Broadcast Regulation and Investigations

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Arbuckle, Mark R. “Herbert Hoover’s National Radio Conferences and the Origin of Public Interest Content Regulation of United States Broadcasting: 1922-1925.” PhD dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2001.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Coase, Ronald.  “The Federal Communications Commission.” Journal of Law and Economics 2 (October 1959): 1-40.

Dempsey, John Mark, and Eric Gruver. “Government Control of Radio Communication: The 1918 Debate.”  Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26:2 (2019): 284-298.

Donahue Carter, Hugh.  The Battle to Control Broadcast News: Who Owns the First Amendment?  Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.

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.

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.

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.

Godfrey, Donald G. “Senator Dill and the 1927 Radio Act.” Journal of Broadcasting 23, no. 4 (1979): 477-489.

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.

Grams, John A.  “An Analysis of FCC Actions in the Licensing of Newspaper-Affiliated Broadcasting Stations to 1970.” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1973.

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.

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.

Krasnow, Erwin G., Laurence D. Longley, and Herbert A. Terry.  The Politics of Broadcast Regulation.  3ed.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.

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.

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.

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. “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, 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.

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.

Tworek, Heidi S.J.  “The Savior of the Nation?: Regulating Radio in the Interwar Period.” Journal of Policy History 27:3 (2015): 465-491.

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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