Chart III
Along with the local press of one or two selected localities, the analyst should select several government personages and should follow every word of theirs he can find. The basic principle is for the analyst himself to determine the range of materials to be covered by deciding his own work-load in advance. This in turn depends on the time he has available for the task, his mastery of the language, his interest in the projects, probable interruptions due to semiofficial elbow-bending, and other personal factors.
The rule remains: Consistent analysis of the same output with reference to basic topics over a sustained period will inevitably reveal the propaganda intention of the source. (It must be pointed out that the expert analyst still is needed to select topics and to confirm interpretations.) To make a first guess as to whether the intended effect is being achieved or not, the analyst uses himself as a propaganda guinea pig. What does he think of the issues? What might he have thought otherwise? What would he think if he were a little less intelligent, a little more uncritical, than he is? And to complete the analysis, the analyst must go out to the audience that receives the materials and find out what effect the propaganda has had by asking them about it (see interrogation, page [145]).
Printed Materials.
Printed matter goes on the air in any major news operation. It is only a matter of time before telephoto facilities develop in line with the experimental New York Times edition printed in San Francisco during the United Nations organizational conference. This was sent, all in one piece, by wirephoto to Frisco and reprinted. The delay between the two editions was merely a matter of minutes. In the future, wireless telephoto may reduce this to seconds, so that all belligerents can simply tune in on each other's major newspapers.
Radio.
The only defense against enemy use of radio monitoring or broadcasting consists of the application of wired radio—which means plugging all the radio sets in on the telephone circuit, putting nothing on the air, and defying the enemy to eavesdrop. If the radio sets are then policed, and are made incapable of receiving wireless material, that particular audience is effectively cut off from the enemy. (When the Red Army, with its acute propaganda-conscious security, moved into many Eastern European cities, the first thing it did was to round up all the radios which the Nazis had overlooked. This prevented the liberated peoples from being enslaved by the "filthy reactionary lies" of the American and British governments, and made sure that the peoples would stay liberated under influence of their local Soviet-controlled newspapers.)
Wired radio is expensive. Radio suppression is difficult; the successful concealers of radio receivers become two-legged newspapers and go around town spreading all the hot dope which the authorities are trying to suppress. Scarcity puts a premium on such news; rumor then becomes unmanageable. Except for strangely drastic situations, it is probable that the great powers will continue to tolerate radio reception even though it may mean letting foreign subversive propaganda slip in now and then.
It is therefore likely that radio broadcasts will be available for monitoring for the pre-belligerent stages of the next war, should war come again in our time, and that radio may last through a great part or all of the duration of the war. Factors which cannot now be foreseen, such as radio control of weapons, will affect this.