Dean of Pundits

The most publicly punditical organization in the U.S.--The Association of Radio News Analysts*-- came out recently with its first code of ethics. The 20-odd pundits were obviously feeling their very real power. They wanted, principally:

> No censorship of broadcast material beyond that required by the Government "during a national emergency."

>No members who deliver commercial plugs for their sponsors' products.

>Painstaking accuracy, good taste and no sensationalism.

This maiden manifesto drew a sharp reply last week from able Paul White, news chief of CBS's newscasting organization. He reminded the pundits of a few differences between newspapers and the radio. The number of newspapers which can be published is limited only by the will to enterprise, but the number of radio stations is limited by the frequencies available, which are scarce. That means, said White, that radio is less able to guarantee an adequate hearing to people whose opinions differ from those of the pundits. White continued:

"No news analyst should broadcast without editorial supervision of his script. . . . The analyst's function is to help the listener to understand, to weigh and to judge, but not to do the judging for him. . . . The public interest cannot be served in radio by giving selected news analysts ... a preferred and one-sided position in the realm of public controversy. . . ."

Free Air. Five years ago that realm was almost void of radio pundits. Today there are about 60 of them on the four big national networks--plus a host of straight news broadcasters and at least one would-be local pundit for most of the 900-odd U.S. stations. Their combined impact is superseding the newspaper as America's Page-One-news source.

Radio has in general tried to follow printed journalism's tradition of a free press. But there has been constant trouble. Commentators can and often do convey their own feelings toward news merely by tone of voice. Their daily entrance into 30,000,000 U.S. homes is very inti mate and puts a premium on voice rather than on brains or integrity. This accounts for the fact that much of the output of U.S. radio pundits is pontifical tripe.

The pundits rode in on a powerful historical groundswell, which really began with the Munich Crisis of 1938. That crisis became a great personal triumph for healthy, hearty, opinionated Hans von Kaltenborn. He was the only important commentator on the U.S. air at the time who was ready for it. He had a good idea of what Munich meant and said so. He was ahead of the printed press and the other networks all the way.

Sound Scoop. For 18 days, during the crisis, Kaltenborn scarcely left the CBS studios. He made 102 broadcasts of two minutes to two hours each. Able to trans late Hitler, Daladier and Mussolini as they came hot off the short wave (luckily there were no sun spots to destroy reception), he gave the radio public an instant summary of their talk and its meaning. The U.S. public had never listened so widely or so intensely to radio news before, and it bought more receiving sets during the crisis than in any previous three weeks of radio history. At the end of his 18-day stint, Kaltenborn was so groggy that when the Archbishop of Canterbury's prayer for peace came in over the short wave, he analyzed that too.

A year and a half later NBC hired Kaltenborn away from CBS -- which by that time had grown weary of his ex-cathedral tone, had acquired the dry, reassuring voice of Elmer Davis, and was plugging him hard.

Soaring Eaglet. Before Munich, comparatively few people in the U.S. had heard of Kaltenborn or knew that he had been on the air for 16 years. He got into punditry by virtue of his associate editorship on the Brooklyn Eagle, a penchant for public speaking, and a well-traveled curiosity about foreign nations.

For a stunt, the Eagle put him on the air (with his head in a photographer's vise so he would not stray from the imperfect microphone) in 1922. A year later he was current-eventing steadily over WEAF. His fan mail included letters from happy housewives: at last they had an easily assimilated news and opinion source with which to confront their cocksure husbands. "Please tell me," they begged, "is he right, or are you?" Kaltenborn is certain that radio began the political education of women.

Kaltenborn left the Eagle in 1930 for WABC, key station of the Columbia net work. He was 52. Since then he has been a prize example both of radio's oracular virtues and its faults.

Paid Brain. Anyone listening to Kaltenborn's final broadcast for last week (NBC, Mon. to Fri., 7:45 p.m., E.W.T.) heard that Mussolini, though slipping, was still Italy's boss; that the refusal of Argentina's new government to sanction a general election meant more dictatorship and revolution; that the U.S. food situation was bad because it had been run by a White House clique; that U.S. coal miners were 50% better off than when war began, etc.

Kaltenborn and his colleagues usually have to go on the air without enough time to reflect, weigh, or wait for more information. Kaltenborn himself predicted that Hitler would not come into power. A few hours before the Wehrmacht smashed into Poland, he still thought that negotiation was a good bet. His expressed views on labor have often been tendentious and shallow in perspective.

Stubborn, proud, prejudiced, Kaltenborn nevertheless has stuck to the tradition of free speech and made it stick. More powerful pressure groups have tried to run him off the air than have attacked any other commentator. He has beaten all of them, including America First, which had his sponsor (Purol) on the ropes with their anti-interventionist mail. He has insisted on saying what he wanted to, and his audience (about 10,000,000) has forgiven his mistakes and gone on listening. His long-range batting average is pretty good.

Less conceited than confident, Kaltenborn gets paid a vast sum for airing his opinions. He admits that "It is quite possible I am earning more money than any single individual in the United States who works solely with his brain." What he earns is best known to the U.S. Government, which takes 82% of it, but the sum is not far from $325,000 a year (some $200,000 from radio, the rest for movies, lectures, magazines, etc.). He agrees that he is overpaid, but he likes to point out that he failed to hit the big money until he had reached retirement age. Lately, he has taken to saying to himself just before going on the air: "Make it good, old boy, it may be the last one."

*Founder: H. V. Kaltenborn; President: George Fielding Eliot; age: 15 months.

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