Charles W. Chook Bryant

Fred Cook filed a complaint against Redline Broadcasting, who owned WCGB.

because they had a broadcast with Reverend Billy James Hargis that claimed that Cook, who was an author and wrote a very kind of salacious expose about the FBI, and this reverend said, you know what, this author worked for the communists,

And he attacked J. Edgar Hoover.

And we it turns out they didn't contact Cook to give him that equal chance to respond.

And they denied him his demand for that.

Right.

And it made it all the way to the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court said, you know what, Redline, you're wrong.

You got to do this.

Yeah, it was a very, very big deal.

The other big kind of landmark case was that same year, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ

at all, the FCC.

Another scintillating title.

There was a U.S.

appeals court who overturned the FCC's decision not to consider a petition to revoke the license of Lamar Broadcasting, WLBT.

So these citizens got together, civil rights groups, and they were like, you know what?

This station is awful.

First of all, they're not covering the civil rights movement, and they're flat out racist and segregationist.

And so we're going to petition this, and the FCC denied the petition in 1964 and said citizens don't have the standing to file a petition like this.

Right.