" Straight " News for Foreigners The decision that special
programmes are to be broadcast from this country by the B.B.C. in certain foreign languages represents what is on the whole a regrettable necessity. For many years this practice has been adopted in Italy, which now broadcasts in no fewer than nine different languages, in Germany and in Russia, and the field cannot be left to the totalitarians. " The news sent out," the Post- master-General has indicated, " will be ' straight ' news, and not the sort of propaganda that comes from some foreign countries and does them no credit." The selection of languages is so far to be restricted to Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, though the possibility of giving broadcasts in German and Italian is-not to be excluded if the scheme proves successful. From this choice of languages it may be inferred that the aim of the broadcasts is largely to counteract the effect of those of " some foreign countries " ; for the calumnious and malicious distortion of the news, directed largely against this country, with which the Arab-speaking countries are being fed from 'Rome, is notorious, and but little less so is the creation by German broadcasts, in Spanish and Portuguese, of prejudice against Britain in the South American countries, where British trade has, it is reported, been seriously affected as a result. The best answer to disinterested propaganda is unvarnished fact, and if the B.B.C. sticks to that, as it intends, its broadcasts are likely in the long run to get from its distant hearers the attention they deserve.
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