RADIO AS POLITICAL EDUCATOR
Australia Tries A Forum of The Air
NEW ZEALAND listeners who tune in to Australia may have heard from Melbourne an experimental session called "Forum of the Air.’ We call it experimental because it may not continue, and has not yet been going long enough to show what its possibilities are. But the first two sessions will have made those who heard them wish for more.
; ORUM of the Air takes the form of a public debate on some topic of national importance. Four speakers debate the subject, and the audience is invited to submit questions. The session runs fortnightly. The first broadcast from the Assembly Hall, Melbourne, featured the Prices Commissioner, Professor Copland, and Dr. Lloyd Ross, Chief Research Officer of the Postwar Reconstruction Department, versus Sir Herbert Gepp, managing director of Australian Paper Manufacturers, Ltd., and Vernon Smith, general manager of the Shell Co. of Australia, Ltd., in a debate on the subject of Free Enterprise versus Public Enterprise. Birth Rationing was the subject of the second broadcast — an extraordinarily
frank and often heated discussion on the subject of birth control. On this occasion the chief speakers were Dame Enid Lyons, Dr. Norman Haire, and the economist, Colin Clark. The session runs for one hour and is divided roughly into 10 minutes each for the two opening speakers, seven minutes each for the two second speakers, and 15 minutes for question time. Each of the leading speakers then has another three minutes, and finally the chairman sums up the arguments. The Only Censorship Speakers are men and women who are authorities on the particular subjéct under debate. As far as possible they are chosen to represent different types of temperament; one in each team, for instance, may have a showy and emotional
approach, while the other is logical and quiet. As the Forum is being broadcast "live" and impromptu, for National Security reasons questions submitted by the audience must be in writing. The only censorship imposed is on the score of giving information to the enemy. This is the reason for "vetting" questions before a member of the audience is allowed to walk up to the microphone and put over his own question. After each debate the full text is printed in pamphlet form, and offered to the public at threepence. "Experiment in Democracy" "The idea behind Forum of the Air is not to stage a contest in oratory, but to discuss issues of national importance from all angles, so that listeners can clarify their own ideas," says the ABC Weekly. "Forum of the Air is a practical experiment in democracy which makes articulate one of the oldest democratic (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page) institutions-the right of free expression. It is the logical extension of the Discussion Groups which the ABC has been fostering with the same object for some years, and it will furnish the listening groups with an extra stimulus and a new sense of the excitement of free discussion _ "Free discussion of the community’s problems at a public meeting goes back to ancient Greece. The adaptation of this form of public debate to radio, which has become one of the most powerful methods of communication and education, goes back 10 years to the inauguration by the National Broadcasting Company of America of a session, Town Meeting of the Air. "Town Meeting of the Air was a direct revival of the traditional New England gatherings where any delegate might have his say, where the spark which led to the Boston Tea Party was kindled, where the armies that fought the Rebels at Lexington were recruited. The motive of many of these early political debates, however, was to win support from audiences by appealing to prejudice or partisanship, and the meetings often ended in disorder. "The radio Town Meeting was initi- ated by George V. Denny, associate director of the New York League of Political Education, which for nearly half a century has been conducting nonpartisan education in New York City." Listening to All Sides The American magazine Movie-Radic Guide noted that Town Meeting of the Air by 1941 was being broadcast over more than 100 medium and short-wave stations in the U.S.A. to an audience of about. 6,000,000 ®people, and was being followed up by over 1400 Listening Groups. It added: "Town Meeting is Mr. Denny’s remedy for a common ailment-our refusal to listen to the other fellow’s opinion. Mr. Denny has noticed that people generally associate only with other people who share their own attitudes, read only those books which express their own viewpoint, buy only those newspapers which support their own prejudices. Realising the danger to democracy apparent in this situation, Mr. Denny decided that America needed a radio programme where listeners would have to listen to more than one side of a question." Scientists, businessmen, politicians, journalists have appeared in Town Meeting. The audience is allowed to heckle and talk back, a development which the ABC hopes to bring in to Nation’s Forum of the Air as soon as security conditions permit. Movie-Radio Guide sums up the atmosphere of the session: "Obviously, the excitement and entertainment value of America’s Town Meeting of the Air is merely a by-product. The real aim is = Sih the American public to think for Benny’ br national problems. And Mr broadcast has done more that aim than 100 years of paler bast." In the same way the ABC hopes that its Nation’s Forum of -the Air will come to stand for tolerance, reason, and justice, and that\ it will establish radio as an active force in political education.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 275, 29 September 1944, Page 8
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937RADIO AS POLITICAL EDUCATOR New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 275, 29 September 1944, Page 8
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