Radio Body Pledges to Aid National Drive on Racial Propaganda

The National Association of Broadcasters today pledged cooperation of the radio industry in a nation-wide campaign of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America against “anti-sectarianism and anti-racial propaganda.”

The Council’s plan calls for individual ministers to use their local stations “for the purpose of creating a better understanding between the various races and religious groups.”

Such propaganda “weekens both religion and the liberties of our country by divisive tactics of propagandists attempting to arouse Americans against themselves, said Neville Miller, president of the N.A.B., in a letter sent to all radio stations.

“There is no greater public service a station can render then to give its facilities to bring its listeners closer together in the bonds of understanding, based upon truth and fact,” the letter continued. “This, to me, is one of the root principles of the American system of broadcasting.”

Miller said that, from its knowledge of past history, the Federal Council, representing some 143,000 individual Protestant congregations in the United States “knows that the germs of intolerance cannot easily be controlled, once let loose,” and that “the time is at hand for a constructive campaign of tolerance and understanding.”

In a statement by the Federal Council, the aims of the campaign were set forth as follows: “The primary aim of this radio campaign is to lay essential facts before the American public in order that, through an educated public opinion, we as a people may profit from the example of many less fortunate European peoples living in countries where democracy has been destroyed by tactics that included the fomenting of racial and religious hatred and oppression.”