Report on blacklisting: II. Radio-television ([1956])

Record Details:

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"Take Their Word" FOR THE AMERICAN LEGION POSTS which care to use it, the semi- monthly Firing Line, published by the Legion's Commission on Americanism, is a prime source of information. Its circulation, estimated at about 4,000, is limited mainly to department and post commanders of the Legion. But anyone can subscribe. As one Madison Avenue "security officer" put it not long ago, Firing Line is "one of the usual sources" to which networks and ad agencies turn for guidance. The Legion's newsletter is older than Counterattack. Before be- coming the Firing Line it bore the less dramatic but perhaps more accurate head: Summary of Trends and Developments Exposing the Communist Conspiracy. Today it follows fairly close the stand- ard form employed by Counterattack, Red Channels and Vincent Hartnett's File 13. (J. B. Matthews provided the blacklisting movement with most of its root information with his "Appendix IX," but credit must surely go to Hartnett for showing how to put that information into tidy form, something like a job resume.) The Firing Line's sub-billing — "Facts for Fighting Communism" — is only a verb's toss from Counterattack's "Facts to Combat Commu- nism," and it often happens that they are referring to the same facts. The Firing Line is published out of the Legion's national head- quarters in Indianapolis, but its policies are set in Washington by Lee Pennington, assistant director of the Americanism Commis- sion, and James F. O'Neil, director of Legion publications. The blacklisted television performer who wants to be cleared 110