NEWS IN AMERICA
By JOHN CARTER
TO anyone crossing the Atlantic, in either direction, the only thing more astonishing than the quantity and quality of news which America is absorbing today from England and the Continent is the paucity of news from America to be found in our own Press. As is shown by, for instance, Mr. Winston Churchill's broadcast to the United States, Mr. Eden's visit and speeches and the announcement that Their Majesties have accepted the President's invitation for this coming June, the authorities have recently become sharply aware of that long-neglected factor in world—and not least European—politics, Anglo- American goodwill: and the Trade Agreement has indeed given tangible form to what the Americans call " good neighbour policy."
A little forethought, however, a little more consciousness of what the average American feels, might surely have set the good work under way earlier. As it is, our overtures inevitably look less like the friendly extending of a firm hand across the ever-narrowing Atlantic than the feverish waving of a man with his back to the wall. To take only one example: a very cursory acquaintance with average American opinion, as ventilated for instance in Middle Western newspapers, might have been expected to open the eyes of even an insolvent Government (which ours is not) to the psychological importance of our virtually repudiated debt. Most of America is now realist enough to see that some revision will ultimately have to be made in the tepay- ment of that debt: but it would be hard, I believe, to ex- aggerate the moral asset to our position in American eyes of even a token payment, as a sign of goodwill and good in- tention. Americans, contrary to the general idea here, like the English. They like England, and would like to like her more, if only, as they themselves put it, it wasn't made so goddamned hard for them. If we English knew a little more about America, we might, all of us, get some idea of the way Americans feel. It would enable 'us to make our- selves better understood in return, and incidentally it would warm our chilly and uneasy hearts. It would also make us envious, in one respect at least ; and this brings me to the other side of my original state- ment. For it would not, I imagine, be disputed by anyone who reads American newspapers that the U.S.A. is the last remaining major country to enjoy free speech and a free Press. Articles in these columns and elsewhere have dis- cussed the degree to which the English daily Press is sub- servient to unofficial Government pressure, suggestions from powerful advertisers and other agents for suppressio veri, if not for suggestio falsi. It is, of course, obvious that American newspapers also have their own policies and other coloured spectacles, by which their editors are guided. But the fact remains that the American newspaperman, and pre-eminently the American foreign correspondent, is today responsible for a disproportionately large share of the straight news printed anywhere in the world. The names of a dozen English foreign correspondents of the highest enter- prise and repute spring readily to mind. They are indeed every bit a match for their American rivals: but how much space do they get ? There are honourable exceptions among the daily papers in London, and more in the provinces, to the general practice of cutting the foreign despatches to the bone or editing them to cotton wool: and even in the most subservient organs flashes sometimes indicate that though editors may be weak-kneed reportage is not dead. But if a member of the English public should wish to remind himself of what real news-coverage means, he must buy a copy of, say, the New York Times.
Business took me to America in September of last year, and for three months—for the first time in a couple of years —I learned from one morning and one evening paper in New York more of what was going on in Europe than I can find out by reading every daily in London ; and without hav- ing to read between the lines all the time, either. During the critical period of September and October there would be two or three column despatches every single day—quite apart from news articles and leaders—from half a dozen key points in Europe, written by foreign correspondents whose names even an Englishman knew well, giving a full and dis- passionate account of what was happening. The editorials of Times or Herald Tribune might interpret the news differently, as became their different points of view, but their readers had the facts before them, and in profusion, from which to form their own judgement.
I found my friends and acquaintances so far better informed of the events of the spring and summer that their enquiries put me to constant shame. And this not only in New York, which is traditionally more alive to European affairs. Two years ago the local newspapers of the Middle West carried hardly any foreign news. In 1938, and right in the thick of the election at that, it was all over the front pages: and my wife reported an equal, and even more remarkable, degree of interest and well-informedness in a sleepy little cotton town in South Carolina.
It is true that these results are not entirely due to the reading of newspapers. There is also that sprawling, immediate and picturesque giant, the radio. A great deal of nonsense is talked in this country about the commercialism of American radio, with the implication that every sound it emits is bought, paid for and therefore biased. Whether Toscanini sponsored by a manufacturer is better or worse than a B.B.C. concert, is at the moment irrelevant: what is not generally appreciated here is the existence and charac- ter of the " goodwill " programmes put on by the American radio networks themselves. Chief among these is news, and the technique of its gathering and distribution is something which would open the eyes of the man who tunes in to the careful phrases of the regularly-timed B.B.C. bulletins.
During the crisis, America lived with its radio on. As any news of urgent moment came into the broadcasting studio, whether from the agencies or from its own foreign corre- spondents, it would be put in shape by the staff. Then— flash, and whatever programme was in progress would be cut off, the bulletin would be read out, comments added when necessary—and the regular programme resumed. The Columbia Broadcasting System is only one of the many American networks, though a large one ; but it maintains the most elaborate and enterprising foreign news organisa- tion, with offices all over Europe. In critical times it is able, and constantly does, switch its entire listening public—say five million receivers—on to a transatlantic telephone con- versation between its news editor in New York and its foreign correspondent or some local authority in Prague or Paris or Warsaw. America, in fact, will hear stop-press news from the very mouth of the man on the spot, within a few hours—sometimes minutes—of the actual happening.
One final testimony to the enterprise of American radio may be cited, since I have found it generally unrealised here. After the invasion of Austria, the Columbia news staff realised that Czecho-Slovakia would be the next victim, and began to make arrangements for keeping America fully and promptly informed. They discovered that it was impossible to broadcast direct to America from Prague or anywhere else in the country, since all transmissions by high-powered short wave had to go by land lines through Germany. It was obvious that the " straddling " of these land lines would be used for a complete censorship when the time came for the Nazis' next move. The Columbia technicians, how- ever, proved more than a match for Dr. Goebbels—they approached the Prague Government for their co-operation In installing a transmitter of the necessary power. This was duly constructed ; with the result that in September and October Columbia were able to provide the whole American public with a constant supply of up-to-the-minute, authori- tative and uncensored news. This sounds more like The Front Page or Five Star Final than sober truth. But truth it is: and perhaps instructive,
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