Meet the Press [1951]

This chapter provides a verbatim record of Bertrand Russell’s occasionally heated exchanges with the panel of Meet the Press, NBC television’s weekly current affairs programme. Russell faced a barrage of questions about East-West divisions, his pacifism and socialism, diplomatic recognition of Communist China, and British politics and social conditions. Meet the Press had been launched on radio by the Mutual Broadcasting System as a vehicle to promote the American Mercury, the famous literary review established by H. L. Mencken but owned and edited at the time by Spivak. Yet the programme soon commanded recognition and respect in its own right, especially after NBC started production of a separate television edition in 1947. The show’s panel format was very quickly embraced by the news departments of NBC’s rival networks. Russell was honoured by the latter invitation but replied that he had “grown too old for such jaunts”, saying that it was “very unlikely to ever again come to America”.