Broadcasting in the Service of Peace

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 380, 4 October 1946, Page 7

Broadcasting in the Service of Peace

THIS article was written by PROFESSOR

JAMES

SHELLEY

Director of the NZBS, for the "BBC Quarterly," a new journal, "intended for those engaged in the art and science of broadcasting." We have secured special permission from the BBC to print it here.

F I remember rightly, it was in the year 1914 that that very sane Englishman, John Galsworthy, wrote an open letter to the nations pleading for aeroplanes to be outlawed as weapons of war. But even if mankind could have been persuaded to forgo the terrible joy of destruction which its new toy promised, Galsworthy’s plea was too late. These are days of progress! It took centuries for the playful Chinese cracker to grow into effective artillery, but in this scientific age toys develop almost overnight into world-shaking engines of war. Perhaps the plea which forms the theme of this article is made too late. For, although only 20 years ago broadcasting was little more than an interesting toy, we have seen it used in recent years as a major instrument in bringing about and carrying on a war that all but wrecked civilisation. Without broadcasting, Hitler might even now have been a useful paperhanger, or the inmate of some local asylum for thwarted paranoiacs. Who shall say what the outcome of the war might have been, had the millions in the Empire not been heartened by the spoken word of Mr. Churchill? What disruptive forces stood any chance against that proud challenge to our courage and sacrifice? The cold black and white of the printed news sheet would have proved of ‘small sustaining value had it not been brought to life by the emotive. power of that brave voice. HE power, extensity and immediacy of broadcasting make it an instrument which can be as devastating to the mentality of nations as atomic bombs may be to their ~physical structures. Even those intimately associated with the control of broadcasting are often astounded at the manifestations of its power. I understand that the BBC officials upon investigation in the liberated countries were surprised to find how, much more influential had been the transmission to occupied areas than they had ever hoped for. The same experience is often the result of announcements over advertising networks-a recent case comes to my mind which is typical: a big firm, highly experienced in radio advertising, broadcast two short announcements and were astonished to

receive mail replies six times as numerous as the outside limit for which they had prepared. In its extension broadcasting has a unique position. Foreign aeroplanes may not land in a country without permission. Persons may not enter a country without passports. Even cable messages may be effectively controlled, either voluntarily by the editors of newspapers by rejection or comment, or by censorship. But foreign broadcasts know no frontiers. They can enter a country without let or hindrance. Broadcasting has already encroached on the territory of national sovereignty. Effective restriction on listening’ has been proved impossible even in the most strictly regimented country in the world during war time: the BBC did some of its finest work because of this. What hope, then, can there be in peacetime, in countries that pride themselves on their freedom of speech, of preventing the entry of poisonous aggressive ideas which will insinuate themselves into the minds of the people? And it is useless thinking that the average person can weigh up the value, the truth or untruth, of these ideas. The mental reaction of most people will always be: "There must be something in it!" If home transmissions set out to counter or correct these dangerous assertions there will soon develop that war on the ait which will lead almost inevitably to war in the air. BROADCASTING has. been used. during the war for the purpose of making contact with and submitting proposals to governments with whom we were not on diplomatic speaking terms -and those proposals were heard by the whole people, not merely by diplomatic jugglers. In the past the lapse of time, maybe only a few hours, that has occurred through the slowness of diplomatic channels of communication, has afforded the chance for local incidents to occur which have put peoples beyond the control of governments. But the immediacy of broadcasting makes possible a hold-up of hot-headed action so

that calmer counsel may havea chance. On the other hand, it may be used as a dangerous stimulus to such precipitancy. But the power of broadcasting does not come alone from its immediacy or from the number and extensity of the audience. From the intimacy and immediacy of the living voices within the very circle of the fireside is created a psychological urgency that often is irresistible. Emotional tension in extreme cases can even beget communal hysteria, especially when fear is evoked, as in the famous "invasion from Mars" drama in America, or the more recent case in Paris of the radio play dealing with the running amok of unleashed atoms, Although such spectacular instances may seem exceptional because of their short-lived intensity, there can be more ultimate power for good or ill in the quiet day-by-day stirrings of emotional interest or bias which may accumulate by way of choice of news, commentators’ attitudes and even selection of ordinary programme material, apart from any direct propaganda; and while these words are being written during the first year of peace, while the United Nations are sitting to hammer out the machinery for the maintenance of peace, at this crucial moment in the history of. the world, one great nation is broadcasting over the face of Europe propaganda expressly designed to stir up feeling against another great nation. The real threats to the peace of the world originate far back in the sub-con-scious processes of the minds of nations, repressions due to lack of understanding and lack of sympathy, whose origins are often buried in history, which gradually draw to themselves emotional energy through the years from all sorts of partly understood ideas and experiences, until they assume obsessive power and subjugate any rational view: of life. Then some sort of breakdown is inevitable. But it is not until they have almost reached this breaking-point that they become in any Official sense disputes or situations likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace, and as such come within the purview of the Security Council. There will be grave danger that

the Security Council will be forced inte the practice of prescribing for sympetoms and not basic causes. HERE is one article in the United Nations Charter-and as far as I can see, only one-which has in mind this great underlying educative work which should aim at making the Security Council an unnecessary institution: Article XIII. (b) imposes upon the General Assembly the necessity ("shall" is the word) of initiating studies and making recommendations for the purpose of "promoting international cooperation in the economic, social, cultural, educational, and health fields, and assisting in the realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to Tace, sex, language or religion." The articles does not speak of the responsibilities and sacrifices that are involved in "rights" and "freedoms," but doubtless the "studies" will ‘make those clear to us. To do the work of conditioning the mind of the ordinary citizen to an active faith in the United Nations there is one agency which beyond all others can be effective-broadcasting: not by means of dry news "hand-outs" about the doings of committees and estimates of international trading, but. by clothing with flesh and blood the bare bones of "bluebooks" and "white papers"; by presenting dramatically or semi-dramatically the joys and sorrows of the ordinary lives of ordinary people the world over. The average citizen does not understand and does not want to understand the semiabstractions of social science, but he does understand the individual need for love and laughter, babies and bread-and-but-ter, and he is shocked into action if anything goes wrong with them, And the experts who are needed to preach the gospel of the United Nations are not statistical wizards — however necessary these may be behind the scenes-but real live men with big hearts and human voices, like the man who gave eyes to our ears and brought tears to those eyes and anxiety to our hearts, when he broadcast the magnificence of D-Day as he saw it from the deck of a destroyer; like the man who almost choked our utterance with the tragic beauty of Arnhem; like the man-or men-who gathered together the skill and patience of Britain and built "Mulberry" on the

BROADCASTING AND PEACE

(continued from previous page) air for us; like the man who gave us throughout the war our weekly tonic of sanity and hope and put heart into us to face another week. It if not enough that we know things; they must be made real to us so that they become part of our very being, an active faith to live by. The League of Nations never penetrated to the hearts of the people; it did little more than provide little coteries of intellectuals with subjects for discussion, The United Nations must do more if it is to succeed; for, in spite of its big stick in the shape of an armed force, its strength ultimately must be based on the common consciousness of peoples which alone can give force to the decisions of delegates. And that common consciousness is evolved by feeling perhaps more than by reasoning. At this moment the recent agonies of the war provide emotive driving force sufficient to, give an initial impetus to the United Nations, but in a generation those agonies will be dim, and the younger folk will want something more to do than just listen passively to the deliberations of delegates at a remote assembly- United Nations is the word, not United Delegations. And the medium that has the power to unite nations, or disunite them if wrongly controlled, is broadcasting. HE United Nations must not cease to exist in the minds of the people between meeting and meeting. The organisation must seize upon broadcasting with both hands, and establish a continuous intimacy with the popular mind, so that a new loyalty will grow up in our con-sciences-a loyalty to the world cause of which our national loyalties must become tributary parts, carrying with them emotional power for the well-being and peace of all men. The United Nations organisation will of course have its own transmitting station, but this will of necessity be very official and impersonal in character. It will need to be supported by the freer and more intimate efforts of the broadcasting institutions in all countries, to which it could supply material; and, just as in the Assembly of the United Nations a tradition of be-haviour-a feeling, an atmosphere — is being built up and recognised as one of the outstandingly important factors contributing to its success, so, with the broadcasting institutions of the world, a tradition of international courtesy and helpfulnes$’can be developed which will have more real power than any attempt at control of a negative character such as was tried by the League of Nations. It is realised that there is no possibility of effective outside control of either the transmitting or receiving of broadcasts-the war has taught ‘us that -even if it were desirable, but there is greater power for good in the still small voice of recognised courtesies than in the brazen threats of force. A peace which is kept by the existence of a superior force must be a very insecure peace unless it is based on the goodwill of the peoples backing that force. Signatures to treaties and charters mean little to a nation that ts to go to war. What is needed is to bring to bear on people’s minds and hearts the forces that make nations not want to go to war; and for this no agency has anything approaching the power of broadcasting. Signatories to charters are

governments, not peoples. But disturbances of the peace in the future are likely to arise in their early stages not so much from clashes between nations as from domestic clashes of ideologies within a single nation. The parties concerned will draw to themselves the support of other nations which will wittingly or unwittingly foment the trouble by powerful short-wave broadcasting till it spreads to other nations, and then the hope of action by the United Nations will be remote, AWS, treaties, charters, or any pacts written down in so many words, howsoever backed by force, cannot precede but must necessarily follow in the wake of traditions or understandings of what are humanly regarded as decent behaviour, courtesy, fair-play and gentleness: Bs : +++» Your gentleness shall force More: than your force move us to gentleness. 2 The problem bécomes one of developing these traditions and understandings. This is a long sustained process, and the great emotional power of broadcasting must be brought to bear on the myriads of individual minds so that there may develop bneath the ideologies and political partisanships a feeling of our common humanity and a burning, active desire to be at peace with one another and help one another, however much we differ in ideas, and however mistaken we may think other people may be in their arguments. If broadcasting regards its job as solely concerned with the passing on of objective truth (if there is such a thing as objective truth where human relationships are concerned), it is shirking the duty to humanity which is peculiarly its own --the- emotionalising of intellectual: vision. as The controllers of broadcasting institutions must be leagued with the aspirations of the United Nations and must be continually moved to regard themselves directly or indirectly as servants of that organisation. A national broadcasting institution cannot live to itself alone. It knows no frontiers, and its decisions are imposed on neighbouring nations or on nations half the world away as much as on its own. An actual instance or two will make this clear. A certain sequence of events covering a few days was not broadcast on a certain country’s network, in order not to interfere with the activities of the police in their tracking of a criminal; but the news sent by cable was broadcast from another country (which did not appreciate the reason for -or even know of-the desired silence) and received by listeners in the district in which the police were working. Another great national broadcasting institution recently decided that certain broadcasts should: not be withheld in spite of their possible injurious effect on. certain types of people. Whether that decision was right or wrong I do not question. But by making that decision for its own country, that institution denied any freedom of decision to the country over the border where its transmissions could be readily received. There are an infinite number of issues and practices of a positive as well as of a negative character which should be the subject of discussion and understanding (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) among broadcasters. Broadcasting is still in its infancy as a world power, and it were surely wise to seek the guiding hand of the United Nations in these corffparatively early days so that our steps may be led into the way of peace. Broadcasting is the most powerful potential instrument of peace the world possesses-and alternatively, it is the greatest potential instrument of psycho- , logical aggression available to the nations. Let us not have war on the air. It is easy for us to drift into aggressive practices under cover of news and commentary, but there is no such thing as drifting into peace. Unless the United Nations can secure the goodwill and active help of broadcasting, the Security, Council will have plenty of thankless work to do with little chance of ultimate success. So why not the "United Broadcasting Institutions?" Why not turn the stupendous instrument that has been so effectively used for war into an instrument which can as effectively be used for nation to speak peace unto nation?