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 on the other hand were completely intoxicated with the idea that they were actually addressing their constituents and friends. Speeches dragged on hour after hour. Socialists objected because they said, “It is not right that the public should hear all the rude things said in this house.” But the main reason of Chile’s Congress for ending its broadcasting was that the effect thereof had been the precise opposite of that intended—a parliamentary stymie.*

*Proceedings of the U. S. Congress have been broadcast on special occasions—President Hoover’s speech on Washington’s Birthday, 1932; the Coolidge Memorial service last January: the first day of this year’s special session. Plans are afoot, but strongly opposed, to install permanent broadcasting equipment in both House end Senate.