The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Americas Voice Over the World THE VOICE of America headquarters in the Department of the Interior in Washington is just about the most fascinating spot on this...
...Preparing scripts in more than 50 languages is by no means a simple matter...
...A moderately intellectual person sitting in the depths of Russia or China, and hearing these lectures, would see straight into the heart of our country...
...As I was leaving the Voice's office I happened to see a thick pile of typed manuscripts—and the temptation was too much...
...Information Agency (USIA), which also operates libraries, movies, language schools, industrial and cultural exhibits and many other projects to give people all over the world the right idea about what sort of country this is and how democracy really works...
...The Voice is part of the U.S...
...Every table, every desk, every filing cabinet is jammed full...
...only by accident did anything get through...
...Europeans often complained that they were weary of hearing about our gadgets...
...Russians told me that they would rather have a voting machine than a washing machine...
...They describe life in an open society like ours, and discuss politics, religion, the arts and the individual...
...But the fact that we had them and they didn't in no way increased their affection for us...
...Were it not for their devotion to the job, not one of these workers would stay in such a place...
...But we are careful now not to give the impression that physical comfort is the be-all and end-all of our civilization...
...These people are the central corps of the army fighting dictatorship...
...A new habit was formed, a new spirit developed...
...While Khrushchev was here, his speeches and interviews furnished a large part of the material for Voice broadcasts...
...Of course people in China or Czechoslovakia would like to have those things...
...The lecturers, introduced by Bettina Hertenbach, are Crane Brinton, George Gibian, George N. Shuster and Henry Bam-ford Parkes...
...Externally not inviting, it has no charm from the point of view of comfort, arrangement or decoration...
...And all could easily find other jobs with more pay and more congenial surroundings...
...Seven scripts are straight news stories from Europe and America...
...They all seem to belong to the "Talks and Features" branch of the Central Program Services Division...
...One deals with American literature, one with our theater and another with our movies...
...Those at the Voice are in close touch with folks on the other side of the Iron Curtain...
...When he goes on the air he must know what is in the minds of most Germans...
...I took the lot...
...Two give accounts of scientific developments...
...This means that the script writers must have a keen eye for what is significant at home and around the world, and they must also be alert to the state of affairs in the target area...
...The Voice of America is a mission...
...These, naturally, were not jammed...
...This is a masterpiece in intellectual organization...
...At the bottom of my manuscript pyramid is an array of 13 lectures, a Symposium on the Open Society...
...Now about half of our materials go through...
...This is an important change —we are penetrating in a big way...
...The hundreds of talented and devoted men and women who work there are practically in one another's laps...
...They would rather have brotherhood and democracy than motor cars and 20th century kitchens...
...They felt that our eternal description of refrigerators, deep-freezes and other electrical devices was crude boasting about our wealth and comfort...
...A series of six programs, written by Professor Wilfrid Malenbaum of the University of Pennsylvania, deals with economically backward countries—how they are backward, why they are backward, and what they can do about it...
...they hear the heartbeats of the millions...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Americas Voice Over the World THE VOICE of America headquarters in the Department of the Interior in Washington is just about the most fascinating spot on this continent...
...My friends told me, too, that it is impractical to try to conceal America's widely distributed comforts...
...Now all that is changed...
...But other jobs are, for the most part, just jobs...
...One of the top Voice directors explained to me that Khrushchev's visit had a decisive effect on broadcasts to Russia...
...When the Premier returned home it was impossible suddenly to change back...
...A man broadcasting to Germany in the afternoon must get reports of German news in the morning...
...There are 33 manuscripts in my pile...
...And they realize the people there love freedom as we do...
...Information and inspiration are aimed at big and little countries on all continents...
...Most broadcasts carry news, since people in both the totalitarian and the underdeveloped countries yearn for trustworthy reports of the latest events...
...The Moscow Fair did a lot to advertise them...
...Before Khrushchev came almost all our broadcasts were jammed...
...Naturally, I asked my friends about one of the Voice features which formerly brought many objections...
...When I reached home I found I owned a treasure...
...Only two of them deal specifically with events in USSR: One reports the cut in Soviet troops and the other discusses the reorganization of the Soviet security forces...
Vol. 43 • March 1960 • No. 12
