POLISH RADIO CONCENTRATES NOW ON EDUCATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 16

POLISH RADIO CONCENTRATES NOW ON EDUCATION

war Broadcasting Department, a member of the Polish Resistance Movement’s "Radio Post-War Planning Committee," and intensely interested in Poland’s present attempts to extend "educational broadcasting," Dr. Maria Sebrovska of Warsaw-who is at present surveying New Zealand education after attending the New Education Fellowship Conference in Sydney-knows a@ great deal about broadcasting in Europe's eastern peasant countries. \" employee of Poland’s pre"I am really a psychologist," she explained, "but I wads employed from 1933 in our Polish radio’s research department investigating listeners’ preferences. Radio did not then seem a great force in the country-so small a proportion of our people had receivinz sets. It was then we in Warsaw found ourselves surrounded by German forces, our government having fled, our papers having ceased publishing, and bombs and shells shrieking over us continu-ously-then we found what broadcast-

ing can do. Our radio headquarters became the centre of the city’s defence. We kept running 24 hours and listeners, I believe, never switched off their sets. All information went through us and everyone who had a problem rang us up or came to us. BBC Was Most Reliable It was BBC news, too, said Dr. Sebrovska, which deserved credit-more even than the score of visitors from Britain who were smuggled in-for maintaining the Underground’s contact with the outside world and consequently the morale of the people. "We suspected all radio news broadcasts of being propaganda, of course, and so we would check what each station’ said by listening to its broadcast of the same news in different languages to different countries. Both Berlin and London varied the emphasis and presentation according to the country they were addressing, and both gave, of course, not completely objective news but a mixture of facts and propagandist interpretation. But we

found that the BBC facts and interpretations were very much the most honest of all stations. We were surprised that Poles were able to listen to London. "Of course all sets were supposed to be surrendered. But those that escaped early inspection were built into armchairs and partitions between rooms and even-some of them, into little secret soundproof rooms. Many people were caught listening but always there were some who were not and they passed news about by voice or in stencilled ‘newspapers.’ This desire for illegal news at great risk was very interesting because loudspeakers gave official news in the streets whenever it came on. Though people called them ‘barkers’ and wrote up ‘Donkeys park here’ and things like that in the places where listeners would stand and hear them, people listened a lot because names of arrested persons and so on were broadcast. But propaganda does not. affect people much if they have no faith in its (continued on next page) 2

(continued from previous page) soutce. Radio particularly is ineffective unless there is confidénce in the announcers and in what they say." Present Difficulties And had the "Post-war Radio Planning" that was done underground produced fruits, we asked. Not many, confessed Dr; Sebrovska. Partly that was because the Polish peasants and town workers still had so few receiving sets "though many _ who entered Germany with the Russians brought back German sets, which they had taken from housés along with other things." But transmission was a great difficulty, too. Warsaw was planning to change its 120 kilowatts to 600 when war began. But now it had only a little 60-kilowatt plant which the Russiats had given it. And only three other towns, two of them ex-German, had stations. "But we are using loudspeakers in city waiting-places and in clubs and community centres. And very many of our broadcasts to them as well as to schools are educational. In fact Polish radio to-day concentrates more on education than on entertainment."