Radio Wars
Truth, Propaganda and the Struggle for Radio Australia

A 1995 history of the struggle for editorial control of Australia's overseas broadcasting service.

Errol Hodge (Author)

9780521479271, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 19 June 1994

352 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

Radio Australia - the multilingual overseas radio service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - is little known in Australia, but is heard by millions of listeners in the Asia-Pacific region and others throughout the world. Radio Wars, first published in 1995, was the first book to tell the story of this important but unexplored aspect of Australia's international presence. Launched in 1939 as a propaganda tool, the service was for three decades caught uncomfortably between those who would use it as an instrument of foreign policy and those who would have it an icon of journalistic integrity. But the author argues that by the time of the Dili massacre, propaganda had given way to forthright and factual reporting. Spiced with anecdotal detail, Radio Wars traces a struggle that ranges from personal pettiness to events with significant political ramifications.

1. Radio Australia at war, 1939–49
2. A Cold War weapon, 1950–3
3. Moses: 'a gutless wonder', 1953–64
4. Hasluck's push for power, 1965–72
5. News commentaries: a Cold War battleground, 1950–72
6. Vietnam: 'one of the chief agencies for radio propaganda', 1956–73
7. The coming of detente, 1970–91
8. Indonesian honeymoon, 1945–74
9. Collision with Indonesia, 1975–88
10. Indonesian massacre, 1991–3
11. Voice of Australia
12. A future for Radio Australia?
13. The new wave: international television, 1985–94.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP]