Jitters

Last week, as World War II became a reeking reality, radio, the war correspondent, got the jitters.

Three incidents that set radio quaking: 1) Week ago Tuesday night A. P. Correspondent John Lloyd spoke over NBC from Paris at 8:30 EDST (1:30 a. m. Paris time). "The situation is now definite," he was explaining. "There are no more doubts. ..." when suddenly he was drowned out by a giant banshee yowl. "The air raid sirens are now bawling," Reporter Lloyd shouted, and he was heard no more. But the growling, whining, shrieking sirens wailed into U. S. listeners' ears for two full minutes. Then the Paris transmitter quit, and the world heard no more from Paris for six or seven hours.

2) In its daily round of war capitals, NBC got through one night to Warsaw. Mendel Mozes, correspondent for the Jewish Telegraph Agency in Poland, wasted no time getting down to the details of his visit to the Nazi-bombed Centos Society home for Jewish children near

Warsaw. "Children with staring eyes . . . led blindly away as if pursued by a ghost. . . . The picture of corpses still stands before my eyes. One little hand detached from a corpse ... a child's brains bashed on the wall. ..."

3) In Washington, White House Secretary Stephen T. Early said for the record : 1) that in war the press is a seasoned veteran and radio an untried rookie, and 2) that if radio proved itself a "good child," well-mannered, etc., it would be left to itself; but if it turned out to be a bad one, the Government disposition would be to "teach it some manners." Under the Federal Communications Act the President could, in any national emergency or merely to safeguard U. S. neutrality, shut down any or all radio stations. Already the President had proclaimed U. S. neutrality, was preparing his declaration of "limited national emergency.

The hooting Paris sirens and the suspense of the six-hour-long silence from Paris were considerably beyond the limit of radio's rules for mystery serials. Even in prizefight broadcasts a fighter may be cut, but he never bleeds, yet from Warsaw NBC had broadcast into U. S. parlors bashed brains, hacked-off hands, slaughtered children. Commentators, necessarily, were far from neutral. The European news reports broadcast were censored at the source, and amounted to little more than propaganda (even though the press printed no less censored news). In addition to all this, the cost had been terrific--as much as $18 a minute for transatlantic connections, countless refunds to advertisers whose programs had been interrupted.

Worried NBC and MBS cut war-news schedules drastically, cut off foreign commentators entirely. But CBS, it appeared, had not yet caught the jitters, stayed on the job hoping eventually to get right to the front.

Toward week's end, CBS, MBS and NBC got together, agreed to "edit" the news (i.e., avoid repetitive bulletins, pair up varying reports, sift announcements from foreign radio stations). CBS decided on at least two foreign hookups a day, interruptions of programs for big news only. NBC planned to use its men abroad on a newly announced schedule of war news periods only when they had something to say, began to scout around for correspondents in neutral European capitals, in the hope of getting uncensored news.

Main loser in radio's own little war scare was MBS, which not only went back to pre-War schedules, but abandoned its low-cost transcription roundups of foreign propaganda broadcasts.

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