Horizon

Shirer's Blacklisting

If you're a relatively unread youngster like me, you may associate the McCarthy era with governmental persecution in the form of HUAC, and assume the "blacklist" was something circulated among movie studios covertly. If so, William Shirer's account is a real eye-opener:

[Shirer describes his diary entries.] I recounted being listed in Red Channels. For the first two or three days I did not, I could not, take it seriously. Then I began to circulate around New York, especially around Madison Avenue where the ad agencies and CBS were. And I learned to my utter astonishment that to be listed with one hundred and fifty others in this obscure publication as being involved with Communism or Communists was to be blacklisted from employment in broadcasting, the entertainment world, and journalism in general. Unbelievable! This two-bit publication had become the bible of Madison Avenue and the networks. If your name was in it, no advertising agency — and in those days they produced many of the leading shows on radio and TV — and no network executive would hire you. You were condemned to unemployment in your field — with no chance of explaining or defending yourself.

[...]

It became obvious that CBS was the main target of the publishers of Red Channels and of their weekly sheet, Counterattack. The latter had charged that "all networks let some Communists and Communist fronters get on their programs, but CBS is the worst of all." The response of CBS to this shocked many. It hired the publishers of the scurilous sheet that had attacked it to investigate the loyalty of tis employees! [...]

What was this Red Channels, which dictated to the mighty moguls of the advertising agencies, the networks and even the movies whom they might employ?

It was the work of three former FBI men, Theodore C. Kirkpatrick, John G. Keenan, and Kenneth M. Bierly, who had resigned from the agency shortly after the war. Early in 1947 they had set up a firm called Americna Business Consultants. [...] To increase its profits and prestige, in June 1950 American Business Consultants brought out Red Channels in magazine form, under the subtitle "The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television" and with an illustration on the cover showing a large red-stained hand clutching a microphone. There were one hundred and fifty-one names listed, and after each name was noted the organization the person was "reported as" having once belonged to or supported. Declarations that the suspects were "reported" as subscribing to were also listed. The publishers obviously got their list from the House Un-American Activities Committee [...], the Tenney Committee in California, and the Daily Worker[....]

To avoid libel suits, the publishers printed a disclaimer to the effect that they were not accusing any of the listees of being a Communist or even a Communist sympathiser. They also stated their belief that in screening personnel, every safeguard must be used to protect the innocent. They did not say they had followed this practice. Obviously they hadn't, for none of those listed — I later found — had even been questioned by them. Amazingly, some courts of law would, in the Red-baiting hystaria of the early 1950s, accept as sincere these phony disclaimers.

A portion of Shirer's entry in Red Channels can be seen here.