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We can get immediate statements from officials here to correct Axis innuendo.
We get and compile editorials from the U.S. press, useful to quote on the air when Goebbels is making the most of the Chicago Tribune. Our writers have the benefit of background experience and research. We propose only to hand you the stuff to use as you see fit."
How this finally began to work could be seen last week in the Manhattan office of the Coordinator of Information, a new, orderly place on Madison Avenue with a bepistoled Federal guard in the anteroom. Inside was what amounted to an international city room, with ex-New York Herald Tribune Foreign News Editor Joseph Barnes at the desk. From the wire services—and from Washington's suggestions—Editor Barnes picked items of interest, tossed them to six key writer-researchers of such caliber as Edmond Taylor (The Strategy of Terror). Pointed or amplified, the items went next door to Stan Richardson's office. Richardson, checking for both State Department and industry, put them on a private teletype wire to receivers in each short-wave news room. Sample item:
THE FOLLOWING FROM THE COORDINATOR OF INFORMATION IS FOR YOUR USE IF DESIRED
A WAR DEPARTMENT STATEMENT ANNOUNCING TODAY THAT NEARLY 2,000,000 WOOLEN BLANKETS OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY ARE TO BE PURCHASED FROM AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS FOR THE USE OF AMERICAN DRAFTEES CAUSED WASHINGTON OBSERVERS TO COMMENT ON THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THIS ACTION AND RECENT NEWS OF THE SEIZURE BY GERMAN AUTHORITIES OF BLANKETS FROM NORWAY'S CIVILIAN POPULATION TO HELP PROTECT NAZI SOLDIERS FROM THE RUSSIAN WINTER.
STANLEY RICHARDSON
Propaganda? There is nothing devious in the procedure of thus pointing up a one-line War Department announcement destined for routine burial in the back pages of newspapers. U.S. short-wave men can and occasionally do demand from "the Donovan people" through Richardson a convincing check on the accuracy of any news passed to them. Yet they appreciate the help they get from a new service that saves them a lot of work.
This week NBC started a new series of short-wave broadcasts for Europe and South America entitled Hitler Betrayed by Himself. Worked up with the collaboration of Free Frenchman Raoul de Roussy de Sales, the program consists of quotations read by one voice from Hitler's declarations on various topics, followed by another voice recalling what actually occurred. This is about as far as U.S.
short-wave newscasters go in the direction of "counter propaganda." NBC's staff of 65 smart writers, producers and linguists has been working for democracy long enough to feel with fervor that the blunt American truth is the best antidote to Goebbelsian innuendo. Of the latter, they know through their correspondence (e.g. 1,170 European, 4,524 South American, 4,908 Central American letters so far this year) their listeners are sick & tired.
Boston's short-wave WRUL observes the same moderation, but is more concerned with what President Walter Lemmon calls "morale relief" for Occupied Europe. A non-profit foundation that has as auxiliary staff the whole modern-language department at Harvard, WRUL has the blessing of the Donovan group for an extended cultural program which may cost about $500,000 this year—twice as much as NBC appropriates for short wave.