VOICES FROM AMERICA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 197, 2 April 1943, Page 4

VOICES FROM AMERICA

What The News Commentators Say NEW broadcast feature from the National Stations that is of interest to all who follow the daily news of the war is "What the Commentators Say." This is a programme originating from the short-wave stations of the American Office of War Information, presenting the principal American radio news commentators through their own Voices in discussions of "the events of to-day and the prospects for to-morrow." "What the Commentators Say" lasts 15 minutes, and will be heard every day except Sunday and Monday at 7.45 p.m. It will be relayed direct on reception from KWID. In the first broadcast, Raymond Gram Swing, Raymond Clapper and Dorothy Thompson were introduced by the announcer, and listeners were promised the views and voices of John Gunther and H. V. Kaltenborn in future broadcasts. Those who have short-wave sets will find the programme on KWID, 9.57 megacycles; KES3, 10.62 megacycles; and KWB, 10.84 megacycles. We print below photographs of some of the commentators to be heard, and notes about them.

ene Gram Swing’s broadcome from Washington, D.C, four nights a week, and are recorded and re-broadcast by the BBC. He had "a conventional American education," and after a few years on various papers in the mid-west, became Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. During the last war he got a scoop by paying an American student 25 dollars to memorise a message and elude the German censorship-the first news of a large-bore gun that was shelling Liége. After the war, he acted as foreign correspondent for several papers, and by the middle ‘thirties his news analyses had won such respect that the BBC made him its commentator on American affairs, Swing likes to read from a well-prepared script, and spends 10 hours a day preparing his 15-minute broadcasts. She Wouldn’t Be Drowned OROTHY Thompson is the daughter of a Wesleyan minister who emigrated to the United States. She went to Syracuse University, and afterwards took part in suffragist activities. Her speeches went down well, but at one village the band -tried to drown her. So she wrote her speech paragraph by paragraph on a blackboard, to the cheers of the crowd. In 1920, she’ sailed for London and got herself a newspaper job. In Ireland she reported Sinn Fein troubles; in Vienna, Emperor Karl’s unsuccessful putsch for the Habsburg throne. In 1932 she got an interview with, Hitler, but was so little impressed that she wrote an article containing a 100 ‘per cent. wrong guess that he would

never come to power. As a result, she was the first American journalist to be expelled from Germany. Since then, she has been one of America’s most popular columnists. In 1941, her column, syndicated to 196 papers, was estimated to be read by 7,550,000 American men and women. No ‘Script, No Advertising . V. KALTENBORN, a tall, ruddyfaced, white-haired man, is said to be the only commentator who speaks without a script, and.can read a bulletin and interpret it to an audience at a glance. He refuses to be interrupted by advertising when he is on the air. In support of his claim to be impartial, he points out that he has been called proGerman, — pro-Roosevelt, pro-Japanese, pro-Communist, and pro-British. Kaltenborn ran away from high school after his first year, worked in lumber camps, newspapers, and finally found himself in the army. After a year as city editor on his hometown paper (in Merrill, Wisconsin), he made his way to Europe by freight train and cattle boat. Some curious adventures followed, and in 1912 he married a well-known beauty, Baroness Olga von Nordenflycht, and returned with her to the impecunious life of a reporter on the Brooklyn Eagle. After 20 years of editorial and speaking experience, he found himself wellequipped to become the first radio newscommentator and news analyst. He was the first commentator to bring actual battle sounds from the front to the radio audience-during the Spanish "civil" war. During the Czech crisis, he (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) got through 85 broadcasts in 18 days. In 1940, Kaltenborn was appointed official news analyst for the National Broadcasting Company. Beat the Berlin Censor W ILLIAM L. SHIRER, whose voice is familiar to thousands of Americans saying, "This is Berlin calling!" first went to Europe on a cattle-boat. He then got a job in Paris with the Chicago Tribune, and within a year, was on the European staff of that paper. After his marriage in 1931, he went to India and saw a great deal of Gandhi, whom he once described as "the greatest man of our times." In 1937, Shirer became Continental representative of the Columbia Broadcasting system at Vienna and Berlin, and played a part in devoloping the new technique. Though his script was censored, and he spoke with a German censor at his elbow, he got a lot of points across to the American listeners by subtle inflexions, and so on, that the censor could not understand, The diary he kept during this period published as Berlin Diary in 1941, was a best seller. Also by Cattle Boat dessa GUNTHER is yet another who made his first trip to Europe on a cattle boat. Born in Chicago in 1901, Gunther showed early signs of his interest in the world-at 10 he had written 200 pages of an encyclopedia. He got a job on the Chicago Daily News, walked out, and sailed to Europe. Calling at the Daily News office in London for his mail, he was invited by a kind editor to report for work. Subsequently, he found himself "covering the Continent" from Vienna, and in 1935, he went to London (still working for the Daily News). By this time, he was a frequent contributor to The Nation, Esquire, Harpers, the Atlantic Monthly and the Saturday Evening Post. It was in 1935 that he made his ‘reputation with Inside Europe, "out of the conviction that Europe is the prisoner of three men," In 1939 his Inside Asia was published, and he began his first broadcasting.