WGBH Journal; Media Ethics: Access And Bias

I'd like to welcome you all to our panel on access to the media and class biases. My name is Joan ?Berman?. I'm a professor here at Boston University. We do have some very distinguished gentlemen with us this morning and I'm going to first introduce you to John Wickline, who, uh, has been a reporter, an editor, has been with both commercial and public television, is an expert on cable TV, and is now Dean of the school of Public Communication at Boston University. John. The only thing I regret is that we don't have a public aff- public address system, we're being recorded but I'll try to speak up and I hope the rest of us will. Those of us who are concerned with access chiefly are concerned with making it possible for community groups, minority groups, and, and women to be able to reach the mass public with their ideas and their proposals for the improvement of society. The question is: who controls the access to the mass media? And the answer comes down to publishers of newspapers

and magazines and the owners and managers of television and radio stations and cable systems. Access to newspapers becomes a very touchy First Amendment problem. Indeed, in the Miami Herald vs. Tornillo case, the Supreme Court ruled that a, a newspaper could not be forced to give a politician equal time to answer an editorial attacking him. The reverse, of course, is true in broadcasting. The Communication Act of 1934 specifically requires that a station give equal time to a candidate that it has opposed or time for a reply to an editorial that persons or groups opposing for persons or groups opposing the station stand. But we have one law of access for newspapers, which is no law, and another for broadcasting stations, which comes out of the fact that- that, uh, airwaves, in theory, are owned by the public and the channels or

station frequencies are assigned to stations as public trustees. Paradoxically, it's been the newspapers that have traditionally given space to opposing views and open their columns to opposing views through letters to the editor and, more recently, to op ed pages. I don't think that's enough, but it is it's better than the closed-mindedness most station managers show when it comes to opening up what they consider to be their air to community groups who want to present their points of view and, and present them without interference from the station management as you would in, as you would be able to present it without interference in- in say a letter to the editor. Although ultimately we we would like to convince station owners and network managers to provide access to minorities and women because it is right, it's more likely that we're going to have to rely on the law and on FCC rulings to open up the air to its rightful owners, the people. As I mentioned, at the luncheon yesterday, the way

Everett Parker and the United Church of Christ have used the Fairness Doctrine and other statutes to give access to minorities and women has been ingenious. One of the methods has been to support local community groups in monitoring the broadcasting of a station that is closed to minorities and then file a petition to deny the station's license. That gets their attention. And it was this method that, uh, that was used in overturning the license of, uh, the station WT- LBT TV, in Jackson, Mississippi, which had consciously and, and consistently discriminated against black concerns and against hiring blacks, uh, on its, uh, in its programming. But there are other tactics, short of license ?challenge? have worked as well. And one of the things that Parker's group has done is to have the community itself monitor the station's programming and then go to the station, uh, with the obvious threat of a possible license

challenge later, and point out to them that they haven't been dealing with community issues or they haven't been dealing with one segment of the community and then negotiating with that station to see to it that those concerns are met. And that has succeeded in a number of cases around the country, uh, where stations have signed voluntary agreements to pay more attention to, uh, their own community problems and, uh, and the problems of various segments of that community. I have differences with Everett Parker on the Fairness Doctrine, however, and we've debated it before. I think he presents the best case I've ever heard for it, as you heard yesterday at lunch. But I think that some other rules or legislation could be adopted to ap- replace it. Yeah I will, I'm sorry we don't have a P.A. system. broadcast [unintelligible] Oh I see.

OK. [unintelligible, sound of sirens] Uh, perhaps the in the back would like to move up, ?because? there are many seats upfront, in the front couple of rows Would you try that and, um, pardon? Well thank you for wanting to hear. So, um, glad to have you up front.

As I said, I have differences with Everrett Parker on, uh- on the fairness doctrine, however, and I think that some of the rules or some of the legislation might be adopted to, uh- to replace it. And I hope in time that it will. First of all, the problem I have with the Fairness doctrine is that it's seldom- the FCC rarely enforces the part of the rule that says a station must engage in programming concerning controversies confronting the community. There's only been one recent case in West Virginia and a case involving strip-mining where a station was required to take up that controversy in the community. There've been- the FCC has been far more prone to enforce the requirement that stations or networks provide so-called balance in programming on controversial matters and that gives me a very serious problem because I don't think that any government agency should be able to dictate content of programming on a program-by-program basis. I think that's a dangerous power to give any any government. Second of all, the threat

that, uh, the FCC has in its fairness doctors gives the stations a fine excuse to tell reporters and producers that, "no we shouldn't get into this problem because what will happen is that we'll ha- we'll run into a Fairness Doctrine problem. We'll have to put opp- opposing people on the air, all that kind of thing and we just don't want that kind of hassle." I've been told that personally in- when, uh, I've proposed controversial subject to produce on air. And so then you have to fight to get them on air because they don't want to raise the prospect of a Fairness Doctrine challenge. And in that way it is suppression of uh, uh issues. So in the Fairness Doctrine I think you have a Catch-22 issue when it comes to try to require controversial, uh- controversy and- and diversity in programming. I think you'd be far better to require stations to provide daily, even in prime time if you could accept that heresy, open time for community groups to present information that they believe is in the public interest. That way you eliminate

government control of program content and you provide time on air for material that's not specifically shaped to meet the station's primary concern of making a buck. Radio station WRVR in New York. The station I managed before I came to Boston University, uh, we tried some experiments in access that I thought were pretty interesting. First of all, all our news and public affairs programs were open to call ins from the public, so that on the- the morning one-and-a-half-hour news and public affairs program and on the evening hour and a half news and public affairs program on controversial issues that a reporter would present, a, a listener could call in and challenge that reporter on air or give an opposing viewpoint right at the time that, uh- that the issue was taken up or the story was presented and the reporter or producer could be challenged on, uh, what he had provided. And I think we have a P.A. Thank you very much.

We also, uh, hired minorities in a- in excess of their percentage in the listening area and, and, and, uh, to a large percentage in excess: about one- third for the, uh- for the station. We hired, uh, women to the extent that they made up one-half of the producers, managers, and reporters and on air personnel on the station. And that helped shape content both- both those- those, uh, measures because we did have people who understood the concerns of minorities in the community and who understood the concerns of women who normally don't get into the producing role in, in broadcasting. And it, it helped us also with a rapport with the community that we wouldn't have had otherwise, because, uh, these people, as reporters and producers, could go into the community and get community groups to come out and appear on these news and public affairs mix programs in the morning and evening so that they could talk directly to their publics and also be questioned by the public because they were also going to challenge from, uh- from call ins. In the

great day in the sky, when we have a tremendous diversity through, uh, 100 cable television channels, through many more radio stations, through drop-in frequencies in the VHF band, then we may be able to say that we have enough outlets to the public for women, minorities, community groups in general to reach the public with their messages and- and become effective in the techniques of produc- production so that they can reach the public. But I think that time is quite a way off and such groups are going to have to keep practicing, uh, the- the art of persuasion, at least, so they can hit away it at the curveballs that they're going to be thrown by station managers and owners who want to keep the championship in the field of profits. Thank you. Thank you, John. Glad we have our P.A. back. Next we will hear from Next we will hear from Tom Winship, who I think needs no more introduction than the fact that

?-ter? of The Boston Globe. She's [unintelligible] going to have equipment up here [unintelligible] Do I need both of these? I think that one's for the recording, that's so we can hear you. I sort of feel as if as a newspaperman I'm in the wrong pew this morning. I, uh. mean for- for print journalists, this currently fashionable idea of unlimited access, uh, class biases is rather ridiculous. I really can't believe that anyone who has spent five minutes thinking about it, uh, could think otherwise. Uh, when you're talking about print journalism, I think you're missing the mark of- of, uh, newspapering in the real world when you talk about this unlimited access, uh, to the media. Uh, I think it probably

does make some sense to radio and TV but that's a couple of areas that I'm not an expert in, and I'm not about to become one. Uh, in the first place, um, we always as print journalists, I'm glad I've got some- I don't know they don't have some support from more or not but, uh, I have a ?coen?, but I get a little wary of - of always- ah, being accused by radio and TV people that, uh, uh, that we have a free ride. That they have to operate on FCC regulations, uh, which is- I think we ought to talk about that or a minute just to lay the groundwork. Uh, there's a basic reason why radio and TV must be considered, uh, um, distinct from print journalism. Uh, newspapers are not under the FCC, they're under the First Amendment. And, uh, and why aren't they? Why aren't we under government regulation? Uh,

Well the answer is that TV and radio ?are?, uh, currently paying the price for, uh, um, for regulation,um, requiring media access etc. because they happen to enjoy the luxury of having their competition limited by law, by the government. It's the FCC that limits the number of radio and TV stations in any given area. And I as a journalist having to put my head against Bob Moore out in Framingham. Uh, uh, I'd give anything to have my market place, uh, uh, limited by the government. The competition is very fierce for- for- particularly for metropolitan newspapers. Uh, we not only have to fight it out for the for the news and advertising dollars within the city but we, more importantly, we're

fighting it out with the, uh, growing su- suburban papers, the growing regional pap- magazines and papers. So I would like to kind of lay to rest this theory that the poor old TV and radio stations are being asked to abide by certain rules, such as the ones under discussion today, uh, uh, while we are not. Uh, That license that you get from the FCC is- is some form of a guaranteed profit. And you have to- I think those two, uh, communication systems do have to pay the price. Uh, now in this matter of- of- of access to the press, most successf- most successful newspapers fulfill ?this? pretty- pretty well I think, with notable exceptions by all of us. Uh,

we have to. Uh, there's nothing shy about our customers. Uh, if they feel like being shut out they let us know and write us forms, marches etc. Uh, when it comes to p- specifics I'm just going to talk very briefly about the paper I know, the Globe. Here's what we do on this access model, and I'm not- I'm not standing here smugly and saying it's enough, it's terrific, because it isn't. Um, but we were on an average of a half a page nearly a half a page of Letters to the Editor every day. This is a little- ?This is? I think a little more than the norm in most papers. Uh, that's sort of the prime time Forum idea that the John Wickline was talking about, that- that he suggested maybe, uh, radio and TV could do where- where people are

are free to call in and- and, um- and say their piece. We do that every day. In addition we've just begun running a full column, um, called "On The Other Hand," which is a vehicle, we hope, for the particularly well-written, particularly long-reasoned letter that deserves more than the usual 300 words that we try to limit people to. Um, in addition to that, the letters to prominently- we run about two full pages every week of letters to- t- th- three-quarters of a page, actually of Letters to the Editor. And we- we do those, through, um, a, um, I don't think- it doesn't bother me, but we do it through kind of a mutual arrangement with

two oil companies. They, um, they are placing a schedule all over the country. They have for some time. They- they like prime space, they oft-, they usually get it, the New York Times gives it to 'em on the Op-Ed page quite often. But we, uh, give 'em- we say ok, you can have a page of- we'dlike a page of more space for letters we'll give you a page in front of the editorial page. You run your quarter page and we'll put letters in the rest- on the rest of. It seems to me it says that's one of those rare cases where the- the, uh,- the editorial people and the advertising people both win. Um, we solicit, oh, on an average of six um, um, opposite editorial page pieces, uh, that, um- and a lot of them come in, and wait, but we have to ?chase-? we have to invite him, also. if you have particular if you are interested in a special subject

that's under debate you don't happen to have a good offering. Carry our regular ombudsman column [unintelligible] column, we do the thing that everyone else does, we print, uh, corrections, I'm afraid, almost daily, uh, I get wary with them. We run "Ask The Globe," we ask individual groups to come and have lunch with us, we go out in the community have lunch with them. Sometimes they come uninvited, fine we- we like that. Sometimes people come chained themselves to the door. We don't like that. [laughter] Uh, but, uh, there's a hell of a lot of communication with the public. I wish there more, but there's quite a bit and there's quite a bit of access, a little- little thing the kind of important, our publishers have an awful, deeply felt tradition that, uh, every department should be acc- accessible to the public, um, including themselves. Our publisher, Dave

Taylor, answers the phone himself; he keeps funny hours and, uh, he just picks up the phone without being screened through secretaries and he enjoys that. What if we decided to print, uh, everything that is sent in to us or submitted to every demand, uh, for space in the paper. It's a little bit, uh, a little bit unrealistic. It would render the paper ineffective. It would deny any editors judgement. Not that our judgment is that- that- that infallible, but really much more important it would turn up, uh, newspapers, the print media, into such, um, uh, a dull Journal that, uh, that nobody would read a Damn sheet. Um, This [unintelligible] ?That was a vice? That was a very fashionable and very common thing during those-

during the 60s and early 70s, which I missed terribly, to, um, have, uh, groups representing a special interest, uh, make, uh, is usually their top demand that they have a weekly column on whatever rights they happen to be representing. That's, that's a hard one to fight off. But again, you- it's- you get yourself into a situation where if you say yes to this group you're gone. Your papers filled up and you, um, uh, you just news print is expensive. You just can't print the tonnage that would require if you took every handout that came along or took every off a column that came along. If we charged $2- $2 or $5 a

copy, um, or probably increased our papers much more than they are now what happens to readers? They won't buy the paper or the only ones that will buy it will be an elitist group. The, uh, the less fortunate won't be able to pay the price and you're out of business. As far as I'm concerned, under the free access notion, in a formal, too often exaggerated way, we wouldn't be printing the news we'd be little more than Xerox machines. Who controls access to the media? Johnson suggested that the editors control it and the publishers. Well, that's- that's a little oversimplified, I think. I sound like an economic royalist, but really the marketplace does control access and, um, I think it'll continue to do so.

So far as, um, an example of this access problem, the most difficult and trying, wrenching one I've had lately was the, uh, with a famous cougar and ad- ads that have been placed in papers all over the country including ours. And we were under tremendous pressure not to print them. The house was divided on the issue. Um, We talked and talked and thought and thought and we finally decided to continue the schedule. Obviously the issue came to a legitimate head when, uh, the voice of the government started closing down newspapers a couple of weeks ago and, um, tossing people in jail.

And, um, we've- we nevertheless decided, uh, we'd- we- that access to the press was just as important in the advertising columns as in the news columns, that to do other- to get in the censorship business, which is sort of a one of those to buying insurance once you get on it where do you stop? -- would be doing exactly what we're condemning South Africa for doing: censorship. When I went ahead with it on the same day we wrote a, um, I felt a rather strong editorial saying we don't approve of this. We hate the idea of running this ad, we don't approve of- We obviously have no sympathy for the- um, the South African government et cetera, et cetera.

And, um, uh, it somehow or other, I think it worked pretty well, because, uh, the ad agency started getting pressure, that was- that was, uh, placing these these ads out of New York and they announced as probably lot of you people read, t- in yesterday morning's paper, that they were canceling Boston and New York because of the ?wife? what'd they say? Not- well, because of the political climate in Boston. And, uh, seems to- seems to me, uh, well I personally, I know it's terribly debatable, I personally feel very good about- feel quite comfortable with opposition that way. And I feel more comfortable that the [inaudible] has been canceled. That's enough, now Thank you. I'd like to focus for a few minutes on the question of access in terms of

who controls the decision-making process? Ah, what is news, and who decides what is newsworthy? If you remember last night, Ron McLeish said to cover something is a moral choice and not to cover something is a moral choice. I'd like to read you a little quotation. As long as newspapers and magazines are controlled by men, every woman upon them must write articles which are reflections of men's ideas. As long as that continues women's ideas and deepest convictions will never get before the public. That was not written by Gloria Steinem. That was not written by Bella Abzug ?Abzug.? that was written by Susan B Anthony in 1900. And as you probably know the situation hasn't changed very much for women, in journalism, since 1900. If you've ever watched a

new show on television this season, the Lou Grant Show, this, uh, tells a lot I think about the newspaper business in many ways. There are stories which may or may not be mythical, but there's one thing that's very real on the Lou Grant Show on Tuesday nights at 10 o'clock when the men at this mythical Los Angeles paper get together to decide what is going to be in the next day's paper. And they meet to decide what's going to be on page one what goes, what doesn't go. You look around the const- consultation table and there are only men around the room. And it seems to a great many people that the business of the press, controlled for the most part by white middle class men, does make a difference in what we read, ah, that if perhaps there was some, uh, influence in a decision making way by women and by minorities than perhaps the

media would not be accused of being the quote establishment media. Ah, now, this is an area strangely enough where we are not dealing in feelings and attitudes and beliefs as- as we are in many of the other panels that we've heard in- in the last day. Uh, we don't have to think or wonder about whether women and minorities are poorly represented. It's not something that we- that, uh- that we can speculate on. There are solid figures to back up the belief. Uh, there is a fascinating new book out called "The News People. And this book was written after interviews with something like thirteen hundred journalists all over the country and one of the things that they found, based on the last census figures and U.S. Department of Labor figures, is that while the labor force in general, the total full-time labor force in this country, is approximately 2 to 1 men to women in journalism the ratio is 4 to 1, men to women.

Ah, and I wouldn't even go into, because I think you can- you probably know that, along with the the personnel differential, there is, at every age level, quite a bit of salary differential too. Women traditionally have not been denied entry level jobs so that everybody now, of course, is having a hard time getting into the newspaper business. But at the entry level nobody is saying that ah, that the young girl, fresh out of college, with brand new ideas is having a rough time. She's not having any more of a rough time than the young man is. This is not where the problem lies, the problem does not lie in entry level. The problem lies when women want to climb into the ranks of the decision makers, when they want to be given a vo- voice in those editorial meetings as to what is going to be covered and what is not going to be covered. If you look around an organization like the APME, the Associated Press Managing Editors, for example, which just met last

week in New Orleans, and I don't know what this year's figures are but I know from consulting last year's membership book out of over 500 members of the APME there were 8 women. If you go back and look through all the organizations to which both male and female journalists belong you see a great preponderance of men. Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, up until a couple of years ago did not recognize that women too were professional journalists and, uh, ha- was a society of only men and debated this for many years and convention until finally, I think, that 6 or 7 years ago they decided to admit women. Uh, the National Press Club, up until a few years ago, did not admit women. And there are very funny stories in connection with this. In fact, I will now steal an anecdote from my friend Carol Rivers, who likes to tell the story of when she was covering Washington, uh, and was assigned to cover a speech by Carl Rowan

at the National Press Club. She was not allowed to sit with the members of the National Press Club on the floor of the club; she, with the other women, was relegated to the balcony of the National Press Club. And so there she was up there taking notes and Carl Rowan was talking about his background in the South and how he and other blacks had to sit in the balcony of movie theaters. And as he was saying this, all the reporters' eyes swept up to the balcony and there was Carol and the other women busily taking notes, relegated to the balcony of the National Press Club. That situation has changed women are now allowed to be members of the club. Up until about 4 years ago, I believe, the Gridiron Club, which is another highly prestigious Washington club, did not admit women newsmaker- news- journalists as- as members. They finally three years ago admitted their first woman Helen Thomas. Now I'm not mentioning these things because women particularly like to belong to organizations and go to meetings, there's more to it than that. What happens, as you all know, in

in ah, organizations of people who work together, is that a buddy system forms, a support system forms, so that you get a network which is very rightly called the Old Boy network where when somebody understands that an opening occurs in a newspaper he calls a friend, uh, the friend is another man and a man very likely gets the job. And so a whole support system and network forms. And this is a system that for the most part women have been shut out of. Now, uh, I think we should all be aware that the situation is changing. It's changing in two ways. First of all it's changing through self-help programs. Women have begun to form together to form their own kind of network, to run management programs where- so that if- if called they'll be ready, you know, sh- should the mantle fall on them. They've also taken the route of affirmative action lawsuits. A lawsuit- an affirmative action suit was

instituted several years ago at The New York Times, which has now become a class action suit. There have been other suits at Newsweek, at Time magazine, still in litigation at Reader's Digest. I think the last round up I saw from the, uh, the Guild said that there were at least 40 papers now involved in some kind of an affirmative action litigation. So I think it's- I think it's too bad, though, that this this route has had to be followed. But for many women it has seemed to be the only route that they could follow to get into positions in the nation's press where they too would be able to help call the shots on what was going to be called a- uh- and what was going to be covered and what was not going to be covered. I think the situation has got to change. If for no other reason than the fact that we have so many women now in journalism schools, we heard Dean Wickline say yesterday that, now for the first time, there are more- slightly more women than men as journalism students at

SPC. We have slightly more women than men in the graduate journalism program. Columbia University graduate journalism program this year, for the first time, has slightly more women than men. Ah, right now, 43 percent of the nation's journalism students are women. So it seems to me that the sheer force of all these women out there who are going to be looking for jobs is going to somehow make some changes and, uh, and cause some movement in the nation's predominantly white male conservative newsrooms. I'll stop here and I can go back to that later in discussion and I would like now to introduce you to Ned Shnurman ?Sherman? who has been with the National Education Television Network, has been a city editor for CBS TV News, in New York, and now is associate director of the National News Council.

Ned. Thank you, Joan. I'd like to start by noting for you that, in this panel on Access, it was- you probably thought it was spontaneous but it was well planned that we only gave you limited access at the beginning and only your protests brought full access by the placing of the public address mikes. So you had access to us but not quite, When we started this morning. As usual, the national news Council, at least I speak for myself here, but the News Council generally finds itself in contention with various elements of the media because we're not particularly loved as a watchdog and so, this morning, to fulfill a traditional role, I'll take issue with all 3 speakers who went before me before commenting briefly on my own about some of the problems I see with access to the media. John Wickline began by talking about the Communications Act of 1934 and I know

that John realizes too that the Communications Act of 1934 is such an archaic bit of business at this point, in 1977, that it should surely be, if not scrapped, completely revised. When my own students at NYU this summer tried to give me a definition of the Communications Act of 1934 I was totally unable to get a satisfactory answer from any of them and so I told him the real answer to that was that the Communications Act of 1934 was a very popular dance team and they later became known as Rogers and Astaire. The fact is that the Communications Act of 1934 has never been properly updated to allow television and radio to grow into this last quarter of the century, where we're now located. John also talked about mandated open time for stations to give to community

groups. I think that what WRVR did in New York was remarkable. It was an exceptional dialogue and a fascinating station and I'm sorry that its all-public-affairs format has faded from view, it was certainly a rarity. But as for mandating it, of course I have problems with that. I think that the minute you mandate it you begin to formalize what groups come to the station. And I think that the whole process in- then becomes self-defeating. What I want to see are more enlightened managers such as Mr. Wickline. Briefly on- on Tom Winship's comments, I would just simply agree totally and that would be my format here that, uh, the, the unrestricted access by groups is ridiculous. Those were his words and I agree with them heartily, I think that they lead us into a new thicket that's far worse than where we are today. But I do have some problems

with his analogies about television being limited by law and newspapers being limited by competition such as suburban newspapers. I wonder about newspapers that are owned by chains. I wonder about newspapers that are part of conglomerate groups. I wonder if those newspapers aren't just as much in a monopolistic situation as the television networks to which Mr. Winship was referring. There is a guaranteed profit. That's true in television network ownership but I'd like some of you to examine the profit and loss sheets of some of the great chain ownership newspapers and in this country today at the same time I think that the Globe gives us an outstanding example of a newspaper that grants, in modern terms, as much access as I believe you can anticipate from a daily publication. And I would stress that in some of the comments that I want to make a little bit later. As

for Joan Bearman's comments I think that, although she says the situation is changing, I sense in her voice the frustration of a situation which 'was' rather than 'is'. I think the situation is changing, and I think the important thing to recognize in the changing situation is that women who have come at the entry level have tended, in recent years, to stay longer in the business; and in the process of staying have put themselves in a position to logically be selected for managerial roles. And I think that they're... the failures in numbers won't be corrected without constant abrasive action, I would agree. But I think that the process has begun and moved much further ahead than I think was alluded to here. It is true that, and interestingly, that only one major newspaper in the United States has had a woman as a managing editor

and she didn't remain as a managing editor for more than about a year and a half. But I would hope with all of the activity, on all fronts, and the fact that the sheer numbers are there, that the situation- that there will be some natural change in addition to what you've alluded to: class action lawsuits and the like. Now, in general, I guess that it's obvious from this panel that access is going to be one of the major continuing concerns in the field of communications. And there are several factors that point in that direction and in both ways, the growing concentration of ownership in the area of communications is a sure reason why the access problem is going to continue. The increased reliance on network electronic presentations and there you certainly have a concentration of ownership and the failure of either print or electronic media to provide really satisfactory mechanisms to make access possible although of course in individual cases they do.

Traditional access and print journalism through the use of readers advocates, ombudsmen, letters to the editors, hasn't increased that significant- that significantly in recent years where, I just alluded to the Globe and, uh, but I would like to say, in general, that the number of ombudsman on major newspapers or readers advocates has not increased sharply in the last 10 years, and in fact there really aren't more than a dozen such figures of any prestige anywhere in the United States today. Thank you, Tom. And additionally, speaking I guess a bit chauvinistically, there are only two news Council- news councils of any consequence in the United States our own, The National News Council, and the Minnesota Press Council and there's no sign that news councils are proliferating as an access force, and that may be good. On the other hand, access by special interest groups is just rife everywhere. And the special interest groups that worry me most are the special

interest groups that carry big money with them. I suppose many of you are familiar with the concepts of Mobile Oil Company. Mobil Oil Company would like to do one of three things. It would like to have a news and editorial position that they can present on the air and pay for, they'd they like and get highly well-placed ads on significant news pages and newspapers, which I find incredibly distracting. Their position on the Op-Ed page of The Times is a constant distraction to me. And if they don't- if they're not satisfied with either of those they'd like to go out and buy their own newspaper which they certainly have a right to do and in this case they had been exploring, in New York, the possibility of buying the defunct Long Island Press, the former Newhouse paper. I find that a disturbing access trend, that if you've got the bucks you're can have the access. On the television side, there is virtually no provision for the viewer or listener to have

access other than replies to editorials ,occasional letters that are read on programs like "60 Minutes," and of course, threatening letters to station managers. This is led to the strengthening of the citizen groups as we've talked about here, and many of whom are represented I'm sure in the audience, in an effort to concentrate their efforts through organized pressure which carries with it, unfortunately, the threat of some form of Federal Communications Commission action. There is an alt- easy alternative to some of this, not all of it, and the easy alternative, in electronic journalism, is for it to grow up. For it not to worry that every time it turns around the FCC is going to jump on it. And I was disturbed when Tom Winship said we have the First Amendment, uh, and they operate under government regulation. I find that disturbing in that I hope electronic journalism operates under the First Amendment and that it can operate more freely under the First Amendment in the future rather than less freely. The debate on the Fairness Doctrine is

another panel, another luncheon, another time. But the problem for the electronic field is that they don't provide the access. They are afraid to have an ombudsman. Unfortunately, the Ombudsman proposal that was carried before networks in the last few years was carried before it by a right wing conservative ?get? the network's group called Accuracy and Media in Washington. They made the proposal that networks be forced to have an ombudsman. So the auspices were certainly as about as poor as they could be. Nevertheless, the proposal has merit it's something I leave with you as an idea in this panel. On, ah, as I say, the one hand, is obviously concerning willingness to grant access. On the other a rush to gain access while satisfying special interests. And I think in the long run that can create even greater havoc than anything resembling the broad public interest. What is clearly needed is a re-studying of tactics on both sides. I went to

a panel in Washington where citizen and access groups went before the FCC to present their views one day. They were briefed in the morning, by Les Brown, who I believe is gonna be with you today, and there must have been 95 groups that- that were heard before the FCC that day. I only ask you what could you imagine for your airwaves if all 95 groups had their way in what programming ought to be for the future. Each of them. In his- it's own way was a meritorious group it had its strong backing by areas of the community, but areas of the community only, and what I'm suggesting is that before some form of limited act, I think there has to be a broadening on both sides. I think that newspapers came out of the Tornillo case feeling that they had won a significant victory, which they surely had and that access was not mandated, but the courts left open, clearly, the prospect that some form of limited

access might be mandated in the future. I'd hate to see it happen, but there is certainly been scholarly things written on the subject of the prospects for limited access being mandated in the print field. So, how do you do this? How do you make this accommodation on both sides? Tom Winship alluded to one, that's a constant meeting of the minds between citizen groups and and the proprietors of ah, news organizations, media organizations. I think they have to be small, they have to be informal, they have to be as unstressful as possible. The people who chain themselves to the front door are not going to have a rational discussion with the publishers and editors of a newspaper. I think out of that you might get community task forces. I'm not suggesting that people in a community become editors of newspapers, I'm only suggesting that editors of newspapers might learn more of what's going on in their community if they have an unhurried and respectful dialogue, and a lot of editors do and I'm not suggesting that they don't occur

in some communities; I don't think they occur in enough communities. The most radical proposal I would suggest to you is in the electronic field and that would be a lifting, for a brief period of time, trial period, of that portion of the Fairness Doctrine which requires balance and programming and to see what the networks would do and what the individual stations would do under those circumstances. I think you'd need a voluntary body I'm not suggesting it be a news Council. It might be a new body to listen to complaints to see if there were serious problems with this. I think that portion of the- of the Fairness Doctrine which requires some presentation of materials can be retained without being stressful, as it was suggested yesterday, but that the balanced programming portion is the one that leads to the incredible endless timidity of electronic proprietors and it might be, on an experimental basis, a rather novel and interesting thing to see, if it

were just lifted entirely for say a two year or three year period to see whether we get any radical change in programming. That's it for now, thank you. [silence] I'm Dick Cunningham from the Tribune in Minneapolis. I'm the readers' representative, what is commonly called an ombudsman at this conference. And I am concerned by where we've gotten in this discussion. I don't think that unlimited access is the this discussion, I don't think that unlimited access is the issue Tom Winship talked about the economic pressures on

newspapers, uh, the cost of space. I work for an economically safe newspaper in a noncompetitive situation and we do not, despite all our efforts to do so, give equal or reasonable access to all segments of our society. Hiring women, hiring minority people does help in our daily news huddle of 12 people there are now two women and one black news editor. Uh, the highest ranking woman has the rank of assistant managing editor, the other woman is an assistant city editor with the responsibility for assigning reporters during the day. That's made a great deal of difference in those afternoon councils. We get a new support for complaints from women that I bring to the news huddle. We get the complaints defined in newspaper terms so that they're not so

threatening to the males in that those meeting. People help too, the fact that I'm there, the fact that there's a telephone number that people can call with those complaints does get their complaints into that news meeting. But I think there are other things we have to do. Tom talked about letters to the editor. He talked about On The Other Hand op ed had pieces that are solicited, that are thoughtful/ I think those are not written by or produced by the people that we really are not talking about in this meeting. The special interest groups, too, do get in, both the commercial special interest groups that can buy ads but the special interest groups like, for example, the gay community in Minneapolis, which is very well organized, does get into the newspaper with their concerns. What I think we want,

and I'd like to see some more attention to this panel addressed to, is access for ideas and concerns that do exist in the community but are not yet defined in terms that we white, middle class, male, newspaper people can understand. Now, I don't know how to do that. But I have, in addition all the other things that have been suggested, a pet idea of mine is that we perhaps do exactly, on a modified basis, what Tom Winship says we shouldn't do. And remember we're not talking about unlimited access. Give the community a portion of the newspapers, regularly, perhaps half a page in which they write for it, to which they telephone instant editorial comments. Uh, I think one of the things we'd find is that when we read those comments, we'd find that- that

those people were talking about things that we'd written news stories and good interpretive analyses about a year ago. And when those kinds of letters come into the editor now we discard them and say, "oh how we wrote about that." The point is that it didn't impact on the community or major sections of the community when we won our Pulitzer Prize Prize for writing about it. Now is the time that it's a concern in the community, let's get out some new reporting and interpreting on it now. Thank you very much. I really am intrigued by that last idea and- uh, of having, uh, instant editorials phone in. I think it has a great advantage in that it deals with the person who doesn't want to bother to write a letter, that has the advantage of avoiding the inevitable one week delay printing- printing a letter ?after? the editorial appeared. ?I guess? pretty good idea.

Uh, you are the fellow who runs a hot line, I s'pose. What is your feeling on, uh, on how much response there'd be from from our readers? You think that they would, uh, would take advantage of it? I think so. I get 17 contacts a day, on an average of a period of 2 years, and that is without any particular promotion of my accessibility. [sound of microphone moving] I think it's a great idea. Carol? Yeah I'd like to [unintelligible] 1 reality of life that I ran into when I was down in Washington working for a newspaper called the Washington Star a couple of summers ago. And And Washington's biggest, probably the most black city, or one of the most black cities and most Americans [unintelligible] was. And it's pretty clear [unintelligible] their- their [sound of clearing throat] ?climbs?

Yeah. Just added to the isolation of these groups. Now that the war on poverty is no longer a story, are we as the media not- not helping that isolation but adding to it by going with the market? Hm, Let's try Tom on that one. Gee, uh, uh, Carol, everything you

say is true. Uh- uh, we have a- who's gonna to speak for the- the uh- the inner, um, city people? Uh, I think there is a, um, uh- seems to be a growing movement of neighborhood papers. Uh, they're gonna have a- which I think helps. Uh, they're gonna have and- they're going to have problems for the same reason the big ?papers have 'em? on who's going to pay for- whose going to pay for- uh, for these neighborhood papers. Uh, [sound of snapping] we have a funny phenomenon which- which totally frustrates me, um, and it's quite- quite new. Um, most of our readers are in the suburbs, I guess about two-thirds of them are in the suburbs, and that's not atypical but, uh, two-thirds, or even more, of our reporters,

particularly the young reporters, live in the city and, um, they're not- the- they're not particularly interested in covering the suburbs, they- they're turn inward, they're interested in- in the city. And, um, maybe that- maybe that is an optimistic, um, ah, trend, uh, for the future. I, uh, I guess I hope they'll- they'll put the heat on us, the young- these new city dwellers who, uh, form the majority of- of our paper. I suspect it's true of most inner city- uh, most ?McParland? papers. That they of- uh, may be enough of a lobby within the plant to make us pay more attention to the, uh, to the, uh, the black communities in the, in the city. You know the- it's-it's very crass and it's very understand- We all know the

reasons why, uh, there's apparently stronger readership. Bills are collected better [laughs], easier amongst those- us dull white suburbanites than the people in the city. But, um,[sigh] I- [sound of tapping] I guess I don't have any other very good ideas. How 'bout you, John? [sound of tapping] Uh, I- I think that they ?inaudible? [laugh] I- I think that the problem of the, uh, of convincing the advertisers that, uh, that there is a market to be addressed in the city is probably the thing- the trouble that you have mostly in, uh, in metropolitan papers because the ads, it seems to me, are primarily, or the advertisers probably feel that they want to reach the 60-65, 70 percent in the suburbs rather than- than in the inner city areas. But I

wonder if they're- I don't know, but I wonder if there aren't, uh, uh, the advertisers that could be developed by very good community coverage within- with- within the city, uh, advertisers for such things as food -- everyone eats. Uh, uh, I just don't know. It's, it's a very difficult financial thing and, uh, uh, ah, I discussed, uh, ah, with- at meeting of the, uh- of the Globe editors one day and they- they do feel that they- they cover the city, uh, very well and- but they, they're concerned by the fact that- that the large percentage of, uh, readership is outside the city. And I just wonder if there is an advertising corps that could be developed in the city. Yeah. I'd just like to correct that ?inaudible? I'd want to absent myself from that- the editors at the Globe who think we're covering the city well. I don't think ?we're covering it a bit well.? I think we cover city politics pretty well- fairly well, but I don't-, think we do a terrible job.

The business of developing advertising in the inner city -- as you said, that's a damn tough one because the figures aren't there. I mean the stories aren't there, the concentration isn't there. It's, it's a tough one, Carol. ?I'll take one shot at it, Carol?. So we have it's simply that I think that newspapers after all are not operating in a vacuum either, and uh, societal changes are reflected in newspapers. There are some signs of revitalization of cities, downtown cities. New York, in spite of all the gloomy things that you may read about it, seems to be going through an undercurrent of renaissance in terms of building, in terms of redevelopment of neighborhoods, that eventually has to be reflected in it, in the news coverage in its newspapers. And there's a, I think aside from that, there might be a way to stimulate a bit of interest in city coverage, and that is that you don't just wait for

President Carter to take a walk through the South Bronx and find the devastation that everyone knows is there and avoids on their way home to the suburbs. I think it's a different type of reporting. [cough] What I meant by that is simply that when I was at CBS -- John was there one time with me -- reporting on- on 'cheap crime' was just reported on as 'cheap crime' per se, and it still is on the television local news. But I think it can be reported on in terms of neighborhood fears and concerns that would, surprisingly enough, gain reaction from people who live in these affluent white suburbs who will feel some empathy and understanding for the concerns of the people who are trying to- to get somewhere and get out of the trap of the kinds of communities they're in. I think that reporting has begun to move that way somewhat in newspapers, and Tom Winship alludes to his young staff wanting to do that. It's certainly true of young staffs on newspapers in other cities that I've been at.

The problem is the proprietors and their movement towards the other audience. How do you respond to the fact that The New York Times has three days of special sections now which cater to no one but the middle class and upper middle class. There is not a thing in there that deals with basic living and that is very disturbing. On the other hand, I've heard of projections on The Times' planning 'way in the future and they're thinking of going national and getting into- going much more national and getting into putting out papers such as they tried once in California, because they're worried about the shrinkage in the city. I tell you, just one other, I'm just grasping because it's a desperate subject. You know, there is a slight turnaround of population coming to the city. Everywhere. In all the cities that are somewhat alive.

That can't help but address itself to your concerns. The other thing that -- and I sure second the last motion there about New York -- there's a little undercurrent. I think one thing that- I think in a funny kind of a way, there are a great many cities that are, that have got a lot of life, kind of new life coming into them. I think everyone says [clanking noise in background] how terrible Baltimore is. God, Baltimore's got a, quite a got a very exciting waterfront right now, and there's- there's some kind of new life, there this is a new life in, ah- in, ah, Cincinnati and there's, ah -- I'm talking about the older cities. Chicago is just a big bouncing baby, it always has been and still is, I think. The figures, they're tiny but there, there is a turn-

around in Boston. I'm uh- as Bob Moore knows, [unintelligible] just the city not. But I just think there's maybe something moving, that the old- the old girl may not die. Ned, you mentioned that 'societal changes are reflected in newspapers.' I have a sense that newspapers have been rather slow to pick up on, on what is really happening in the way people are- are- are truly living today. With some exceptions of course -- and Ellen- Ellen Goodman immediately comes to mind. But it seems to me if you look at the proliferation of gay newspapers, feminist newspapers in the last few years, these papers have come into being because they are viewing the- the mass media as an establishment media -- a media that is not reflecting the issues that they are particularly concerned with. And if you want to say anything about that? I think it's interesting that after making the

point that there is an undercurrent of change in New York that, uh, while you see it reported in isolated stories, I'm sorry not to- to say that I don't see this, that the trend and the development and- and the underlying problem being reported on, as a story in itself. And I hope that that kind of -- that's what I meant by 'some of the reporting', that's one aspect of it, that good news feeds on good news and it might be interesting to see a bit of that. Yeah. I have a question for John and that's supposing that the television, radio stations were required to give open time, who's going to pay for the production? Who's going to pay for the production? The stations? I think they should. every [unintelligible] said yesterday, the uh, the profits profits of the networks and the stations went up 70 percent last year and, and uh, they have just been able to put aside their- their responsibility to the- to the public, it seems to me. Just- did you notice the other day that John O'Connor suggested

that public television, particularly public affairs and news in public television, should be supported by some kind of contribution from the networks who are making- who do really literally have a license to steal in this case. And yes, I- I do think that- that, it should come from them. As a kind of uh, print media person, my knowledge and awareness of the National News Council and it's bound to [unintelligible] how effective the News Council is, and I tends to have a low visibility. And I wonder how we could help make it more effective. I'd like to repeat that question, and I think, that question was directed toward Ned, to the effectiveness of the National News Council and how perhaps we could make it more effective. Well, my response is, and you certainly hit it just right, it's not very effective.

It's not even a pinprick on the surface of American journalism and maybe there are good reasons why it shouldn't be, if we're an intrusive force. Tom Winship certainly takes issue with the concept of the Council. Nevertheless, what the Council asks for in American journalism is an enlightened view of what it's trying to do. We get it from papers like the Globe in terms of cooperation. We don't get it in a lot of other places. I think our main problem has been our failure to seize major issues that are before American journalism and the public, and to run with them. We wait for complaints to come in over the transom. And those complaints that come in over the transom are often trivial and off the mark, just as questions of presidential news conferences are often trivial and off the mark. And so, ah, our arch, our visibility and our impact, good or bad, awaits I think a sharp revision, on the one

hand of the format we use for taking complaints, and on the other hand by at least the acceptance of the idea of the experiment by more of the American press so that we can find out whether the idea really works or is a bad idea. It might be that there are many potential drawbacks to a group of people sitting around second-guessing editors who have made decisions on the spot about news stories. I have my reservations about them. So does Bill Arthur who's our executive director and was the editor of Look, and so does Norman Isaacs who is our chairman and was head of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. On the other hand, we find something very interesting, all of us having been in news most for all of our careers, and that is that there is without question a very thick-skinned attitude by the proprietors, reporters, editors of newspapers about criticism from quote, the outside, unquote. They don't want it, they don't wanna see it, and they don't want to be part of it. May I make a comment on that, uh?

I was in as a consultant early on in the National News Council, and one of the problems that I saw and suggested to Ned and Bill Arthur and others involved, was that it was originally designed to be a, an area- a, uh, an organization that functions on two fronts. One, this area of taking complaints about newspaper stories, but there is a committee on freedom of the press and the First Amendment guarantees. I think that that committee has done far too little to show its support and go to bat for- on major issues of freedom of the press that would make the- the Council much more credible to uh, to newspapers and serve a very valuable function that I don't- I don't feel has been, uh, served. Uh, uh, Norman Isaacs was talking at, at the dinner the other night and I asked him about that specifically -- and Ned and I have talked about it too -- and he said that is the area that we're gonna to go into, that I said I felt the Council

had to initiate action in these Freedom of the Press areas that it hadn't done before, and that might just lead to, uh, uh, to newspapers feeling that they just weren't going to be picked upon, but they were also going to be supported strongly when they were right or where their- their rights were threatened. Bob, do you have a question? Yeah, I just want to get back to what Carol Rivers brought up and part of the answers that came here. Yes. I think she was talking [unintelligible] what could be, what could newspapers, inner city newspapers do about the coverage of the non-, more or less, non-reading public in the cities. And it occurred to me while Ned Shnurman was talking that, living in New York he could tell us how many neighborhood newspapers there are, which means that the New York newspapers aren't covering not

only the slight readers but even the more affluent readers. And the second thought is, [clears throat] ah, their talk of the undercurrent which is moving back or showing an interest in the cities, And I really don't have any figures around it or anything to support what I'm going to say next, but I would say this: that you might well consider that it may be a little bit of a dreamworld to believe that somehow the cities will return to what they were. Ah, Living in the suburbs as I have for the last 17 or 18 years, I find that in the area where I'm living, which is about 20 miles west of Boston, there's a good deal of interest and concern of people out there for their own, ah, atmosphere, their own growth as a growth policy statement of the state, brought out recently, and that like all of us -- and we're all running into this in newspapers -- there is a certain amount of the selfish outlook that all people have. They think of their own interests first and I don't think that you find

uh, that much interest in reviving the cities. You may even find that people in some favorable-to-themselves suburban areas feel that they are the new semi-cities. We don't have to be the city that Boston or New York is and was. But that the, even the legitimate theater would have its place in a place 20 miles out of the city. Doesn't have to have, you don't have to have 3, or is it 4, here in the city. Restaurants and so forth, the affluent theatergoers live out within that region. And there's things like this that I think- I just want to throw the thought out. I think you really should have to consider a little of that, because there is that kind of talk and where talk starts, there may be more to follow: namely that the suburbs are not that concerned firsthand with doing something nice for the cities. I think it's part of that, Bob. You know, you've just touched on it. Jim, I'll get to you in a sec, I just want to say in answer to what Bob said, that

it is interesting, I just realized while you were speaking how many neighborhood newspapers there now are in New York. I go out of my apartment in the Village in the morning and I've got 3 newspapers a week that are now Village giveaways. These are throw-away newspapers, they're there in my lobby for me to take: The Villager, Our Town and the third one, Wisdom's Child. And every week without fail there's at least one story or 2 stories in each of those papers of, of great interest to me, and I think they might be of great interest to the whole community doesn't surface. There was a piece in the Villager a few weeks ago about the, the, uh- the problem that the gay and straight community is having living with each other in the, in our neighborhood. That's a matter of more than a neighborhood concern that has not surfaced in The New York Times, The New York Post, or The Daily News. And that's just one example of an access story that appeared in a neighborhood paper. And I'd guess in

answer to your question that there must be 25 of these papers around the city at this point in the 5 boroughs. I was impressed with Mr. Winships candor about the way the [unintelligable] covers the city. I appreciate his honesty and I wish there were more editors of metropolitan papers around the country who would follow suite. I was inspired Yes, I wanted to [unintelligible] candor about what the Globe covers? to suggest to the editor of The New York Times, where I once worked, where the institute is very knowledgeable [unintelligable] concept they posed where to buy the best cavier in town. Wouldn't it be a nice idea if once a week they covered the city, Metrosection cover the city, as an experiement to cover the city. That'd be an idea. [unintelligible] people of the inner city [unintelligable] The fact that the neighborhood newspapers and their increasing success

[unintelligible] success should demonstrate that [unintelligible] what they ought to be doing, which is covering the city. I think it's wrong, really, to pose the concept of waiting for revitalization of the inner cities that means the return of the white people. So once again, the newspapers will follow the white affluent middle class back into the city. You know, I have a very odd feeling that if a metropolitan newspaper covered [unintelligible] it would win the loyalty, after a considerable time when you get rid of skepticism, cynicism, about the press that it would win the loyality of the people who live in the inner city. Who would in-turn buy the products that are advertised there, and therefore, this whole economic barrier might collapse. I am not an economist, I can assure you, and I'm fully aware

of the economic problems involved here. But it seems to me that the newspapers, which are right on the top heap, as far as [unintelligible], do have to change their concept. It's not entirely economic, its psychological and [unintelligible] might be able to make a breakthrough, that is, you could break through the psychological and ?traditional? factors first. First thing is again, hiring practices. That blacks and hispanic-speaking people [unintelligible] should not be hired on token bases but on bases of ?deed? and reality. [unintelligible] of black communities, inner cities, to the degree that it has improved [unintelligible] ah, increase in the number of black, Hispanic reporters [unintelligible] [unintelligible] reporters and other minority people on the metropolitan desk.

Thank you Mr. Ranson. I'd like a response from them because, because it seems to me to be a total energies of metropolitan newspapers in the last few years have been gone, going towards chasing the suburban readers and in the form of zoned editions and coverage of at least the highlights of town meetings, lots and lots of trend stories. Seems to me whole effort has gone out there where the money is rather than concentrating inward. Can I take a flyer at a couple of your points? I like the way you began your disc- discussion. But number one, neither The Times nor The Post are big mon-, The Times or the Globe or most newspapers in competitive situations are big moneymakers. Secondly, the numbers aren't there, unfortunately. Take a look at the number of papers The Times sells in the city and the number they sell

totally. It's just -- oh, I don't know, 25 percent maybe. So even if my dream came through, and I- I admit it's a dream, Bob, I dream that everyone's going to come rushing back to the city in hordes -- 'course they're not -- Uh, even if that came through, you- our newspaper would not survive. Just I mean putting that much concentration into the inner city in the way of cover- covering it. Thirdly, ah, most cities, I mean well let's say there are a half dozen cities in the country that have bored a great many of their readers to distraction by covering so much of the inner city. I meant I'm thinking specifically of busing. That's a, ah- that just devoured our papers, devoured other papers that have

gone through the trauma. And ah, it's -- you just can't ignore this. I don't think it's realistic to put all your eggs in the city basket. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to talk for a minute about the topic today which spoke of class biases. As far as I can see, we haven't got into that very much. [laugh] It seems to me that there are a whole lot of people in this country that don't believe politicians, that don't believe professors, and that don't believe newspapers, and most of these people did not go to college and don't make a lot of money, yet the media is hiring people to report to them those people who themselves have college educations, and who more and more have graduate degrees, I think there's a tremendous gap here, I don't know what to do about this, but it seems to me -- I'd like to ask what you're suggesting? Are you suggesting that people who work without

I'd like to ask you what [words cut off] Hence, I don't ... It's impossible I don't know. That's what I'm trying to get at, I'm not, I wasn't disparaging your remark. I meant there might be some very basic people in the community who could make an editorial contribution. There are a whole lot of basic people who say, you know, don't get any information from the media that we work on, and don't consider it relevant, who don't base their decisions on the media, who don't operate with the media we work on, and don't consume it, and don't base their decisions off of the media. Joan? Yeah. You know, that- that goes back to some early days in, ah on, that I had on the New York Evening News. We had at police headquarters, and- and Ned knows, an illiterate but he can certainly cover the police headquarters and phone in his story and then a rewrite man rewrote that story. And it's an interesting idea that if you had somebody who was truly knowledgeable about a particular community

and at least was literate to the extent of conveying that information to someone who could write it, perhaps you could have that kind of meld. I don't know, that's the sort an interesting idea. I don't happen to believe that you have to be poor to write about poor people or that you have to be a woman to write about women. What I think is that, you know, a sensitivity is required, to the issues. And you know, I think it's really throwing up a false flag to say you have to be one to write about it. But it seems to me that there has been a lack of sensitivity to issues that are really important towards minorities, as you said, to people in, you know if we do have a class system in this country, to- to lower classes. I think a lot of that insensitivity, however, comes not on the reporter level but comes on the editorial level where decisions are made as to what is going to be covered: Are we going to cover, ah, the- the strike down in this section of town? Or do we, you know, can we spare the manpower for that, are we going to cover more establishment events, for example?

I- I feel, have felt so strongly about the point you're making. A couple months ago I rather arbitrarily, and quite foolishly I suppose, I hired a reporter and his chief attribute was that he didn't have a college degree. I was thrilled.[Laughter] I wondered, ah, Joan -- he worked out pretty damn well, too. I want to just take your role for a minute as the moderator. One thing that I found interesting in the latter part of this discussion, and that is that not a question's coming out of there about television. A principal source of news in this country today by almost every survey that's ever taken by anyone, and at least as an initial source. And what could be worse about doing anything about the situation in television. We were all very kind in the beginning, I think, in our remarks. But what kind of community responsibility, do you see in the coverage of local news on television, anywhere?

All you worry about are the hair styles of the- of the moderators, of the anchormen, whatever they are. Their dialogues with the weather people and the sports people, and whether a couple will look sexy on the screen. No thoughts, no concerns, no ongoing response to community needs -- and I'm talking about local level now -- the networks make a generalized effort to cover the country. There, it seems to me, is an area of concentration by a community that is absolutely a necessity if we're going to get anywhere towards turning around responsible coverage. Because the way things are now, television responds in its coverage of things to, ah, largely to what it reads in the newspapers. They're afraid to cover things on their own. I was talking with [unintelligible] ?Conneraught? last night at, who's been at NBC and been elsewhere and in television, Channel 13 in New York.

And she remembered a situation where she was onto an extremely good story that she brought in to- to her television bosses about the development of the uh, the Strickman filter for cigarettes. They didn't want to deal with the story because they hadn't read about it anywhere. And that's precisely where I would hope there would be some area of interest and concentration, and I would like to see a few questions ?on the subject? So that you brought it up and brought me up. That's Mrs. Connor. As you were speaking, I'm not familiar with local stations elsewhere around the country, but speaking about Channel 4 in New York, I don't think they're really quite on point.

One, they have to answer to FCC criteria, and they do pay attention to minority communities. And I don't think we would be talking about this if television hadn't raised our consciousness about minority groups. Whatever the criticisms about hairstyles, they're accurate, but they go across the subject with this discussion. I found the criticism rather poignant. [laughter] I do think, Mr. Schnurrman, that you in your presentation made one of the recommendations that need to be followed. And I agree with you: citizen-owner contact in broadcasting is indispensable. They're off in their own corner even more, I think, than the editors of the metropolitan dailies. Another facet -- and these solutions were part, I think, of a very ingenious 6-point proposal offered by Mr. Thompson, the Neiman curator from yesterday -- Another part of that which goes into this citizen-proprietor contact was that ?50? percent uh, the Globe, I think, gets into The Globe, I think, gets into communications policy on trendy issues such as children's television

or children's advertising in television. But there is no media critic at The Globe. And I'd like to ask Mr. Winship if he senses any movement And I- I just found out yesterday... How 'bout three? We got three. You're content but you're not criticizing quality or other media. I haven't seen the sharp writing or the...It's a bad day that Bill Henry doesn't take on, ah- take on, ah some aspect of TV or the radio. Oh, I agree [unintelligible] [words cut off] A bad day that he doesn't do it. Tim Leone waltzes all over the place... we don't see him enough. Charlie Whipple doesn't just confine himself to the, what's in the Globe, he gets in ethical questions. I don't want any more critics. [unintelligible] Media critics. I don't want any more media critics.

We're too goddamn self-centered as it is. [laughter] We're looking at our navels too much of the time rather than getting out reporting. You're a good fellow though. [laughter] I know that. Yes. I'd like to get a response from television and radio [unintelligible] I worked for about 4 years as a coordinator for all the minority programs for a local television station in Boston. And I had to deal with all the minority communities and put together programs for them. And we did probably as good a job as we could, given the budget we were given for public affairs programming.

That doesn’t concern me as much as the way that TV and radio and the newspapers covers the community. It’s more a reaction to problems in the community. Instead of going out and creatively and positively covering the community. We all react to pressures, and Tom Winship brought it up in relation to the busing crisis. We all were caught up in the issues of the busing crisis, and that got boring after a while. But that doesn’t cover all the issues of the minority communities. So how can we do that? Certainly throughout my whole time in, ah- in local television news, both at commercial television and public television, to get people to agree to supply money to hire good, honest-to-God reporters who would get out into the field and do original stories on their own -- not investigative reporting, just good hard original stories, and not play off The New York Times or not play off the Boston Globe as, as the stations do in this town -- is a tremendously difficult thing. I can remember an instance at, ah, WCBS TV in New York in which I wanted to hire 5, count 'em, 5 good reporters for $25,000 each, experienced reporters who could go out and shake up that community with their original reporting. No way could I do that because they wouldn't appear on camera every day, their faces wouldn't be seen. But what was offered to me instead was $125,000 to buy another film crew because the film did

appear, and I think that's, that's what goes on across the board in local television. I think some are better than others but in general they do not want to take the chance of covering stories on an original basis. [new speaker] One of, one of the criticisms that a lot of groups have made of the media is that they have to create a bizarre event or, or have a bizarre figure in order to get coverage. And, and we can think of Florence Kennedy, for example, or the famous so-called bra burning incident -- and maybe I should take this forum to- to say, as Betty Friedan has said many times, that there was never a bra burning. This, this -- for those of you who do not have long memories, this was a created incident to get media attention. Back at the Miss America contest, I believe, in 1968 where women decided to throw into the garbage can all the paraphernalia of beauty, which included their cosmetics and also included some underwear. And so they in fact threw bras

into a garbage can; no one ever burned a bra. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan insist, so maybe if we do nothing else this morning, we will overcome that- that myth. But do you think, do the rest of you on the panel think that is true, that you- that you have to be bizarre, look bizarre or create something peculiar in order to get media attention? [new speaker] Oh, I'd love to talk to that. And I think Bernard Rubin, the organizer- organizing genius of this conference should be smiling when he hears this because he knows that television is a set-up for his public relations students when they get out of college. John Wickline, when he was at WRVR, had a morning feature on one of his news shows that I absolutely loved. I was then the city editor at WCBS and his morning newsman, Adam Powell, used to read the day book for me while I was still in bed. The day book, for those of you who don't know, was a rundown of

events that are gonna to take place in the city that day. The assumption being that only those events that are on the day book are worthy of any kinds of coverage. And here I was, in a state of semi-wakefulness, catching up with what it was I knew I was gonna cover that day. And, uh, whether I liked it or not... [text ends]