The Urgent Voices

Radio & TV went into the Korean war as undermanned as any of General MacArthur's divisions. There were only six radio reporters in all of Japan when the first North Korean divisions rolled across the 38th parallel, and one in Korea. On the home front, during the first critical days of the fighting, such quidnunes as Walter Winchell, H. V. Kaltenborn, Drew Pearson and Fulton Lewis Jr. went on vacation. But the networks soon started making up for lost time.

By last week the radio and television corps in Korea had grown to a platoon of 25 men, including such experienced hands as CBS's Ed Murrow and Bill Costello. Many of the later arrivals came armed with twelve-pound Minitape recorders, transcribed their stories on the spot and flew the tape to Tokyo for broadcast to the U.S. Along with such eyewitness accounts, the networks were also distilling, from their own sources, and from the regular news services, enough material for nearly 300 newscasts each week.

Politburo & Pin-Up. At home, the big-name analysts were also working overtime. Concentrated in Manhattan and Washington, they range from Mutual's Gabriel Heatter, who dispenses folksy anecdotes and emotion-charged speeches in a voice ballooning with sepulchral tone, to ABC's Elmer Davis, who brings a dry and often witty realism to his clearly labeled speculations about what's behind the news.

In between are analysts like CBS's Eric Sevareid, a measured, calm-voiced reporter who is hard-put to give both sides of every question in his allotted 5 minutes; NBC's Morgan Beatty, who alternates reading the minds of the Politburo with such "colorful" items as Hollywood's reporting an increased G.I. demand for pinup girls; and Mutual's Frank Edwards, who claims to have tipped his listeners in advance to the B-29 bombing on the Naktong front and usually sounds willing to punch anyone who disagrees with him.

Two of radio's best and newest efforts indicate a trend away from the one-man dopesters. Mutual's War Front-Home Front (Mon. 9:30 p.m. E.D.T.), a recorded program, lets Stateside newsmen cross-question front-line reporters via short wave and telephone. ABC's United--or Not? (Mon. 10 p.m., E.D.T.) turns newsmen from as many as 20 countries loose on outstanding United Nations' diplomats. Last week, even Britain's urbane Sir Gladwyn Jebb found the drumfire of questions hard to handle. Some he met squarely ("No, I don't think Soviet Russia should be tossed out of the U.N."); some he dodged ("I can't answer questions about Formosa in public").

Map & Pointer. So far television has found no way to compete with radio's fast-breaking, flexible news coverage. Except for its dramatic United Nations telecasts, TV has contented itself with scooping the newsreel theaters. In addition to Tele-News newsreel clips, CBS-TV supplies a pointer and a relief map of Korea so that Douglas Edwards can conduct televiewers on a nightly Cook's tour of the battlefront. John Cameron Swayze on NBC-TV's Camel News Caravan explains battle positions on his map with the aid of animated planes, tanks and troops.

Neither radio nor television has yet produced anything to match such notable, on-the-spot broadcasts of World War II as the round-the-clock reports from the Normandy beachhead, the liberation of Paris, or the running account of a bombing raid on Berlin. But radiomen were taking considerable satisfaction from the surveys which showed a sharp climb in radio news audiences (up 18% over last year). With listeners hungry for early, accurate news reports from the Korean front, many a television owner was beginning to turn back to his radio again.

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