“Radio priest” Charles E. Coughlin will reply later this week to charges leveled against him by Elliott Roosevelt in a Saturday night broadcast over the Mutual Broadcasting System national network, it was announced here today. The President’s son, in one of his tri-weekly talks for a commercial sponsor, had called Coughlin a “compounder of stories,” a speculator in silver and an anti-Semite. He invited Coughlin to reply to the charges over the same Mutual network.
In his address, Roosevelt declared that “even censorship might not be too high a price to pay if it will help insulate us against the anti-Semitic oratory of the radio priest out in Royal Oak, Mich.” He said he did not know what effect the recently adopted radio code of ethics would have on Coughlin but “it will be interesting to watch.” The President’s son is head of the Texas State Radio network.
“Despite the fact that his own churchmen as well as Jews have been relentlessly persecuted in Germany,” Roosevelt said, “Coughlin’s shrine has become a clearing house for questionable propaganda which the Nazis make the fullest use of. Most of Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic views have been taken up by the Nazis and widely quoted in Germany.”
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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.
