Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television is an anti-Communist tract published in the United States at the height of the Red Scare. Issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack on June 22, 1950, the pamphlet-style book names 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others in the context of purported Communist manipulation of the entertainment industry. Some of the 151 were already being denied employment because of their political beliefs, history, or mere association with suspected "subversives". Red Channels effectively placed the rest on the industry blacklist.
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In May 1947, Alfred Kohlberg, an importer of Chinese textiles and an ardent member of the anti-Communist China Lobby, funded the for-profit organization, staffed by a group of former FBI agents, called American Business Consultants Inc., which issued a newsletter Counterattack,[1] Kohlberg was also a founding director of the ultra-rightwing John Birch Society, whose self-declared purpose was to "expos[e] the most important aspects of Communist activity in America each week".[2] A special report, Red Channels: the Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, was published by Counterattack in 1950.
At this juncture, three founder members remained: John G. Keenan, company president and the businessman of the trio; Kenneth M. Bierly, who would later become a consultant to Columbia Pictures; and Theodore C. Kirkpatrick, officially the managing editor of Counterattack, and the group's chief spokesman. A former Army intelligence major, Francis J. McNamara, was the primary editor of Counterattack. The introduction to Red Channels, running just over six pages, was written by Vincent Hartnett, an employee of the Phillips H. Lord agency, an independent radio-program production house, or "packager". Hartnett would later found the anti-Communist organization AWARE, Inc.[3] The tract, released three years after the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating purported Communist Party influence in the entertainment field, claims to expose the spread — by means of advocacy of civil rights, academic freedom, and nuclear weapons control — of that influence, in radio and television entertainment. Referring to current television programming, the Red Channels introduction declares that
"[S]everal commercially sponsored dramatic series are used as sounding boards, particularly with reference to current issues in which the Party is critically interested: "academic freedom", "civil rights", "peace", the H-bomb, etc.... With radios in most American homes and with approximately 5 million TV sets in use, the Cominform and the Communist Party USA now rely more on radio and TV than on the press and motion pictures as "belts" to transmit pro-Sovietism to the American public."[4]
Red Channels went on to describe how the Communist Party attracts both financial and political backing from those in the entertainment industry:
No cause which seems calculated to arouse support among people in show business is ignored: the overthrow of the Franco dictatorship, the fight against anti-Semitism and Jimcrow, [sic] civil rights, world peace, the outlawing of the H-Bomb, are all used. Around such pretended objectives, the hard core of Party organizers gather a swarm of "reliables" and well-intentioned "liberals", to exploit their names and their energies.[5]
Red Channels served as a vehicle for the expansion of the entertainment industry blacklist that denied employment to a host of artists it considered sympathetic to "subversive" causes, attempted to forestall criticism by claiming that the Communist Party itself engaged in blacklisting when it criticized anti-Communists, seeing to it that "articulate anti-Communists are blacklisted and smeared with that venomous intensity which is characteristic of Red Fascists alone."[6]
Without making any blatant, potentially libelous accusations, Red Channels lists 151 professionals in entertainment and on-air journalism who it clearly implies are among "the Red Fascists and their sympathizers" in the broadcasting field.[7] Each of the names is followed by a raw list of putatively telling data, with the sources of evidence varying from FBI and HUAC citations to newspaper articles culled from the mainstream press, industry trade sheets, and such Communist publications as the Daily Worker. For example, under the heading for Burgess Meredith, identified as Actor, Director, Producer—Stage, Screen, Radio, TV, the first three of a total of seven data points read:
Reported as: American Committee Signer of letter. Letter, 10/23/45. for Yugoslav Relief Chairman, Winter Clothing Campaign. Letterhead. 10/23/45. Committee for First Signer. Advertisement in protest of Wash- Amendment ington hearings. Hollywood Reporter, 10/24 47, p. 5. Un-Am. Act. in California, 1948, p. 210. Coordinating Com- Representative individual. House Un-Am. mittee to Lift the Act. Com., Appendix 9, p. 670. Embargo Against Spanish Loyalist Government[8]
Many other well-known artists are also named, ranging from Hollywood stars such as Edward G. Robinson and Orson Welles (who had already left the country), to literary figures such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman, to musicians such as Pete Seeger and Leonard Bernstein. Ex-leftist and HUAC informant J. B. Matthews claimed responsibility for providing the listings; he would also work for the later discredited United States Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI).[9] By 1951, those identified in Red Channels were blacklisted across much or all of the movie and broadcast industries unless and until they cleared their names, the customary requirement being that they testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
One libel lawsuit was filed against Red Channels, by actor Joe Julian, who charged that Red Channels was responsible for his income plummeting from $18,000 the year it was published to barely $1,500 three years later. The case was dismissed on the specious basis of the tract's care in not making overt claims about specific individuals and its brief disclaimer: "In screening personnel every safeguard must be used to protect genuine liberals from being unjustly labelled."[10]
CBS radio personality John Henry Faulk also sued. Faulk was a favorite target of Hartnett, who proudly proclaimed himself a coauthor of Red Channels. In 1953, Hartnett started Aware, Inc., an anti-Communist organization with its own bulletin focused on the entertainment industry. The bulletin said that, in the 1940s, Faulk had sponsored a pro-Communist peace rally, entertained at pro-Communist clubs, appeared at Communist front activities, and addressed a "Spotlight on [Henry] Wallace" event in "'the official training school of the Communist conspiracy in New York'" (pg. 232). More than one year after Faulk sued the blacklisters, CBS fired him. A 1962 jury award of $3.5 million in damages for Faulk prompted a telling cartoon, titled "Nailed", by Herblock, in which a huge hammer (labeled "Faulk Case Verdict") bangs a nail through the collar of a black-jacketed burglar (called "Blacklisters"). Although the damages were later reduced, the 1962 verdict marked, for most, the end of the blacklisting era.[11]
For a complete tally of those named in Red Channels, see The Red Channels list.