Isolationists & Nets

"Three or four men who control the radio networks have arbitrarily shut off from the air the voice of this great gathering." With these dark words, echoed by rabid applause, Chairman John Thomas Flynn opened America First's big rally in Madison Square Garden.

Mr. Flynn had been reaching all week for a martyr's crown to put on the head of America First. At the moment Mr. Flynn was able to make his sweeping declamation because Mutual Broadcasting System, which recorded the entire rally, had time free to rebroadcast only Senator Burton K. Wheeler's half-hour.

Neither NBC nor CBS broadcast any of the proceedings. At America First's request a fortnight before, NBC had offered its only free time that night: a half-hour between 10:30 and 11 on a 62-station network east of Chicago. CBS, on the other hand, having no time free of commercials that night, declined to sacrifice any income in order to make time. Senator Wheeler huffily turned down NBC's offered half-hour as "inadequate."

By comparison with the all-station network facilities opened up for President Roosevelt's Navy Day speech, those offered to America First were small. But Mr. Flynn and his friends could hardly expect to be treated like the head of the Government, who alone of U.S. citizens rates all the air time he wants whenever he asks for it.

NBC and CBS, licensed by the New Deal's FCC, might possibly be surmised to favor interventionist over isolationist organizations in allotting radio time generally. But NBC dug into the record at the request of FCC's Chairman James Lawrence Fly. It showed that on both NBC networks, from Jan. 1 through Oct. 31, 1) interventionists had 68 programs, 77 speakers, 25 hours, 14 minutes; isolationists, 72 programs, 76 speakers, 25 hours, 2 minutes; 2) the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies and the Fight for Freedom Committee together had 14 programs; America First had 14; 3) the average number of network stations carrying previous America First programs was 70, eight above the number Senator Wheeler turned up his nose at last week.

These figures do not take account of news commentators on both networks who present their own points of view, which are rarely like America First's. Mr. Flynn made a point of this. He even lumped Raymond Gram Swing and William L. Shirer together with Walter Winchell and Dorothy Thompson as "angels of war."

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