforts to Separate Press and Radio Ownership, 1937-1944.” MA thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1948.
Edwardson, Mickie. “James Lawrence Fly, the FBI, and Wiretapping.” Historian 61:2 (Winter 1999): 361-381.
Edwardson, Mickie. “The FCC’s War Problems Division: Partner in a Forgotten Blacklist.” Journal of Radio Studies 6:2 (1999): 270-286.
Edwardson, Mickie. “James Lawrence Fly’s Report on Chain Broadcasting (1941) and the Regulation of Monopoly in America.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 22 (October 2002): 397-423.
Farabaugh, Patrick. “Carl McIntire and His Crusade against the Fairness Doctrine.” PhD dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2010.
Flannery, Gerald V. Commissioners of the FCC, 1927-1994. Lanham: University Press of America, 1995.
Foust, James C. “So Vivid a Crossroads: The FCC And Broadcast Allocation, 1934-1939.” Journal of Radio and Audio Media 20:1 (2013): 87-101.
Friedenthal, Jack H., and Richard J. Medalie. “The Impact of Federal Regulation on Political Broadcasting: Section 315 of the Communications Act.” Harvard Law Review 72, no. 3 (1959): 445–493.
Friedrich, Carl J., and Evelyn Sternberg. “Congress and the Control of Radio-Broadcasting- I.” American Political Science Review 37:5 (October 1943): 797-818.
Friedrich, Carl J., and Evelyn Sternberg. “Congress and the Control of Radio-Broadcasting- II.” American Political Science Review 37:6 (December 1943): 1014-1026.
Gary, Hampson. “Regulation of Broadcasting in the United States.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 177 (1935): 15–21.
Godfrey, Donald G. “Senator Dill and the 1927 Radio Act.” Journal of Broadcasting 23, no. 4 (1979): 477-489.
Godfrey, Donald G., and Val E. Limburg. “The Rogue Elephant of Radio Legislation: Senator William E. Borah.” Journalism Quarterly 67 (1990):214-24.
Goodman, Mark, and Mark Gring. “The Radio Act of 1927: Progressive Ideology, Epistemology, and Praxis.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 3, no. 3 (2000): 397-418.
Goodman, Mark, and Mark Gring. “The Ideological Fight over Creation of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927.” Journalism History 26:3 (Summer 2000): 117-124.
Grams, John A. “An Analysis of FCC Actions in the Licensing of Newspaper-Affiliated Broadcasting Stations to 1970.” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1973.
Hamilton, James L. “The Demand for Cigarettes: Advertising, the Health Scare, and the Cigarette Advertising Ban.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 54, no. 4 (1972): 401–411.
Hazlett, Thomas. “The Rational of U.S. Regulation of the Broadcast Spectrum.” Journal of Law and Economics 33 (April 1990): 133-175.
Hazlett, Thomas W. The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
Hendershot, Heather. What’s Fair on the Air? Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Ismail, Sherille. “Transformative Choices: A Review of 70 Years of FCC Decisions.” Journal of Information Policy 1 (2011): 6-35.
Kelley, Carey. “Airing Equity: The Impact of Activism and Federal Policy on Women in Broadcast Journalism, 1964-1986.” PhD dissertation, University of Missouri, 2024.
Kirkpatrick, Bill. “Regulation before Regulation: The Local-National Struggle for Control of Radio Regulation in the 1920s.” Journal of Radio and Audio Media 18:2 (2011): 248–262.
Krasnow, Erwin G., Laurence D. Longley, and Herbert A. Terry. The Politics of Broadcast Regulation. 3ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.
Kruse, Elizabeth. “From Free Privilege to Regulation: Wireless Firms and the Competition for Spectrum Rights before World War I.” The Business History Review 76, no. 4 (2002): 659–703.
Levi, Lili. “The Four Eras of FCC Public Interest Regulation.” Administrative Law Review 60:4 (Fall 2008): 813-859.
Lippmann, Stephen M. “Forms, Frames, and Frequencies: Regulatory Capture and its Effect on the United States Broadcasting Industry, 1920-1950.” PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2005.
McChesney, Robert W. “Free Speech and Democracy! Louis G. Caldwell, the American Bar Association and the Debate over the Free Speech Implications of Broadcast Regulation, 1928-1938.” The American Journal of Legal History 35:4 (1991): 351–392.
McChesney, Robert W. Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for Control of US Broadcasting, 1928-1935. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Mason, John. “Obscenity in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures.” Journal of the University Film Association 23, no. 2 (1971): 54–61.
Matzko, Paul. “Do Something About Life Line: The Kennedy Administration’s Campaign to Silence the Radio Right.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 48:4 (December 2018): 817-831.
Matzko, Matt. The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Messere, Fritz. “The Davis Amendment and the Federal Radio Act of 1927: Evaluating External Pressures in Policy Making,” in Transmitting the Past: Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Broadcasting, J. Emmett Winn and Susan L. Brinson, eds. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005).
Meyers, Cynthia B. “Advertising, the Red Scare, and the Blacklist: BBDO, US Steel, and Theatre Guild on the Air, 1945-1952.” Cinema Journal 55, no. 4 (2016): 55–83.
Mora, G. Cristina. “Regulating Immigrant Media and Instituting Boundaries: The FCC and Spanish-Language Television, 1960-1990.” Latino Studies 9:2-3 (Summer 2011): 242-262.
Morrow, Robert W. “Nationalizing American Radio: Anti-Monopoly, Nationalism, and the First Alexander Bill, 1915-1917.” Journal of Radio and Audio Media 18:1 (May 2011): 17-32.
Noell, David A. “Broadcasting Faith: Regulating Radio from the New Era to the American Century.” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2020.
Paglin, Max D., ed. A Legislative History of the Communications Act of 1934. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Pennock, Pam. “Televising Sin: Efforts to Restrict the Televised Advertisement of Cigarettes and Alcohol in the United States, 1950s to 1980s.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 25:4 (October 2005): 619-636.
Phipps, Steven P. “Unlicensed Broadcasting and the Federal Radio Commission: The 1930 George W. Fellowes Challenge.” Journalism Quarterly 68:4 (Winter 1991): 823-828.
Pickard, Victor. “The Battle over the FCC Blue Book: Determining the Role of Broadcast Media in a Democratic Society, 1945–48.” Media, Culture, and Society 33 (March 2011): 171–191.
Pickard, Victor. America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Ray, William B. FCC: The Ups and Downs of Radio-TV Regulation. Ames: Iowa State University Press 1990.
Rivera-Sanchez, Milagros. “Developing an Indecency Standard: The Federal Communications Commission and the Regulation of Offensive Speech.” Journalism History 20: 1 (Spring 1994): 3-14.
Rivera-Sanchez, Milagros. “The Origins of the Ban on ‘Obscene, Indecent, or Profane’ Language of the Radio Act of 1927.” Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs 149 (February 1995): 1-33.
Rowland, Willard D. “The Meaning of ‘The Public Interest’ in Communications Policy, Part I: Its Origins in State and Federal Regulation.” Communication Law & Policy 2 (1997): 309-328.
Rowland, Willard D. “The Meaning of ‘The Public Interest’ in Communications Policy, Part II: Its Implementation in Early Broadcast Law and Regulation.” Communication Law & Policy 2 (1997): 363-394.
Powe, Lucas A. American Broadcasting and the First Amendment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Raphael, Chad. “The FCC’s Broadcast News Distortion Rules: Regulation by Drooping Eyelid.” Communication Law and Policy 6 (Summer 2001): 485-539.
Risley, Ford. “The First Step: The FCC’s Investigation into Newspaper Ownership of Radio Stations.” Journal of Radio Studies 3 (1995-1996): 118-129.
Robinson, Thomas Porter. Radio Networks and the Federal Government. New York: Arno Press, 1979. originally published in 1943
Rosen, Philip T. The Modern Stentors: Radio Broadcasting and the Federal Government, 1920-1934. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Schiffman, James R. “Undervaluing Mutual: The FCC’s Missed Opportunity to Restructure Radio Broadcasting in the New Deal Era.” Journal of Radio and Audio Media 24: 2 (November 2017): 302-319.
Selby, Dawn. “Nielsen and the Networks: Scientific Capitalism, Broadcasting, and Congress, 1956-1958.” Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 34:4 (December 2014): 586-598.
Shepperd, Josh. Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2023.
Simmons, Steven, J. The Fairness Doctrine and the Media. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
Slotten, Hugh Richard. “Radio Engineers, the Federal Radio Commission, and the Social Shaping of Broadcast Technology: Creating ‘Radio Paradise.’” Technology and Culture 36, no. 4 (1995): 950–86.
Slotten, Hugh Richard. “Rainbow in the Sky: FM Radio, Technical Superiority, and Regulatory Decision Making.” Technology and Culture 37:4 (October 1996): 686-720.
Slotten, Hugh. Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States 1920–1960. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Smead, Elmer M. Freedom of Speech by Radio and Television. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1959.
Smith, Craig R. “The Campaign to Repeal the Fairness Doctrine.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 2, no. 3 (1999): 481–505.
Smith, F. Leslie. “Quelling Radio’s Quacks: The FCC’s First Public-Interest Programming Campaign.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 71:3 (1994): 594-608.
Smith, Reed W. “Regulating the Regulators: The Conflict between the Congressional Oversight Subcommittee and the fcc.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 54 (April 2010): 194–211.
Spaulding, Stacy. “Off the Blacklist but Still a Target: The Anti-Communist Attacks on Lisa Sergio.” Journalism Studies 10: 6 (2009): 789–804.
Sundaramoorthy, Robin. “Black Radio Ownership and the FCC’s Failed Attempt to Diversify the Airwaves.” PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2025.
Sylvain, Oliver. “Domesticating the Great, Throbbing, Common Pulse of America: A Study of the Ideological Origins of the Radio Act of 1927.” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2010.
Tabbanor, Michelle A. “Hold Your Liquor: NBC and Alcohol Advertising After Prohibition.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26:2 (2019): 270-283.
Tillinghast, Charles H. American Broadcast Regulation and the First Amendment: Another Look. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2000.
Toro, Amy L. “Standing Up for Listeners’ Rights: A History of Public Participation at the Federal Communications Commission.” PhD dissertation, University of California, 2000.
Twight, Charlotte. “What Congressmen Knew and When They Knew It: Further Evidence on the Origins of U.S. Broadcasting Regulation.” Public Choice 95, no. 3/4 (1998): 247–276.
Tworek, Heidi S.J. “The Savior of the Nation?: Regulating Radio in the Interwar Period.” Journal of Policy History 27:3 (2015): 465-491.
United States. Federal Communication Commission. Report on Chain Broadcasting. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1942.
Vos, Tim P. “A Cultural Explanation for Early Broadcast Policy: Professionalism, Voluntarism, and U.S. Broadcast Networks.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 54: 2 (2010): 179-193.
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