SECRET
SIX MONTHS OF RADIO WAR
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GOVERNMENT OPPORTUNITIES
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(1) It was widely expected before the war that the broadcasting services of belligerents would in time of war be crippled in a cockpit of jamming and counter-jamming. Experience has corrected that expectation. The first six months of war have demonstrated that a broadcasting service of world coverage and high speed operation is an essential and powerful form of armament. All the indications are that it will so remain throughout the war, and that, when the fighting services are held in leash during the negotiation and execution of a peace, an efficient multi-lingual broadcasting service will be a national instrument of unique importance.
(2) All the belligerent countries have been increasing and re-aligning their broadcasting services to fill this new conception. The B.B.C., with the approval of the Government, has ordered a powerful reinforcement of its transmitter resources. It has rapidly increased the number of languages which it employs, extended its machinery for ascertaining the effects of its services and developed a new organisation for following with alertness the broadcasting campaigns of other countries. It has gained much new experience during the last six months and will certainly gain much more as the war develops. It has already modified drastically, and will not cease so to modify, its methods of operation to conform with that experience. Certain reforms, however, stand out as of the first importance in their bearing on the home country, on the enemy and on neutral countries alike which cannot be secured without the direct and sustained co-operation of the Government. This memorandum is confined to reforms of that character. Without them the country's broadcasting service cannot become a fully effective instrument of war.
Government spokesmen for international occasions
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(3) It is essential that a Government spokesman of unquestioned authority should be ready to broadcast promptly - or at least (since such declarations may need to be broadcast overseas in the small hours of the night) to provide promptly - the British interpretation of
every
important international development. Such an interpretation has been lacking on several important occasions during the last six months, from the German Government's broadcast disclosures on the night of 31st August of the sixteen points which it proposed for a Polish settlement, to the announcement of the Russo-Finnish peace first broadcast by Germany on the evening of 12th March.
(4) The B.B.C. cannot itself provide such interpretations It cannot secure through unofficial interpreters at any rate without prompt authoritative guidance, the convincing worldwide impression which is at such moments essential. The difficulties of ensuring that such interpretations are forthcoming, when at times the concurrence of the Dominions, of France, of a collective Cabinet and of Parliament may be requisite, are fully realised, as is also the freedom of the enemy from such restraints. It is part of the enemy's technique to time such events, so far as he can control them, so that they may take the Allies by surprise or catch their leaders in recess. It appears essential that a Minister of the first authority, with experience at the microphone, whether it be a member of the War Cabinet or the
Minister of Information
acting as the
War Cabinet's
mouthpiece should always be available, as against any sudden development, to interpret, as promptly as the needs for collective consultation permit, British reactions and British policy by wireless to the world.
Broadcasts by experts from the Services
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(5) It would greatly strengthen the broadcast presentation of the country's cause if naval, military and air experts of outstanding authority were to broadcast more freely than they have so far done on different aspects of the country's war situation. The Germans have used this method effectively - for example in a talk which Lt.-Gen. Ernst Udet Chief of the Technical Department of the German Air Ministry, gave to America through the Columbia Broadcasting System on 8th January, and in an interview of 3rd March, also broadcast to the United States, between Grand-Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the German Fleet, and a representative of the National Broadcasting Company of America.
(6) Early in March the B.B.C. sought permission for Captain Woodhouse of the AJAX to broadcast in its service to South America. Captain Woodhouse was reported to have been accustomed while on the South American station to make speeches in Spanish, and his ship was well known in South America for the help which it rendered at the time of the Chilean earthquake last year. Permission, in spite of repeated requests, was refused by the Admiralty.
Speed in the issue of official reports
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(7) Official reports of important operations in the war should be issued with the utmost speed at any time of the day or night. The news which goes out first makes a biting impression which later reports can never efface.
(8) Here experience has not been consistent. The British raid of 19th March on Silt was reported with effective promptness. The delay - and the grave results of the delay - in issuing a prompt British report on the German raid of 16th March on Scapa Flow are analysed in the Appendix to this memorandum. It is appreciated that the attacker on
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- 4 -such occasions is better placed than the attacked to organise the prompt release of news. The desire of the fighting services to notify the next-of-kin of the fallen before issuing an official notice must be respected. But the evil effects of delaying the issue of reports upon such occasions have, it is submitted, proved so formidable as to outweigh consideration for the next-on-kin and to make the establishment of an efficient organisation for the issue of immediate reports essential.
Fullness in official reports
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(9) Official reports on war operations should be as full as military considerations, and notably the danger of giving information to the enemy, permit.
(10) The continuous survey maintained by the B.B.C. since the war began on the broadcasting services of other countries indicates that British reports tend to be less full than those of the enemy, and for that reason to fall short of maximum effectiveness abroad. The same view has been widely voiced overseas.
The fuller use of Service eye-witnesses
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(11) Official reports on war operations should be supplemented as quickly and as fully as possible by eye-witness accounts. The naval authorities may have had good reason for refusing to permit any member of the COSSACK'S company to broadcast after the ship's rescue of the ALTMARK's prisoners; but the broadcasting treatment of the exploit suffered thereby. The Silt raid of 19th March could have been more effectively treated on the air if the authorities had permitted more than one eye-witness to come to the microphone on 21st March. The single officer detailed for the purpose broadcast six times in home, overseas and American programmes, and spent over twelve hours at Broadcasting House in that good cause. The bearing of this stint of eye- witnesses on the American audience should be emphasised. The two
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- 5 -main American chains - N.B.C. and C.B.S. - are rivals; and two eye-witnesses should be made available on such occasions if, as is eminently desirable, full double coverage in the United States is to be secured.
(12) In this field also continuous observation indicates that the enemy wireless makes wider, prompter and more effective use of eye-witness reports than the British wireless has been able to do. This impression again is confirmed by appeals for more eye-witness accounts from well-wishers of Britain in many parts of the world.
The official contradiction of enemy misstatements
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(13) When a British official report on a war operation has to compete with a misleading enemy report on the same operation, it is desirable that it should be promptly supplemented by a further report pinning down and contradicting the enemy falsehoods. A supplementary statement of this kind was lacking in the case of the raid of 16th March on Scapa Flow, and the omission was at once reflected in the B.B.C.'s mail-bag. Such a statement was forthcoming and was widely and effectively used in the B.B.C. bulletins of 21st March in the matter of the German raid of 19th March on a convoy in the North Sea.
