Radio Days By: Julio Martínez Molina Email: corresp@jrebelde.cip.cu June 14, 2007 00:33:21 GMT A CubaNews translation by Ana Portela. Edited by Walter Lippmann. http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/opinion/2007-06-14/dias-de-radio/ Life, which links periods like scrabble words, has made me take to bed due to an unfortunate bicycle accident, Usually the sick have the accompanying radio by their side and my situation recalled my early youth of short wave, long wave and FM. How strange! The scenario of the dial hasn’t changed much from back then. Despite improving in professionalism, sparkle, social services, and ideological intentions, there is still more to achieve in the world of sound studios and microphones. The scene is pretty good – I believe – in the plural which that is not directed only to an uncluttered or common receiver but a wide range of receivers with a diversity of tastes or demands, on the sound track; or current information or musical offerings. However, there are some problems in the balance of scripts which deal with a varied review to youth spaces; from programs of a social content to other subjects (scientific, cultural, culinary). Copyright or author’s rights seem to be a curse words in many. It is incredible how information is lifted from different web sites of international media – like a tracing – without the slightest mention of the source: the first thing taught in the school of Journalism. Working with information or using it is still a a subject that is pending for some radio scriptwriters. It is not such a futile mission that someone could think. There is a reason for heavyweights in the world information scenario, like the BBC and others who have now decided to only hire anchors who have studied journalism. I would like to recall that, when a report is prepared, it should, at least, consider the basic rules of communication. In truth, mentioning the source is a small sin when compared to the poor efficiency of some narrators, their orphaned values, the absence of a narrative focus in some scripts. I mention narrative because communication also demands it both as a necessary requirement of veracity, solidity and critical judgment in statements. Judgments which are scarce in spaces that rely on factual reproduction, in lieu of an analysis or questioning some figures given by international information chains and the leisure consortiums as unquestionable truths. Recently, Cintio Vitier has said that only general knowledge “can immunize us against the poisonous wave of the banal and pleasurable of the raving mass media”. Anyone who stands in front of a mike – regardless of the specialty, hour or radio station – must be supported by a basic knowledge to sharply recognize an over-evaluation or naivete of cultural criteria: innocence punished by the hangmen. Some radio stations in each territory are affected by the lack of collaborators or specialists on different subject matters Also abundant are programs which bite their tails and are stumps of themselves. They have nothing to say, the vital cycle was complete. But, by the art of magic, they are still on the air. The weightlessness of the leitmotif of the subject dealt with is evident in some occasions. It is not strange to find a space of social interest, with interviews that are (or should be) social agents of a certain magnitude in their respective fields. For example, an hour to talk about a silly gathering that only the promoters know about. I tell it as I heard it. There is more but due to our historical misfortune – space – I can’t embroider. I paraphrased
Woody Allen in the title of this chronicle although without renouncing
his irony in search of a clearer objectivity, regardless of whether my
days in radio were not necessarily of wines and roses. |
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