Siepmann Denies Propaganda Mission: Warns Us to Avoid Distorted Judgment

Beware British propaganda, if it distorts your proper judgment," is the advice of Charles Siepmann, newly appointed University lecturer, and former Director of Program Planning of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Facing directly the charges that he is himself a propagandist as well as student, Siepmann declared, "I have absolutely no political connections whatever; and I have severed all relation with BBC. In the next three years I expect to be devoted to study and thought, perhaps to publication.

"I have neither the intention nor the desire to raise or have raised with me subjects having to do with the war. They are entirely outside the sphere of my work."

Privately Financed

Siepmann has been connected with the British Broadcasting Corporation for twelve years, of which the first eight were spent in the Adult Education Department, and the past four in executive offices, Invited by President Conant to perform research on the role of radio in education, and financed by a private American organization not connected with Harvard or with the British Government, he "nearly fell over backwards" in eagerness to accept the offer.

At Harvard, he will offer to assist the University Committee on Broadcasting and the Radio Workshop, he says. "I am keen to meet the Workshop boys. I think it very significant that they are seeing radio as an effective educational technique, and that they are building their programs around a thing of such contemporary importance as American history."

Popular Education

Education, Siepmann feels, should not be defined in a narrow academic sense, but rather as a stimulus to original and critical thought. Programs interpreting current affairs and featuring controversial issues, can lead the populace to understand other points of view than their own and to modify their preconceptions as a result, he says.

Thus an integrated public opinion can be approximated, and an attitude of intellectual curiosity encouraged: For this reason radio is a "tremendous, powerful, and exciting: new instrument whose possibilities have only begun to the explored, Siepmann declares.

No Impartiality

"There is no such thing as real impartiality, and those who ask it of radio do not know what the word means," he says. "To appear impartial is to say nothing about anything that really matters, or else to present 'both sides' of a question as if a question had two sides instead of sixty!

"What is really important is who is dictating the ideas and values expressed over the air waves, and whether or not we approve of them. In Europe the uses of broadcasting are subordinated to the propagation of nationalistic or ideological ideas to the extent that radio is doing no constructive work but rather denying the free development of the mind.

"In America radio hasn't gotten that far yet."

Will Travel and Study

Siepmann's work will carry him throughout the country and will bring him into contact with the important radio executives and with the Universities such as Chicago which are already interested in radio education in the popular sense.

In this work, he will be solely and exclusively a student, he insists, giving advice only where advice is sought, and concerned primarily with discovering how the great popular appeal of radio broadcasting can be spread into the educational realm.

He is interested in stimulating radio criticism. "Today we have as a matter of course criticism of music, literature, drama; why should we not have radio criticism?" he asks. "People should be asking how radio is serving them; what issues are being treated, and how; whether the ideas they are being fed are those of vested interests; and whether the quality of their entertainment cannot be vastly improved."

With regard to commercialism of radio, Mr. Siepmann was non-committal. He does not feel that it is incompatible with radio education, "especially if we get a better idea of education, and see it as the interpretation of life and its values. Such programs can have a high entertainment value."