CHILE: Radio Stymie

A familiar suggestion from suggesters like George Bernard Shaw (see p. 20) is that government by parliaments and congresses would be vastly improved, frightful volumes of government time-wasting, nonsense, repetition and bigotry eliminated, if nations would install special broadcasting stations to let all citizens hear and judge everything said by their lawmakers. Chile adopted the suggestion this winter.

What ended Chile's experiment last week was not what might have been expected. Long used to the banalities of commercial and political broadcasting, listeners found little to object to in Chile's congressional debates. Deputies...

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