This is a history article, not an engineering article. It's published on the Magazine for the National Endowment of the Humanities. The article spends time disc

This is a history article, not an engineering article. It's published on the Magazine for the National Endowment of the Humanities. The article spends time discussing the perceived cultural potential of radio, as below: "Since radio’s beginnings in the early 1920s, industry and government leaders promoted it as the great homogenizer, a cultural uplift project that could, among other things, help modernize and acculturate rural areas." The paragraph you take such objection to follows that statement, and is entirely relevant in the context of the article.