News & Newscasts

War has sharpened the contrast between the youngest and the oldest professional news handlers-radio and the press:

> U.S. news editors, on whom the Japanese pulled one of the smartest publicity stunts in history last week (see p. 55), were not noticeably reproached for it in their own columns. On the radio, which has no headlines to worry about, they were. Said CBS's placid Bill Shirer:

"They [the newspapers] shoved the Presidential report to the nation into second place, and with what? Well, with the exploit of the Japanese submarine. . . . The object of the shelling, of course, as this network pointed out in its very first mention of the story last midnight, was propagandistic rather than military. . . ."

Shirer's unheated voice carries weight in these matters, because he studied them on the home ground, in Berlin. He was speaking in a weekday evening spot (11 p.m. E.W.T.) reserved early this year by CBS for its first-string reporters to speak their minds in.

> In achieving an effect of straight talk and brave appraisal, the best news programs have probably surpassed the best newspapers since the war started. In taking a proper view of "news" created by the enemy, they certainly have. CBS, proud of its news staff, has especially recognized and used the advantages that a quarter hour on the air has over an eight-column front page in the matter of keeping emphasis where it belongs. Boldest comment yet ventured by a newscaster on the press's sense of proportion was made by CBS's Elmer Davis, apropos the Carole Lombard crash story. He said with justice that headlines and stories took precious little account of the 15 Army airmen in the same crash.

> Radio's usefulness in making Everywhere aware of Someplace has been illustrated in the U.S. by Mutual's John B. Hughes, only West Coast newscaster carried daily by a national network. Calm and articulate Mr. Hughes, a Japan-watcher long before the war, reflects California's concern over Jap residents, has given that subject priority almost constantly since Pearl Harbor--something non--California newspapers have naturally not done.

> The worthy intention to evaluate as well as report events has filled the air with "analysts" whose opinions are no better than the next man's. Catering to a public fatigue with such dubious experts, a recent issue of Pic made an indiscriminate attack on the best-- Messrs. Shirer, Davis, Kaltenborn, Swing--making them out as superfluous to newspaper readers. The valid point, obscured by this sort of thing, is that newscasters would be more effective if they were fewer and better. In accuracy, coherence and discretion, only a few newscasts will stand the test of print.

> The newspapers have one advantage: there are no ads on the front page. Further more, the human eye has learned to skip ads it does not wish to read, whereas the human ear still has difficulty tuning out commercials. Some commercials sound more obtrusive in a newscast than others.

Both NBC and CBS evening news roundups, for example, are sponsored; but NBC's is unluckier in its sponsor. The Alka-Seltzer commercials not only break the program twice within 15 minutes, they seem to assume that hangovers are general in the U.S. at war.

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