Show Bru charts washington gion digest general housecleaning House cleaning in federal communications board Is needed history of control of radious radio Is story of troubled days public concerned because free speech involved split on board adds to general confusion by WILLIAM BRUCKART service national press washington do D C washington it seems among the he inevitable and unavoidable things that there must be growing pains when the government starts execution ot of any new policy this always has been the case I 1 assume it is going to be true always and it does not matter whether that new policy involves something as inhered inherently aly governmental as government supervision of public services or something as inherently political as the national emergency council the latter institution ought to have as a part of its title some words designating its value as the hod carrier in political emergencies such as the recent purge of dem who insisted on being democrats as distinguished from new dealers with that preface we can examine into the situation that exists in the federal communications commission As laymen whose only contact with radio is on the listening endl end or whose only contact with telephones is to use them tor for business and social intercourse or whose only contact with the tele graph is to send or receive messages well obviously we laymen do not know much about the F C a but that does not excuse any of us tor for lack of interest for F C C is just a as close to you and me as the interstate commerce commission is and unless I 1 miss my guess it will be even closer in the years to come I 1 there has been a measure of control over radio tor for years and they I 1 have been troublesome years both for or the agency administering the law and the industry to abide by the law within the last few years however there has come into existence the F C C which is concerned not alone with radio but with telephones and telegraphs these latter industries however are themselves settled down and out ot of their teens they have got by the growing pains but as for radio the story is quite different and decidedly more important because there are fundamental dangers to you and me in the situation federal control of radio story of troubled days the history of federal control of radio as I 1 said above is a story of troubled days the bulk of the trouble has been due to the type of personnel selected tor for tion of that control that is to say politics is to blame as much as anything politicians will aiu endorse any screwy bird long haired theorist or narrow eyed halfbreed half halt breed it if such endorsement dor will get him votes or help hold the royal order of nose pickers in line at election time and that is why or largely why the federal communications commission at this writing is undergoing pains like I 1 used to have when I 1 allowed my childish enthusiasm to overcome my judgment and ate apples before they were ripe I 1 care how many ol of the boys on the government payroll had tummy aches about their lobs jobs or how many private and bitter words passed between or low downs in the commission except for or the tact that precedents are being established that will affect you and me directly as the years roll by the things that have devel developed aped in the F C C concern us because they involve tree free speech involve it as directly as any attempt to use censorship on your newspaper or mine besides there is the certain ty that radio has been used to to fo ment br putto sleep some national issues it brings the nation within say any small room that happens to house a couple ot of good workable microphones it there was ever a place for establishment of basically sound and wise policies it is in the government supervision ot of radio it is hard to get at the facts in the current dust storm within the commission there are so many stories afloat however that somewhere there must be some truth and this belief is buttressed by the known fact that president roosevelt is considering what to do to get the tangle straightened out trouble shooter fails to smooth out the mess to go back a bit it will be recalled that mr roosevelt sought more than a year ago to smooth out the mess by transferring frank me from the job of chairman of tiie the federal power commission to that of chairman of the federal radio commission every one conversant with the situation said at that time that the new chairman was a good trouble shooter and that he would get things working as a highly technical agency ought to work but the truth is that mr has not succeeded if anything there have been more rows and the work of the commission has been slowed down even to a worse condition than it was the whole thing would not amount to a hill of beans except that it seems utterly impossible to get sound and judicial execution of a technical law under such circumstances and the matter becomes of moment to everyone because this monster radio Is still in swaddling clothes the battle within the commission crops up every once in awhile just as it did when the cammi commission sion recently fired hampson gary its general attorney mr gary was asked tor for his resignation and an alternative of another appointment else where in the government but he stuck out his chin and said no well he promptly was fired too much interested in fighting among themselves from all of ahe stories I 1 have picked up I 1 suspect that mr gary was no great shakes as a lawyer on the other bandit hand it was equally apparent that mr gary was being supported by a couple ot of commis who had bad hard noses and quit fighting it is an incident that is related as an illustration and as a basis for the statement that most of the members of 0 the commission and a substantial portion of the subordinate personnel are much more interested in fighting among themselves than in trying to understand and administer an intricate law this COW column Is not the place to attempt a list of the mony many rulings of the commission that have done the industry no good attention can be called however to the procedure under which these decisions are brought about having in mind that such decisions have just as much force as the law itself it is the regular routine in a gov ern mental agency for consideration of problems determination 2 of poll poli cy interpretation of law to have their initiative in suggestions from the top individuals they are named as the policymakers policy makers they have to assume responsibility in the case of the communications commission there seems to be something of the same sam e procedure followed except that the individual members of the board or some of them persist in acting individually rather than col electively as a board this would not be so bad if the board members as a whole were in accord but they are not there is a split as wide as pennsylvania ave nue the result is that on many many occasions underlings have brought forward propositions that served only to fan the flames of disagreement between board members and of course as these proposals became known the portion of the ra dio industry concerned was thor hughly upset because it had no way to defend itself no place to tell its side of the case general housecleaning House cleaning in commission needed again even this condition could be corrected and something of a workable nature developed if the bulk of the subordinates around the commission were sound thinkers that teat unfortunately however seems not to be the case the place is packed and jammed with numerous men who think they are hot shots whose only claim to recognition is that they themselves claim to be experts or who have been unable to make good in the indu industry and have succeeded through political endorsement to get a place at the teed feed trough of government checks so I 1 say that I 1 am unwilling to charge continuation of the mess to mr he apparently has tried but as long as some members of if the commission manage to gair gain public attention by their nauseating blurbs blurs and as long as some of the silly flock claiming to be original new dealers continue to spew out venom about unfairness ot of news papers it is likely the com munica eions commission is going to get nowhere very verv fast much of the silly propaganda that newspapers are unfair to the new deal bubbles to the surface fro from m points other than the com munica eions commission those who serve as the mouthpieces for or such dab clab her ber however can be seen flocking together frequently it is only nat ural therefore to suppose that they are active in spreading their views among commission underlings who in turn get the germs incubated within their own organization I 1 said earlier that it may be mr roosevelt will have to ask for a gen eral era hou housecleaning house se cleaning and resignation of most of those in key positions it is quite likely that he will dodge that action if any other way can be found to solve the problem in an event I 1 hope that congress looks look into the situation if it does may be something concrete will be done to establish a sound agency one that will consider the interests ol 01 listeners and services and jurers equally just as the interstate commerce commission does in its it supervision of rail and other forms of transportation 0 western newspaper union |