On April 20, Billboard reported that right-wing radio commentator Upton Close, who had a show on the Mutual Network, was being dropped by WBIG in Philadelphia in response to pressure from the local chapter of the The Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, one of the most prominent and influential left wing groups of the day. The protest had been joined by unions and other liberal and leftist groups. Close had outraged many for an inflammatory speech that he had made to a woman's group in Pennsylvania. Protesters complained that his presence on air gave legitimacy to the rabble rousing, hate-filled statements he made off air.
Upton Close was the pen name of Joseph Washington Hall, formerly an AP reporter and a professor at Washington University. He had made a name for himself in the 1920s for his news reports and books on Asia, particularly China and Japan, pointing out somewhat controversially at the time the legitimacy of the anti-colonial movement in the continent and warning of Japanese militarism and the growing influence of Communism. He appeared frequently as an Asia expert on radio shows in the 1930s. He became closely allied with the America Firsters and isolationists and was an extreme anti-Communist.
In 1942 NBC gave him a Sunday afternoon spot sponsored by the Schaeffer Pen Company where he became more outspoken and at times intemperate in his attacks on the Roosevelt administration, labor unions, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. His targets were pretty much in line with those of other ultra-conservatives such as the Patterson clan and the Hearst newspapers. However, he was warned several times about his continued attacks on the conduct of the war, considered to be highly inappropriate and unpatriotic. Eventually his sponsor and the network dropped him. He then began broadcasting on the Mutual Radio Network, which had a number of political commentators representing a broad ideological spectrum.
It is hard to say just how offensive his broadcasts were. Most accounts I have found were written by his ideological enemies. White supremacists quote him favorably on their websites. He most certainly was an anti-Semite and an extreme nationalist which apparently was more evident in the speeches he delivered off air and in his writings than in his radio broadcasts. In the 1950s Senator Joe McCarthy wrote to him to tell him that his extreme anti-Semitism undermined his effectiveness as an anti-Communist spokesperson.
To the far left, his rabid anti-Communism was reason enough to banish him from the air. At one time he claimed that if FDR were still alive he would have handed the Soviet Union an ultimatum: either recognize who is boss in the postwar world or get the bombs. This was odd coming from a man who earlier had little use for FDR's foreign policy. He also stepped into the controversy over remarks made by Catholic Bishop Bernard J. Sheil who had said that if Americans were better housed, better fed and better clothed then Communism would have little appeal to them. Sheil was an auxiliary bishop in Chicago, a supporter of labor unions and founder of the Catholic Youth Organization. Close called him a Communist. This played a big part in his eventually being dropped by Mutual, according to Blacklisting: Two Key Documents by John Cogley and Merle Miller. By then a number of radio stations, particularly on the East Coast, had dropped him after continued pressure from the Left and Jewish organizations.
While it is hard to sympathize with Close, the hypocrisy of the ICCASP also is worth noting. The group portrayed itself as a firm defender of civil liberties and free speech and mounted protests whenever a left wing commentator lost a radio spot but then promoted a blacklist of their own.