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Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 37, 22 March 1935, Page 5

ON the main charge, that "to-day little or no discussion of.controversial subjects is heard over the British air," that _ under the British system "radio becomes one of two things, an instrument of Government propaganda or au utterly colourless and wasteful means of mass communication," compressed into Mr. Winston Churchill’s not being allowed to talk on India, the B.B.C. brings forward its past digcussions of Karl. Marx, Tascist), and Imperialism, debates: on drink, betting, blood-sports, the. press, and\ public school education, and congratulates itself that it allowed the Japanese and Chinese representatives

to talk at the height of the controversy ‘over the Manchurian question; also Government and Opposition speakers had been allowed to select their own subjects and say what they pleased during 1933. Censorship. "is concerned solely with ensuring fair play by the Climination of personal prejudice and offence or misrepresentation of opposed points of view in talks put forward as impartial." On this point it would be interesting to hear the views of the Hnglish working man, who quite recently managed to blurt out, before the B.B.C. cut him off, that: his talk had been so cut about that he was sending a complete script to the papers.

HE B.B.C, has been putting on a series of talks by unemployed men; how they make a few shillings a day, and what it’s like in unemployed shelters, and how it feels to be a beggar, and the merits of pavement-art against street singing as a means of livelihood. It is now disclosed that the talks are not prepared by the-men themselves: but the men are interviewed by a B.B.C. official, just as though he were talking to them casually. There is a live microphone in the room and the conversation is taken down by stenographers in another room, This is done so that the men may not become self-conscious.