With no prior experience of journalism, Lesser began producing and broadcasting propaganda radio programmes for the Republican cause. He was responsible for English language broadcasts at a Barcelona headquarters established to broadcast on shortwave in German, Italian, Portuguese and English. During this time the "Daily Worker" published an interview with Independent Labour Party volunteer Frank Frankford, conducted by Lesser, which had been edited to suggest that Frankford was accusing the Trotskyist POUM of fraternisation with fascists; and which claimed the POUM battalion commander was a fascist agent and that arms used in the May Days had been supplied by the Nationalists. Frankford later told Bernard Crick that Lesser had embellished his words but that "there are things still to be explained" and that fraternisation did occur. Crick speculated that the claims attributed to Frankford, in particular the admission that he had "committed the crime of taking part in the armed rising of Fascists against the anti-Fascist Government", may have been the inspiration for the "bizarre and pathetic" confessions made by characters in George Orwell's "Animal Farm".