Page 81 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

70
JOHN BIRCH
SOCIETY
complemented each other. The first president to fully utilize television ironically
died on television. Four days of uninterrupted coverage informing, consoling
the public, and reflecting, honored him.
SOURCES: Michael Tracey, "Non-Fiction Television," in Anthony Smith, ed., Tele-
vision: An International History, 1995; Ann Watson, The Expanding Vista: American
Television in the Kennedy Years, 1990; Theodore H. White, The Making of the President,
1960, 1961.
/. Sean McCleneghan

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY is an organization that works to stamp out com-
munist activities that threaten American democracy. The organization, founded
in 1958 by confectioner Robert W. Welch, Jr., was named after Captain John
Birch, a missionary who was killed by the communist Chinese.
The group is categorized as ultraconservative. The group has sought to re-
move the United States from the United Nations and was highly critical of
Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Supreme Court chief justice Earl War-
ren.
The group, which boasts a membership of approximately 100,000, publishes
various magazines and books, including American Opinion and The JB Bulletin.
SOURCES: John B. Harer, Intellectual Freedom, a Reference Handbook, 1992; Ciaran
O. Maolain, The Radical Right: A World Directory, 1987.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

JOINT OPERATING AGREEMENTS. The Newspaper Preservation Act is
either an effective means to preserve multiple voices in the daily newspaper
field during a period of consolidation and death of dailies, or it is a mechanism
for already profitable newspapers to preserve their profitability and fend off
competition. Joint operating agreements (JOAs) were not new when the act
protecting them was passed in 1970. Twenty-two were in effect, the first dating
from 1933 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The agreements were forged by com-
peting newspapers to permit the weaker of the two to escape the trend of daily
newspaper failures in the 1920s. The agreements consolidated one or more of
the following—mechanical departments, advertising departments, and circula-
tion departments. News and editorial departments were kept separate, and each
paper retained its own name and identity. Thus, competition in news gathering
and divergence in editorial opinion were kept alive. Because some of the agree-
ments included price fixing, market control, or profit sharing, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice challenged the JOAs as being a violation of antitrust law. The
New Mexico agreement was the test case, and that joint operating agreement
was held illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizen Publishing Co. v. United
States.
Within a year the newspaper industry successfully lobbied Congress for leg-
islation legalizing existing JOAs and setting rules for new ones. That law, the