Suspicion.

Blacklisting was the practice whereby broadcasters agreed not to hire someone whose political opinions were "controversial." The blacklist was a destructive social phenomenon that swept through the broadcasting industry in the late 1940s and continued until the early 1960s. Often associated with the more directly political phenomenon of McCarthyism, blacklisting meant economic devastation to thousands whose political sympathies were left of center. The broadcasting industry, like many other sectors in American society, was seized by an anti-Communist hysteria. Unable to find work in film, radio, or television, many actors, screenwriters, and directors saw their careers ruined; some left the country in order to find work abroad; a despairing few committed suicide. In most cases little more than the mere suspicion of associating with Communists landed an individual on the blacklist, which included an estimated seventeen hundred individuals during its term of influence. Leftist...