Father Charles E. Coughlin was a right-wing radio personality in the 1920s and 30s. It is estimated that his radio audience reached 30 million at its peak. That is enormous.
Two articles on Father Coughlin: “When
Radio Stations Stopped a Public Figure From Spreading Dangerous Lies” and “How
a Canadian-born Irishman paved the path of hatred that leads to Tucker Carlson.”
From the Smithsonian Magazine article:
“In speeches filled with hatred and falsehoods, a public
figure attacks his enemies and calls for marches on Washington. Then, after one
particularly virulent address, private media companies close down his channels
of communication, prompting consternation from his supporters and calls for a
code of conduct to filter out violent rhetoric.
“Sound familiar? Well, this was 1938, and the individual in
question was Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Nazi-sympathizing Catholic
priest with unfettered access to America’s vast radio audiences. The firms
silencing him were the broadcasters of the day.
“As a media historian, I find more than a little similarity
between the stand those stations took back then and the way Twitter, YouTube
and Facebook have silenced false claims of election fraud and
incitements to violence in the aftermath of the siege on the U.S. Capitol –
noticeably by silencing the claims of Donald Trump and his
supporters.”
From the Yahoo article:
“It was a descendant of the Irish who became one of mass
media's most famous racists and a fellow traveler of the Nazis. Father Charles E. Coughlin was a Catholic priest and
the founder of the Shrine of the Little Flower in Detroit. Born in Canada,
Coughlin preached a particularly poisonous brand of hatred and antisemitism in
the 1930s. Through his radio show, he reached 30 million Americans a week, or
one-quarter of the U.S. population at the time. For comparison, today's best-known racial dog whistler, Tucker Carlson,
reaches about 3 million out of 340 million.”
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