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Meet the Founder of the Most Powerful Rt. Wing Christian Radio Empire You Never Heard Of [1]
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Date: 2023-07-24
Christian evangelicals became more politically powerful and influential over the past 40 years in part because it developed a far-reaching multi-media infrastructure. And radio was a key part of the movement’s success. While you may never have tuned into any of Salem Media Group’s radio stations, nevertheless, the for-profit Christian company changed the face of radio... and politics. Its radio hosts have been, and continue to be, a who’s who of the modern conservative movement., a movement owes much of its success to Stuart Epperson, Sr., who died recently at 86.
In 2005, Epperson, one of the founders of Salem Media, was named one of the 25 most influential Christian evangelicals in America by Time magazine. Salem (formerly known as Salem Communications) was “one of the most important voices in the Trump MAGA evangelical media infrastructure,” John Fea, professor of American history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, told Religion News Service.
Epperson, a graduate from South Carolina’s white supremacist evangelical Bob Jones University,“was a true believer, who felt he had a mission — to provide an alternative to what he called ‘creeping secular humanism,'” said Adam Piore, an independent journalist who interviewed Epperson.
“Whether you agreed with him or not, he helped change Christian radio, and in the end did as much as anyone to build a parallel universe of talk radio geared towards people who didn’t feel like the mainstream media was speaking for them. He was a key player in the religious right, willing to go into big cities and use stations to proselytize,” Piore added.
Along with his brother-in-law Edward Atsinger, Epperson founded Salem Media in 1986. According to Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron (
https://religionnews.com/2023/07/18/pioneering-christian-broadcaster-stuart-epperson-dies/), “The two built Salem into a radio powerhouse that became a key communication channel for the religious right and a mainstay of the Republican Party. It helped congeal America’s religious communities into a potent political force.”
Epperson, and fellow Bob Jones University graduate Atsinger, started a radio business and eventually established commercial Christian stations in Bakersfield and Oxnard, California. An On the Media’s series called “The Divided Dial” – part of a 5-part series on the power of talk radio written and reported by Katie Thornton -- (
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/divided-dial-episode-2-pews-polls)
traced Salem’s “rise to power from its scrappy start in the 1970s to the present day — a growth that paralleled and eventually became inextricable from the growth of the Religious Right.”
On the Media reported that “They gave a platform to preachers, and, with some money coming in, they were able to buy more radio stations, and turn them into pulpits. They were not a lone wolf Christian station…they were building a network.”
The lifting of the Fairness Doctrine – which had required stations to have a degree of ideological balance in their coverage, and to present multiple sides of controversial topics – “was a godsend” to Salem. The network became “A station that covers the current news in depth and then gives YOU a chance to talk about it, all times of the day…”
According to On The Media, “Salem started building conservative talk stations in cities where they already had Christian Teach and Talk stations. They’d save costs by putting everyone in the same office — and then they’d promote their new conservativetalk station on their religious station.”
Religion News Service’s Shimron reported that “Epperson was a member and onetime president of the conservative Council for National Policy, an influential group whose members include leaders of anti-abortion organizations, think tanks, CEOs, wealthy donors, pastors, leaders of conservative universities and right-wing pundits. He twice ran for Congress in the mid-1980s to represent the 5th Congressional District of North Carolina. (He lost to 10-term Democratic Congressman Stephen L. Neal.)”
According to Shimron, “Salem owns 101 stations in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta. Its eight daily show hosts are name brands in the religious and political right. They include Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk, Sebastian Gorka and Eric Metaxas.” Salem also owns Townhall, a conservative media site, and Regnery Publishing.
Salem’s executives threw its considerable weight behind the candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016. In 2018, CNN Business reported that Executives at Salem Media Group, “pressured some of their radio talent to cover Donald Trump more favorably during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
in the summer of 2016 emails were sent to Elisha Krauss and Ben Shapiro, both former co-hosts of KRLA's "The Morning Answer," and both conservative Trump critics. Krauss and Shapiro co-hosted the show along with Brian Whitman, an anti-Trump liberal, and later Jennifer Horn, a pro-Trump conservative, according to emails obtained by CNNMoney.
"What I have been hearing on TMA... has not been in the spirit of 'supporting the GOP nominee,'" one Salem executive, Terry Fahy, general manager at Salem, wrote in an email to Shapiro and Krauss on July 19, 2016. "In fact, it seems that the show gets into negative minutiae of the Trump campaign and the GOP convention (e.g. criticizing Trump for having his kids speak at the convention.) Do we really need a side by side audio comparison of Trump's wife's speech with Michelle Obama's? How is that ultimately relevant to the big picture and advance the cause?"
Epperson and Atsinger eventually rose to leadership positions within the Council for National Policy, with Epperson becoming CNP’s president. So, aside from making bundles of cash, advancing the cause was always foremost on Epperson’s agenda.
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