The Rev. Walton E. Cole, Toledo (0.) Unitarian, announced last night that he had sent a telegram to Chairman Frank McNinch of the Federal Communications Commission emphatically protesting against the action of Leo Fitzpatrick, manager of Station WJR, in refusing to let him go on the air with a speech condemning Charles E. Coughlin’s activities as being of a pro-Nazi nature.
The address, one of a series sponsored by the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice, was broadcast last night over 13 stations in various communities.
The telegram, Cole said, charged WJR with being a “vehicle for one-sided propaganda rather than for free discussion” and asked that “your commission take the necessary action to have WJR give an equal opportunity for expression of both sides of controversial questions, or that its license be revoked.” Cole declared he would ask the Unitarian Fellowship to press the issue to the limit with the Federal authorities.
The script for the speech was rejected by the station after the station s attorney, William A. Alfs, had last week approved it as containing no libel, Cole stated.
Coughlin, whose Sunday afternoon speeches originate at WJR, commented that he knew nothing of the cancellation of the Cole address and asked: “I wonder why they failed to urge free speech on Station YMCA in New York and the other stations that cut me off.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
