Red Channels

Issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack on June 22, 1950, the pamphlet-style book names 151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others in the context of purported Communist manipulation of the entertainment industry.

"[3] The three founder members were: John G. Keenan, company president and the businessman of the trio; Kenneth M. Bierly, who would later become a consultant to Columbia Pictures; and Theodore C. Kirkpatrick, the managing editor of Counterattack and the group's spokesman.

Referring to current television programming, the Red Channels introduction declares that [S]everal commercially sponsored dramatic series are used as sounding boards, particularly with reference to current issues in which the Party is critically interested: "academic freedom," "civil rights," "peace," the H-bomb, etc ... With radios in most American homes and with approximately 5 million TV sets in use, the Cominform and the Communist Party USA now rely more on radio and TV than on the press and motion pictures as "belts" to transmit pro-Sovietism to the American public.

[5]The introduction to Red Channels described how the Communist Party attracts both financial and political backing from those in the entertainment industry: No cause which seems calculated to arouse support among people in show business is ignored: the overthrow of Francoist Spain, the fight against anti-Semitism and Jimcrow, civil rights, world peace, the outlawing of the H-Bomb, are all used.

[8] Each of the names is followed by a raw list of putatively telling data, with the sources of evidence varying from FBI and HUAC citations to newspaper articles culled from the mainstream press, industry trade sheets, and such Communist publications as the Daily Worker.

For example, under the heading for Burgess Meredith, identified as Actor, Director, Producer – Stage, Screen, Radio, TV, the first three of a total of seven data points read: Jean Muir was the first performer to lose employment because of a listing in Red Channels.

[10] Many other well-known artists were named, including Hollywood stars such as Edward G. Robinson and Orson Welles (who by then, due to tax problems, was in Europe),[11] literary figures such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman, and musicians such as Hazel Scott, Pete Seeger and Leonard Bernstein.