TheEconomistApril9th 2022 Culture 77Children’snewsBulletsand
bulletins
H
owmuchofthebattlefieldshouldbe
broadcastintothelivingroom?News
editorseverywherefacea balancingactin
determiningwhattoincludeintheirwar
reporting.Thedilemmaisespeciallyacute
for those composing reports for televi-
sion’s most impressionable yet most
curiousaudience:children.
“Newsround”,thebbc’s programmefor
six-to12-year-olds,hasmoreexperience
thanmost.OnApril4thit completedhalfa
centuryofdailybulletins,whichin 1986 in-
cluded thefirst reportin Britainofthe
Challengerspacedisaster.Itseight-minute
shows have provided a template for public-
service broadcasters elsewhere in Europe,
such as “Ultra Nyt” on Denmark’s dr.
War footage is carefully edited.
“Newsround” shows the aftermath of
attacks but not the moment of impact;
wide shots of destruction are used instead
of harrowing close-ups. People are not por-
trayed in severe distress. Reports often
focus on children, as in recent packages
showing Ukrainian refugees starting
school in Poland, or celebrating Purim in
Israel. Reporting aims to provide “honest
reassurance”, says the programme’s editor,
Lewis James. A recent q&awith the bbc’s
man in Kyiv emphasised that no British
troops had been deployed.
Everything must be explained: viewers
may not know who Vladimir Putin is or
even, at the younger end of the age range,Journalistsgrapplewithhowtocover
warforyoungstersPioneeringradioTapestries of
sound
I
nhisearly30sandattheheightofhis
powers, Glenn Gould announced in 1964
that he was retiring from public perfor-
mance. Classical-music enthusiasts were
stunned. Less than a decade before, the
maverick pianist had delighted fans with
his authoritative recording of J.S. Bach’s
“Goldberg Variations”. Now, he declared,
“the concert is dead”. In 1965 he accepted a
job with the Canadian Broadcasting Corpo-
ration (cbc) and rode the Muskeg Express
as far as it would go, from Winnipeg to
Churchill, Manitoba.
On the train, Gould struck up a conver-
sation with Wally Maclean, a retired sur-
veyor who combined a homespun folksi-
ness with the soul of a philosopher. Over
breakfast Maclean taught Gould how to
read the signs of the icy land, to find “in the
most minute measurement a suggestion of
the infinite”. The cordial chat turned into a
days-long, probing conversation.
Gould adapted this material into “The
Idea of North”, a radio documentary ex-
ploring Canada’s ambivalent relationship
with its northern frontier, which the cbc
aired in 1967. It was the first of three experi-
mental audio documentaries he produced
about choosing to live apart: “The Late-comers”,aboutNewfoundland,wasbroad-
castin 1969 and“TheQuietintheLand”,
whichchroniclesa Mennonitecommuni-
ty,wasreleasedin1977.Gouldwouldlater
call the shows his “Solitude Trilogy”.
The theme of isolation resonates again
in the wake of the pandemic. What is more
surprising is how fresh and experimental
the programmes themselves sound, even
in the high-tech, peak-podcast era. (They
are available to stream via Spotify, Amazon
and the cbc’s own website.) Take “The Idea
of North”, in which Gould arranged the
voices of four main characters into a single
fugue. A technician recalled being handed
a diagram by Gould, outlining which clips
should be heard when; he was “orchestrat-
ing the voices” on the page.
Gould thought that, in broadcasting,
fidelity to a single human voice was “non-
sense”, maintaining that “the average per-
son can take in and respond to far more
information than we allot him on most
occasions.” He championed a layered
form—thinking of it in musical terms, as
“contrapuntal”—and experimented with it
further in “The Latecomers” and “The Qui-
et in the Land”. By the late 1960s the cbc
had switched from monaural to stereo
sound, and editors were able to weave voic-
es into a delicate sonic tapestry.
The formal daring did not just make use
of technical advances: it created a sublime
listening experience. At the end of “The
Idea of North”, Gould sets Maclean’s mus-
ings to the final movement of the Fifth
Symphony by Jean Sibelius, a Finnish com-
poser who also withdrew from public life.
Reflecting on “The Moral Equivalent of
War”, an essay by William James, Maclean
suggests that, in its arduous extremity, go-
ing north is, for Canadians, the modern
equivalent of conflict.
The trilogy is a masterwork of sonic in-
novation. It redefined the radio documen-
tary and influenced generationsofaudio
storytellers. Listen to it on atrain—or in
any moment of blissful solitude. nDecades after they were made, Glenn
Gould’s documentaries still mesmerisehome
entertainment