Then & Now | Chiang Kai-shek used Western journalists to promote his Nationalist cause abroad – including a controversial Australian radio host
- Frank Clune was a prominent radio host and author in Australia who, despite supporting the White Australia policy, was transfixed by Asia
- In Taiwan, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek wooed Western reporters in the wake of the Chinese civil war to get them onside, and Clune was one of them
“Shock jocks”, controversial radio hosts, are nothing new. Their predigested opinions and populist world views often exert an outsized political influence among regular listeners.
One Australian example, wildly popular in his lifetime through nationally syndicated broadcasts, though largely forgotten today, was Frank Clune (1893-1971).
Clune knew his market, and unabashedly broadcast and wrote for “Mr and Mrs Average” – a domestic audience who, decades before inexpensive mass travel, would never have visited the exotic, faraway places he vividly described.
Clune was a staunch defender of the White Australia policy that prevented immigration by non-Europeans and he periodically articulated this in terms more patronising and condescending than openly racist.
