Word: coding
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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From Washington, U.S. Censor Byron Price and his assistant for radio, stocky J. Harold Ryan of Toledo, sent out radio's first wartime "Code of Practices." Because a few powerful domestic stations (such as Salt Lake City's 50-kw. KSL) have been heard across the Pacific, they told radiomen to be careful even in the use of already censored press news. They warned against references to the weather during sports broadcasts. They also detailed the topics upon which only official information can be given...
...radio code called for particular caution in quiz programs, interviews, and forums, lest enemy agents broadcast information disguised in innocent-seeming phrases. Most such programs on the big networks had already been modified; e.g., for several weeks, questions from the floor in America's Town Meeting of the Air have had to be submitted before being allowed on the air. But there were still plenty of pluggable holes in local programs...
...short, the publication of virtually any news about the U.S. war effort is now forbidden unless specifically sanctioned by the Government. Since all information is of value to the enemy in one degree or another, Censor Price's code could be literally stretched to a ridiculous extent. That it might be so stretched, few editors feared. The majority trusted Censor Price, an A.P. veteran, to give them the best breaks he knew...
...press itself was largely responsible for the issuance of the code, hoping thereby to escape from the uncertainty of not knowing what was printable. Actually, the list, couched necessarily in blanket terms, solved few problems for the press. Most of the important news of today comes under its terms and no reporter or editor can check everything back with the censor. It did not relieve newsmen of their main risk, which is not merely of being fined and sent to jail under the Espionage Act, but of being accused of being enemies of their country...
...code undoubtedly left much to be desired. It went on the tacit assumption that any information given to the U.S. public was thereby given to the enemy. It did not make even a theoretical concession to the principle that news should be kept from getting out of the country (by peripheral censorship) so that the public at home can be allowed to have significant information. By making censorable all news of the progress of production it at least theoretically denied the public any chance to know and criticize if the President's arms program (60,000 planes...