Radio jamming eases

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 22

Radio jamming eases

From the “Economist,” London

Polish fans of Western radio broadcasts have been enjoying trouble-free listening since the beginning of the year. Ever since martial law was imposed in Poland in 1981, powerful transmitters have been beaming out electronic interference to the Polish services of the 8.8. C., of the Voice of America and of (also American-owned) Radio Free Europe. The jamming was paid for by Poland but carried out from Soviet territory because radio waves have to be bounced off the ionosphere. The transmitters have suddenly been switched off. Why? The jamming had become embarrassing at a time when both

Poland and Russia are trying to get along better with the West. It - was also expensive: it costs at least as much to jam other people’s broadcasts as to transmit your own. Besides, with some 600 underground publications appearing regularly in Poland, the attempt to erect an information shield around the country looked absurd. The decision to stop jamming is part of a. more enlightened information policy associated with Mr Mieczyslaw Rakowski, an old chum of General Jaruzelski and himself an excellent former newspaper editor, who was recently elevated to the Polish Politburo. Eastern Europe is not yet a

jam-free zone. The Czech and Slovak broadcasts of the Deutsche Welle from Cologne are jammed. Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria are still interfering with Radio Free Europe, which beams reports about East European politics from its base in Munich.

And although glasnost has brought an end to the jamming of the 8.8.C.’s Russian service and the Voice of America in Russian, the Soviet authorities are still trying to blur out Radio Liberty, another Americanowned station in Munich, which broadcasts in Russian and other languages of the Soviet Union.

Copyright — The Economist