RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

fmding the right method is most frequently either not understood ог for some reason pushed into the background. And when we talk of the further development of the media, of the latest demands for changes, it is of vital importance, in my view, to speak of the ways in which radio and television communicate with their audience. It seems clear to me that programme material cannot remain as it is without being re-worked so that it provides communication with man at the highest possible human ievel, respecting his personality, dignity and right to use his own judgment. However, it is also clear that better communication methods wou!d not be successful without suitable programme material, which means harmonising this material with our Maraist science and ideology... Mass medium communication, in my opinion, means communicating with the masses and there сап be no real commumcation here but simply the transfer of information, wise statements anđ accepted trutbs. From its beginning radio was adapted to the needs of those in power and developed all over the world in the service of capital exploitation, as an extended arm of the state, of authoritarian power, where the listener/viewer was but a mere particle of the !oyal masses. That is how radio came into being, grew and developed, but as such it also developed in us the increasing desire to try and change it (and it did change through the efforts of the best radio workers and through social stimuli) so that it would become more suited to changing social needs. The development of the self-management system reflected both the need and the demand for change in radio too in order for it to fit better into the framework of social changes and to answer the needs of the free character of the self-manager. (Careful analysis would certainly show how radio has developed and to what degree it has kept pace with social development, sometimes a little in front, sometimes dropping a bit behind.) At this round table discussion we have raised a great many questions. Some are already familliar to us from meetings of radio and television workers, yet some аге probably new. It is interesting to see how the theoreticians defme the masses at which the mass media are directed. But I feel that we absolutely cannot go along with their attitude to their audience! It would seem that by importing radio and TV technology we have also imported certain ideas about the media and ways of approaching the man by his set (be it radio or television) and have tended to treat him in an extremely authoritarian way. For at one time this eminently suited the

41