The Jammers

Ever since the cold war began, the Soviet Union has been one of the world's leading broadcasters of radio propaganda. Even today, Moscow beams some 1,900 hours of radio per week at foreign audiences in more than 80 languages. Yet the Russians have always been exceedingly sensitive to foreign broadcasts beamed at them in return, and through the years they have traditionally jammed such broadcasts electronically.

Now, it turns out, they are worried about a new threat: the advent of satellite-transmitted television broadcasting. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim last week, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko called for an international treaty to prohibit such broadcasting from one nation to another--except by mutual consent--as "interference in the internal affairs of other states."

Primarily, the Soviets are concerned about TV broadcasts from the U.S. and China that might some day be transmitted to Russia without a ground relay station. Any government is capable of jamming satellite TV broadcasts. Gromyko's proposal calls for the legalization of such jamming. By implication, it would also permit nations to destroy offending foreign satellites. The Soviets evidently intend to push hard for their proposal at this fall's General Assembly session. Western countries are bound to regard the Russian proposal as an outrageous attempt to paralyze the free international movement of thought.

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