-The BBC and Yugoslavia
THE letter in our correspondence columns from 'Z. Marn prompts similar questions to those the Spectator asked two years ago about the BBC's Russian programmes. How far is it necessary for the BBC's foreign services to compromise. or to fellow-travel, in order to reach their desired audiences? After investigating the BBC's Russian service for us, Peter Wiles concluded that its design sometimes .appeared to be to try to get the Soviet leaders to listen, to persuade them to change their views—an aim which 'only ignor- ance and vanity could suggest.' Has a similar attitude infected the Yugoslav service? Are the broadcasts too careful to avoid giving offence to the country's rulers, in the hope that they sill become converts? Only a full-scale investigation, such as the BBC made (with good results) of the Russian service, could answer these questions; but if what our correspondent says is true, it is time that such an investigation was made. 'Z. Marn,' incidentally, was with the non-Com- munist underground movement, and later with Tito's partisans, during the war. He was then sentenced to death for 'opposition': the sentence was commuted to imprisonment; and after his release, he was able to escape from Yugoslavia.
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