Radio annual and television yearbook (1941)

UNPRECEDENTED by any other news event in modern times, the outbreak of the European War presented a new challenge to the ingenuity and efficiency of radio reporting. How ably this challenge was met was best summed up by the comment of William S. Paley, President of the Columbia Broadcasting System, when he said: "America's position as the bestinformed nation in the world has been achieved in large part by the work of its radio and press correspondents abroad." Hindered by wartime censorship, by interruption of communications and great physical danger, they have managed to secure the facts and present them honestly and often brilliantly. As Alfred J. McCosker of the Mutual Broadcasting System, said in his message to the Overseas Press Club of America recently, "America's correspondents abroad are the eyes and ears of our people." News Demand The American appetite for facts has always been more than a nine-days wonder to our less rapacious brethren across the seas, and our capacity for devouring news has more than kept pace with the increased speed of transmission. We all want to know what will happen almost before it actually occurs. Impossible as that may be, it is only a little less miraculous than the velocity that radio war correspondents have achieved in less than two years of activity. This is an achievement of American organizing ingenuity. What is even more important, is that in its emphasis on the accurate and the unbiased, the radio has played a role demanding exceptional courage. Unlike the press correspondent who could escape from the environmental pressure of his dictatorial host and mail, wire, or even carry his material to its destination, the radio reporter has to rely completely on the transmission facilities afforded him by the country in which he works. For that reason he must play the diplomatic game to the hilt, he must temporize and remain courageous — a man torn between the demands of his listening public and the reality of his existence as a guest of the Minister of Propaganda. He is the target of compulsion and pressure ranging from censorship and intimidation, to indoctrination and threat of expulsion. Physical Risks Added to these menaces are the physical risks of the total war being undergone by most of the radio correspondents. With not a little conspicuous gallantry, the men and women at the "mikes" in the war capitals are today restoring much of the resplendent glories of the war correspondent's profession. In this war of ideologies, radio also has done more than its duty by democracy. Never before in all history have so many people heard so fully and factually eyewitness reports of spot-news events as those broadcast in these past months. One of the most memorable of these broadcasts in this war was the shot-byshot description of the scuttling of the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee, a fine example of sound judgment, quick action, and clear thinking under difficult and hazardous circumstances. Notables Speak Radio has also served as a medium through which the heads of governments and leaders of military forces were heard in millions of American homes. Probably the most valuable contribution radio had made to American understanding of the war and its motivations, has been the series of speeches by foreign leaders— Hitler, Mussolini, Daladier, Chamberlain, from the time of the Munich crisis down to the stirring messages of Winston Churchill. Hearing the actual voice and words of these history-makers at the precise moments when history was being made, has done more than any amount of printed matter to clarify the real aims of the belligerents in American minds. But the real and lasting value of radio has been best demonstrated by direct broadcasts from correspondents, commentators and amateur reporters on the scenes of action from Bangkok to Bagdad. "These men and women," remarked David Sarnoff, head of the Radio Corporation of America, " — these American 53