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LDS Church-owned radio stations:

KSL-AM (Salt Lake City) - purchased in 1925

KIRO-AM/KSEA-FM (Seattle) - purchased in 1963

WRFM-FM (New York City) - purchased in 1966

KMBZ-AM/KMBR-FM (Kansas City, Mo.) - purchased in 1967

KBIG-FM (Los Angeles) - purchased in 1968

WCLR-FM (Chicago) - purchased in 1969

KAAM-AM/KAFM-FM (Dallas) - purchased in 1977

KOIT-AM/KOIT-FM (San Francisco) - purchased in 1975, 1983

-    John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 48


TV Stations in which the LDS Church owns large amounts of stock:

WVTM-TV    Birmingham, Ala.
KTV-TV        St. Louis, Mo.
WETM-TV    Elmira, N.Y.
WSTM-TV    Syracuse, N.Y.
WHTM-TV    Harrisburg, Pa.
KTBC-TV      Austin, TX
KDFW-TV     Dallas, TX

-    John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 49

“It might seem strange, almost slightly blasphemous, to refer to a church as a corporation, but the analogy here is simply inescapable. The Church is undeniably corporate.”

-    Jeffery Kaye, “An Invisible Empire: Mormon Money in California,” New West, May 8, 1978, p. 39

“Bonneville International Corporation [LDS owned communications corporation] receives approval today from this Commission [FCC] to add to its stable of industrial and mass media properties an AM radio station, and an FM radio station, in the second largest market in the United States: Los Angeles – a city in which it already has a $20 million interest in the prestigious and dominant Los Angeles Times.
“This action is taken without a public discussion of the principal issues raised by this case: the conflicts with the public interest in granting ever-increasing mass media power – with all its economic, political, and social implications – to large industrial conglomerate corporations in the United States, in this case an industrial conglomerate that is inexorably intertwined with a religious sect, the Mormon Church.”

-    Federal Communications Commission Reports, v. 16, 2nd series, 1969, p. 460

 “While the buck stops at Smart’s [William B. Smart, Deseret News editor] desk for most important policies that affect the News, including most editorials, in the public eye he is often regarded as merely an extension of the Church. And in one of the most highly significant editorial crises of recent years at the News, that appears to have been precisely the case. During the next-to-last days of Watergate, the News drank the bitter dregs of the Nixon Administration’s culpability and corruption with scarcely a complaint. Friends say Smart festered under advice of LDS Church President Harold B. Lee to give Nixon the ultimate benefit of a doubt before writing off his administration. As a result, the Deseret News was one of the last major dailies in the nation to take a strong editorial stand on Watergate.”

-    Elaine Jarvik and George Buck, “Probing the Power Structure,” Utah Holiday, v. 4, p. 15, May 24, 1976

“The Deseret News continues to routinely send all editorials to LDS Church headquarters at 50 E. North Temples before publication, where they are usually seen by Elder Gordon B. Hinckley, member of the Council of the Twelve, and president of the Deseret News Publishing Company, and by President N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency.”

-    Paul Swenson, “Nostrums in the Newsroom,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, v. 10, p. 50, Spring 1977

“Church attempts to influence Deseret News readers have sometimes backfired. During the 1936 presidential campaign, Church President Heber J. Grant (who detested the Democrats’ New Deal policies) had another member of the Church’s First Presidency write an unsigned editorial accusing Franklin D. Roosevelt of ‘knowingly promoting unconstitutional laws and... advocating communism,’ among other things. The editorial outraged Mormon voters. Many saw the conservative hand of the Church presidency in the editorial; over seventy percent of the letters sent to the First Presidency office soon after its publication condemned the editorial. One historian noted that over 1,200 Latter-day Saints canceled their subscriptions to the Deseret News because of the editorial. It had clearly caused a backlash, and a few days after its publication, 69.3 percent of Utah’s votes went for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (see D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years, p. 75).”

-    John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 38

“... as the Mormons entered national politics the hierarchy either openly or privately controlled prominent Democratic, Republican, and politically independent newspapers of Utah’s two most populous cities.”

-    D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932: An American Elite, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1976, see pp. 241-242, 249

“It is hard to investigate in Utah without turning up a Mormon connection. The Church either owns, or has substantial influence in, banks, department stores, insurance, real estate, agribusiness, and energy and utility companies.
“The Pinpoint Team looked into real estate scams and Howard Hughes’ Mormon aides without causing a ruckus in the church. The... [in 1978]... reporters took on a story that sparked a strong reaction. First, a Pinpoint Team special described a secret attempt by Mountain Fuel Supply, a local utility with strong church connections, to tape record a meeting held by a consumer group; then a column reported that Mountain Fuel had attempted to create a non-regulated subsidiary for the company’s oil holdings, a scheme that would have allowed the company to pass on drilling costs to utility rate payers. Both articles appeared while Church officials who oversee the [Deseret] News were out of town. (‘Whenever I’m onto something controversial,’ says one reporter, ‘it’s crucial that I get it in before anybody can react.”)

-    Bob Gottlieb and Peter Wiley, “Static in Zion,” Columbia Journalism Review, pp. 59-60, July/August 1979

“When I did a series on the Central Utah [water] Project [CUP], it was killed by my editors and publisher because some of the brethren in the Church apparently felt it could be potentially damaging to future [federal] government funding...
“It’s even more interesting when you consider that in a year of budgetary cutbacks and belt-tightening by the current administration, President Reagan saw fit to substantially increase federal support of CUP with a little encouragement from the [Utah LDS] Senators Garn and Hatch.”

-    Robert Mullins, Pulitzer Prize winner and Deseret News investigative reporter, interview, April 19, 1982, as cited in John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 40

In response, Deseret News editor William B. Smart said:

I don’t think any explanation needs to be given on that. The management and myself made an editorial decision that it would be best for the paper and everyone concerned not to have his material appear as he originally submitted it. But some of it, in fact, much of it, was used in a different form later.”

-    Interview with William B. Smart, editor of the Deseret News, April 19, 1982, as quoted in John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 40

“A few years ago [in the late 1970s] we had five reporters working at different times on the Pinpoint investigative team. Everyone of them left, though, for better jobs elsewhere. I’m the lone holdout now in this department. I don’t know why the News hasn’t put some more reporters in this department. There’s certainly enough stories around to cover.”

-    Robert Mullins, Pulitzer Prize winner and Deseret News investigative reporter, interview, April 19, 1982, as quoted in John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 41

“Being the editor of a Church-owned newspaper has not always been easy for me. The hardest thing I believe I’ve ever encountered was reporting of the destruction of the Coalville tabernacle by the Church. I found it hard to report it like it should really have been reported. I mean, here is the uncalled-for destruction of an old and historic structure by the same people who own the newspaper I edit. What am I supposed to do?”

-    Interview with William B. Smart, editor of the Deseret News, April 19, 1982, as cited in John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 40

“God in His wisdom has given us television and radio to assist Him in His great purposes. May we be blessed and ever diligent in the use of all communications media to hasten the day of His kingdom.”

-    Richard Barnum-Reece, “Arch Madsen,” This People, v. 2, no. 6, 1981, p. 46

“KSL-TV [LDS-owned station] possesses the largest Area of Dominant Influence (ADI) of any station in the continental United States.”

-    Federal Communications Commission Reports, v. 62, 2nd series, 1976, p. 255

“We found throughout the country that the [Mormon Tabernacle] choir has a very low listenership. Most of the listeners are female and over 45 years old.”

-    Frank Rigby, “Church Evaluates Image,” Daily Universe, November 15, 1978, p. 12

“The business involvement which we have is a very, very minor part of our activity... We try to operate the few – and I emphasize that – the few business interests that we do have in a business-like prudent way, as any prudent business corporation would do, and use them for public good.”

-    Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, quoted in Ken Wells, “The Mormon Church is Rich, Rapidly Growing and Very Controversial,” Wall Street Journal, November 9, 1983, p. 1

“But, in fact, the LDS Church has considerably more than a few business interests. The Church’s investments are enormous, constantly shifting to take advantage of profit margins in the stock market, and highly diversified. The Church runs a virtual business empire, with assets close to $8 billion by conservative estimates. These Church operations have been run basically for their economic returns and not necessarily for the public good.”

-    John Heinerman and Anson Shule, The Mormon Corporate Empire, p. 76, 1985

“It still bothers those of us who work here [Church Public Communications Department] and must constantly juggle what the brethren want and what we ourselves know is right. You really have to wrestle with your conscience sometimes in cases like this, because if you don’t, you’re going to be in deep trouble. There are no accolades for heroes here. You either keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told, or take a stand for honesty and find yourself immediately unemployed. Those, I’m afraid, are the hard, cold facts of life when you decide to work up here.”

-    Interview with anonymous informant, LDS Church Public Communication Department, Salt Lake City, 1983, as quoted in The Mormon Corporate Empire, by John Heinerman and Anson Shupe, 1985, p. 208