Oral History

Interview with Collin Hunsaker
Date of Interview: October 28th 2004, Brigham City, Utah
Interviewer: Jared Scott
Transcriber: Jared Scott
Tape 1 Side 1

Scott: This is an interview between Collin Hunsaker and Jared Scott
October 28th 2004 in Brigham City Utah

Scott: When were you born?

Hunsaker: I was born in the winter of 1933, February of 1933

Scott: Where at?

Hunsaker: I was born at a hospital in Tremonton Utah. I was raised on a farm just west of Honeyville.

Scott: Do you remember listening to the radio as a child?

Hunsaker: In my early years we had one radio. It was a pretty good sized piece of furniture. The family would gather around it and this is where we got our entertainment. During the second world war that is where we would get our news about how the war was going.

Scott: Do you remember any specific shows that you listened to?

Hunsaker: Not specifically, there was Amos and Andy and a few light comedy type shows. Jack Benny had a show. There were lots of shows about mysteries, I love a mystery and inner sanctum. They were all quite suspenseful for that day and age.

Scott: Do you remember anything specific about the radio news at the time?

Hunsaker: I remember them announcing Pearl Harbor ion Dec. 7th 1941. I remember very vividly sitting around the radio and hearing that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. During those years the coverage by the newscasters was always very upbeat and supportive of the effort. I think that at point in our history there was also censorship so the media probably wasn’t privy to all that was going on, but the reporters that reported that news were always supportive of the war and there were a lot of laudatory comments about people in the military. For a period of four or five years that was all anyone was concerned about. Not only did you get reports on the radio, but if you went to the movie there would be a five minute newsreel showing pictures always in a positive mode. That is where you find a big change if you compare that day to today. In my eyes, from a little farm in Honeyville, everyone was supportive and victory is what everything was all about. They reported not only the progress of the war, but you would see news clips about women and teenagers essentially who would go to work in the defense plants to support the war effort.

Scott: During which war did the media coverage begin to change?

Hunsaker: A little during the Korean, but it went completely to pot in Vietnam. It was a battle or a war that I don’t think congress was sold on. I know the media wasn’t sold on it. I watched that from a different perspective because I spent a couple of years in Vietnam as a member of the Army. I saw firsthand what was going on and also getting feedback as far as the reporters were concerned. It was really in Vietnam when the country seemed to fall apart and lose cohesiveness.

Scott: Do you think the media portrayals of the war were accurate?

Hunsaker: I think it was very impersonal. I think that the media has evolved from reporting the news to trying to put a certain type of spin on the news. I think the network and the top executives have positions and so the people doing the reporting are reflecting the positions of the executives and I don’t think they are particularly accurate. I will say that during the invasion in Iraq the people they called embedded who knew these as people and heard their conversations I think they did a better job at that point. As soon as that operation ended and the news media kind of centralized and came together on things. I think the objectiveness left and I think the positing of the executives took over.

Scott: Getting back to the history of media, do you remember the first time you saw a TV?

Hunsaker: I graduated from high school in 1951 and at that time there weren’t really TVs in the house. We had a radio in nearly every room by that time instead of one central radio. My parents bought their first TV when I was away at college. I remember watching it. Of course, it was black and white with no color on it. In the early days there were two maybe three channels. That was it. You had NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates. That was the sum total of what we saw on TV. Quite a number of the radio shows were then adopted for TV. Jack Benny as an example, you saw what Benny and Rochester looked like on that show. That was quite a step forward. Reception wasn’t always the best. Out away from the mountain you got quite a good picture. In close to the mountains where there wasn’t a direct sighting from the broadcast towers to the antenna you had on your house there was a lot of snow and it was quite an ordeal to watch it for very long.
I bought my first colored TV in 1968 after my first tour in Vietnam. We still stayed with the antenna there was no cable television or satellite. We didn’t start getting the benefit of those things until into the 1980’s.

Scott: What about the size of the first TVs?


Hunsaker: It was a big piece of furniture you had probably a 12 inch screen that was inside of a big console. The piece of furniture itself was three feet tall by three and a half feet wide. Inside that you had a 12 inch screen.. It was pretty heavy and hard for one person to move.

Scott: Were they pretty expensive when they came out?

Hunsaker: Yeah they really were for that time. The price of televisions probably hasn’t changed a great deal from the 1960’s to the present time. It probably cost less now to get a 27-inch tv without all the bells and whistles than it did back in 1968 when I got that first colored tv.

Scott: How big was your first colored tv?

Hunsaker: I think it was 21-inch.

Scott: Do you remember any of the early tv shows that were your favorites?

Hunsaker: There were quite a few variety shows that were good family entertainment. The Ed Sullivan show was a talent show and a lot of new talent got a chance to perform. I sued watch a show called What’s my line? An individual would come on and a panel of three or four would ask questions and try to determine what he or she did for a living. That was quite entertaining. There was the 64 dollar question and eventually it grew into the 64000 dollar question. There were quiz shows like that. Fairly early on, Art Linklittle was interviewing children I think they called it something like Children Say the Darndest Things. That was very entertaining. Most of what came on television you could say was good wholesome entertainment. You didn’t have to worry about controlling it. Of course, there were no remotes so when you turned it to a channel you were content to leave it sitting on that one channel for the whole viewing period.

Scott: When did media begin to not be so wholesome? When did that change?

Hunsaker: It was probably with the movies that got a little risqué. As they started showing some of the movies on television it signaled to some of the TV producers that they could start filming shows that were a little off-color. It is an evolutionary type thing beginning with some of the movies of the sixties and seventies and now to HBO and the different channels that show movies that a person probably ought not to see.

Scott: Do you remember any of the early newscasters from TV?

Hunsaker: Edward R. Murrow was a very popular anchor for CBS or NBC I don’t remember. David Brinkley was on pretty early as an anchor. Walter Cronkite was probably on back in the fifties and sixties. A lot of them moved from radio to television as the media developed.

Scott: Do you remember Murrow’s war coverage?

Hunsaker: I remember also one of the most popular media type reporters during world war II was Ernie Pyle. He got a little too close to the action and got himself killed in the action. He is the type of guy that the media has had a hard time living up to.

Scott: What do you think of the newscasters today compared to the newscasters back then?

Hunsaker: Well, I think they have gone the way of the entertainment industry with their liberal bias. I believe that during the recent elections Dan Rather was trying to make news rather than report news when he got a hold of some documents which he says he thought were legitimate. I felt like that was totally out of line to be involved in something like that. It was quite obvious during the recent election that the media was not particularly objective. I think they discounted some of the comments of the swift boat group without ever investigating the credibility of them.

Scott: Back in the early days was there less bias?

Hunsaker: I think in the early days there was a tendency for them to report the news and not do so much editorializing. Because of computers coming in and some of the other news channels being available, you see Fox lean a little to the right, and you see all the other stations leaning to the left. I would like to see the newscasters getting back to reporting what is happening and being objective about it by reporting both sides of the issue rather than straying to the sides. I think it goes to the top people at tv channels radio stations and newspapers.

Scott: What do you remember about the McCarthy era?

Hunsaker: It was kind of a black mark on our history as far as justice is concerned. There was a lot of concern over the communist party. It appeared it was starting to infiltrate the activities of the US. The FBI had special teams dedicated to counter what was happening as far as communism was concerned. With McCarthy it became politicized and he was probably given some powers that it would have been better if hadn’t been given. The law enforcement had a lot more credibility. J. Edgar Hoover as he headed up the FBI if he said something it wasn’t really questioned. We just would have been better off without Joe McCarthy.