Disarming the Air Waves

For a year or more, the Western press has noted with approval that the Soviet Union is no longer jamming “Voice of America” and BBC broadcasts. Poland was the first of the satellites to stop the costly practice; the Soviet Union gradually followed suit, and now Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have also reduced their jamming to a minimum. A lot of nonsense has been written about the increasing amount of good will toward the West thus shown by the Soviet leadership.

What Western newspaper readers are not told is that the cutback in jamming followed a change in broadcasting policy by the West. Newscasts and comments that could antagonize the Communist rulers are few and far between these days as VOA and BBC plug the late President Kennedy’s “reduction of tension” line.

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E. Schlosser

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For a year or more, the Western press has noted with approval that the Soviet Union is no longer jamming “Voice of America” and BBC broadcasts. Poland was the first of the satellites to stop the costly practice; the Soviet Union gradually followed suit, and now Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia have also reduced their jamming to a minimum. A lot of nonsense has been written about the increasing amount of good will toward the West thus shown by the Soviet leadership.

What Western newspaper readers are not told is that the cutback in jamming followed a change in broadcasting policy by the West. Newscasts and comments that could antagonize the Communist rulers are few and far between these days as VOA and BBC plug the late President Kennedy’s “reduction of tension” line.