University of Virginia Library

II. FORMAL REGULATORY STRUCTURES AND ACCOUNTABILITY
IN RELIGIOUS BROADCASTING

The Radio Act of 1912, which actually preceded regular broadcasting, did not adequately anticipate the problems of this new communications medium. Indeed, these early days of radio broadcasting were characterized by few regulations. A talented engineer could build a station for a few hundred dollars, and anyone could obtain a license. These have been characterized as the "wild and wooly days of radio" [6] and as a "frenzied frequency free-for-all." [7] Ben Armstrong, former Executive Director of the National Religious Broadcasters, described what happened: "Stations competed for the airwaves all across the frequency band, drowning one another in bedlam of squeaks, whistles, and disjointed words." [8]

One of the most celebrated renegades of this early era was Aimee Semple McPherson, an early superstar of radio evangelism. McPherson's shifting of power and frequency was sufficiently annoying that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover ordered her station in Los Angeles closed. Enraged by this action, McPherson fired an angry telegram to Hoover saying, "Please order your minions of Satan to leave my station alone. You cannot expect the Almighty to abide by your wave length nonsense. When I offer my prayers to Him I must fit into His wave reception. Open this station at once." [9] In the end, Hoover didn't have the authority to shut down McPherson's station. It took the Radio Act of 1927, which created a federal agency with the power to license and regulate radio broadcasting; to bring it under some semblance of control. [10] This episode teaches at least three enduring lessons

concerning the relationship between religious broadcasters and public policy.

First, some regulation of broadcasting, religious and otherwise, would be necessary to safeguard stations from technical interference by other stations, to insure that the limited spectrum of frequencies available to broadcasters would be utilized efficiently and fairly, and to prevent misuse by those who would influence society in ways judged harmful. [11] These considerations, taken together, virtually assured that government would play some role, probably a critical one, in regulating radio and television broadcasting. [12] Government could not and would not, after all, stand by while renegade broadcasters transmitted their signals in whatever direction caught their fancy, or while high-power stations drowned out lower-power stations.

Second, while the incident of a flamboyant and highly visible female preacher, such as Aimee Semple McPherson, may lend credence to the perception that religious broadcasters are the principal abusers of the airwaves, in reality abuse of the airwaves is by no means restricted to religious broadcasters. Aimee Semple McPherson was not and would not be the only broadcaster to violate simple norms of civility, such as, avoiding interference with other broadcasters. [13] Quite deservedly, the behavior of religious broadcasters has been the

subject of intense public scrutiny in recent years. But a fair-minded assessment of that behavior will recognize that every misdeed of religious broadcasters can be matched by parallel misdeeds by secular broadcasters. 'It might well be asserted, in fact, that non-religious broadcasters are responsible for the lion's share of questionable behavior broadcast over the airwaves.

Third, notwithstanding the inevitability of government regulation, religious broadcasters have tended to see their mission as special and, therefore, have believed that they should not be subject to regulation by any worldly or secular authority. For many broadcasters, this view is grounded in the belief that the airwaves are quite literally an instrument given by God to facilitate the mission of preaching the Gospel to all the nations. They take seriously Christ's commandment to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. [14] The ability to transmit the voice and the visual image of the preacher has, for the first time in history, made it possible to reach all humankind with the Gospel message. [15] When this perspective is taken seriously, it is understandable why some evangelicals view God's command to spread the Gospel as loftier and more worthy of obedience than any mortal decree. It is important to note here that this perspective focuses attention on the biblical commandment to preach the Gospel, rather than on any constitutional right to do so. From a secular perspective, however, the real issue is not a divine commandment so much as it is one of arrogance--arrogance stemming from the belief that religious broadcasters are accountable to God alone and,

hence, that any other accountability would be superfluous. At a press conference following Jerry Falwell's assumption of Praise The Lord (PTL) leadership in April, 1987, he confessed this to be the case albeit in an underwhelming way: "[we] have had a little sense of arrogance out there in the [televangelistic] church that it is none of [the Government's] business or anybody else's what we do or how we do it." [16] Falwell promised that "the arrogance is over," [17] but six years after the televangelism scandals came to public light, a large proportion of America's religious broadcasters still stubbornly refuse to open their books to outsiders or to subject themselves to formal self-regulation.