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Listening Post
Sirs:
To put me out of business by simply ignoring me won't do. If you haven't seen a copy of the Chicago Times since last October, about 400,000 other people have daily. They know that my shortwave listening post produces copy for my column "We're Listening" five days a week except when atmospheric static gets me down.
Reason for this outcry from the Western Wilds is TIME of May 6, "Two U. S. listening posts make it their business to hear almost the whole works," of Europe on the air. The two: CBS listening post and Princeton Listening Centre. The omitted fact: my listening post has operated since January 1939, that is, before CBS started; and published a day-by-day analysis since Oct. 10, 1939, or before Princeton got under way. It also provided the bulk of the material incorporated in Propaganda Via Shortwave (Feb. 26) by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. . . .
My contention is that a comprehensive job of radio propaganda analysis requires listener, analyst, and editor all in the same person. . . . The trouble is that the important stuff is strewn at random among the trash, and lots of times discernible only by its absence, as in the case of the "Allied change of mind." To get weary is therefore fatal for the post listener as I experienced when CBS and UP picked up Nazi Admiral Luetzow's statement about the scuttling of the Nazi destroyers at Narvik. As a rule the admiral talks so humdrum that he deserves only one quarter of an ear but that time everybody but me thought he had big news. . . .
B. E. LUCAS
The Times Chicago, ILL.
— To Chicago Times' Lucas, all credit for a fine job of listening. But only Superman could out-listen CBS and Princeton, whose big Listening Post staffs are on the job as much as 19 hours a day, seven days a week. — ED.