Mysticism and Broadcast Censorship in Canada

Len Kuffert. "Tempest in the Tea Leaves: Broadcasting the Esoteric Arts and Mystic Sciences, 1937-53." Canadian Historical Review 91 (2010): 1-25.

After it was created during the Great Depression, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) initially held (at least in theory) relatively broad powers to control what was aired not only on its own network, but over private radio stations as well. Kuffert reveals the fascinating tale of one of its adventures in broadcast censorship, in which the CBC tried (and continued to try, throughout the Second World War) to restrict broadcasting programs by mystics, fortune-tellers, astrologists, and various other esoteric artists (the kind that people like James Randi call scam artists, and in general I'm forced to agree).

This was not without consequences. Kuffert implies that CBC's effectiveness in enforcing this regulation was only partial at best. What it did tend to achieve, he says, is to drive a number of esotericists into claiming that what they were doing was based in science (when it wasn't) or traditional religion (ditto), both of which were considered quite acceptable in broadcasting. (The latter leads us back to the cynical definition of a cult, which is any religion that's younger than the rule-maker's.) Nowadays skeptics complain very loudly, of course, when modern-day quacks link their dubious professions to "science."

It's a good article, made all the more readable by the fact that I find this subject intrinsically fascinating. Kuffert may stretch a little bit when he tries to connect his work to prevailing fads in historical/cultural theory (e.g. that the CBC must have viewed its audiences as passive and feminized, or that this is an incidence of control over the production of knowledge), but not in any way that a hundred other scholars aren't doing even as I write this.