Religion has used mass communications quite effectively. Most people know who Billy Graham is because of his remarkable television crusades. Religion's great strength in mass communication is that the religious experience can be brought to people who have difficulty getting out or are cut off from others for other reasons. The great risk is that it will be used dishonestly -- for instance, that funds collected will not be used the way those who donated expected they would be. Those who value the use of mass media for religious purposes must be cautious about to whom they send their money, and they would be wise to check these organizations out to see how they really use the money.

Religion has also been profoundly affected by digital te

The situation with radio is slightly different. Very often radio's influence is only over a regional area. A wide variety of formats exist. A consumer might tune into a radio station that plays only music from the 50's, or the 80's, or that is dedicated to some extreme political view some might find offensive. The solution for the consumer is simple: change to another station. Once again, freedom of speech dictates that almost anything can be said on the radio. There are some rules regarding good taste, but the example of Howard Stern demonstrates that even language many find distasteful may find a place somewhere on the radio.

But the very nature of radio broadcasting has changed as well. Micro-radio stations, which began to appear in numbers in the 1980's, do not need licenses because their broadcast power is under 100 watts. Very often they depend on listeners for donations in order to stay operational, and often have some kind of activist approach (Coopman, 1999). At the other extreme are Internet-based radio stations. Because they have no geographic locations, they do not fall under the jurisdiction of any country even though people in that country can tune the station in (Coopman, 1999). This is the path Howard Stern has taken rather than submit to FCC regulations.

Television has had a remarkable history for a medium only widely accessible for several decades. Its power to affect individuals as well as the entire country was demonstrated by Edward R. Murrow's coverage of McCarthy's anti-communist congressional hearings (Editor, PAGE). It should be noted that the influence on one media often crosses over to another, and this was the case with the broadcast of the McCarthy hearings, because one person targeted by him and his committee was Dick Strout, then a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. The reason Strout came under suspicion was because he supposedly shook hands with a reporter from a communist publication (Editor, PAGE). The McCarthy hearings were broadcast on television, and one journalist played an important role in curbing what are now seen as excesses and abuses of congressional power.

People face a similar dilemma with television. While television has long had censors, what those censors would and would not allow has changed dramatically. In the "I Love Lucy," even when Lucy was obviously quite pregnant, she

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