Sunday Forum; George Gerbner And Robert Thompson: New Perspectives In Communications

I sometimes think that in my lifetime I have lived through a full political cycle from the Republican conservatism of the Harding Coolidge Hoover era into which I was born through the democratic liberalism of the Roosevelt Truman Kennedy Johnson era to the Republican conservatism of the Nixon years from two cars in every garage. To two states and every millionaire's freezer from Teapot Dome to the Watergate. When I first began preparing these remarks a few weeks ago I still was of the opinion that Mr. Nixon might put together a lasting political coalition from the center right. Word as Franklin Roosevelt did from the center left word that certainly as Mr. Nixon's objective and one that influences almost every action and utterance of the president in the domestic forum for Mr. Nixon takes very seriously as the last Republican President Dwight Eisenhower did not. The role of party leader and party

builder but as one explosive event has topped another. In the immortal Watergate affair scandal has struck at the very heart of the presidency. In the past two weeks I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Nixon cannot bring off this grand design for a generation of Republican conservatism. He cannot bring it off. That is unless his Democratic opponents are foolish enough to make him an object of national sympathy sympathy in the current ordeal or to continue to isolate themselves as they did in 1972 from the mainstream of American life and American concern. Although he may be reeling from the Watergate revelations Mr Nixon is not about to give up his dream. This should have been clear from his speech to the nation last week a speech heavily

laced with self-serving political rhetoric and plans for future achievement. Mr Nixon is prepared to use the vast powers of the presidency to a far greater extent than General Eisenhower as we have seen in his running battle with Congress over the impoundment of funds and the curtailment of social programs adopted under the last four Democratic presidents and the power is there as it was not there prior to the New Deal. We have seen in 1950 and again in 1965 that a president can commit troops to foreign combat without an act of Congress although in both instances Mr Truman in Korea and President Johnson in Vietnam. The president undoubtedly had the support of a majority of the members of both houses. We have seen presidents from Roosevelt to Nixon

conclude agreements with foreign nations without approval of Congress. We have seen presidents expend funds and withhold funds against the will of Congress. This is what makes the presidency so fascinating. And I think so pivotal pivotal. This is why the relationship between the president and the news media is so important not just to the president and the news media but to the public. They are presumed to serve. We may not care for a particular incumbent. Indeed we may heartily dislike him but our lives and our destiny are to a large degree in his hands. So we should at least try to understand him and his philosophy of government. He is in a given four year period. To paraphrase a line dear to the heart of Lyndon Johnson the only president we have. We also should realize that what we assess today as good or bad

in Presidential conduct may be viewed in exactly opposite terms. A decade or two from now when I first went to Washington as a young reporter at the end of 1952 Harry Truman was departing the presidency at one of the lowest levels of popularity hit by any chief executive in this century. He was denounced for purportedly permitting communist infiltration of the government for not having brought the Korean War to a conclusion by bombing mainland China for having fired General MacArthur for scandal within his administration and even for his daughter's singing career. Mr Truman did not seem fazed by this low rating or by the polls or by many of the wild accusations thrown at him. Except of course where Margaret singing was concerned at that particular moment. Washington was aglow with the excitement over the coming inauguration of General Eisenhower.

I have covered every inaugural since then but in retrospect I must say that I never have seen the nation's capital quite so filled with awe and expectation as it was in December 1952 in January 1953. Not only were the Republicans regaining control of the House and Senate of the White House and the Congress for the first time in 20 years. But also because a great national hero the soldier who had led the most awesome military invasion in the history of mankind was marching in to assume the presidency. There were not many individuals in Washington or elsewhere in the nation who had gone into mourning over the departure of Harry Truman. Even the 1952 presidential nominee Adley Stevenson had spent much of the campaign running away from Mr. Trump. It was almost as if the nation was congratulating itself on the end of a dark age and the beginning of a new

era in which a bright son named Dwight David Eisenhower suddenly had risen and was now shining across the land. Yet before General Eisenhower's White House tenure had ended historians political writers and politicians were reassessing the Truman presidency and deciding that the courageous little haberdasher from Missouri had not been a debacle but had indeed made more bold far reaching decisions involving the foreign policy of this nation and the security of a free man than any man in this century with the possible exception of Franklin Roosevelt as the Eisenhower Lustral began to Diom as a result of recession. The Soviet thrust forward with Sputnik and a scandal involving the president's White House chief of staff Sherman Adams the Truman lustrum began to gleam the soothsayers and prognosticators had finally caught up with a quotation from Sir Winston Churchill who in

January 1953 53 in the White House had raised his glass to Harry Truman and said you more than any other man have saved Western civilization. Paradoxically when Mr. Truman died last December the most fulsome praise of the former president emanated from those like President Nixon who had been his most acrimonious critics and most vitriolic detractors. Now we find General Eisenhower four years after his death and 12 years after the end of his presidency being assessed more highly than in the final days of his tenure. At the same time we find John Kennedy being judged in a far harsher light than he was during the eight or nine years following his assassination. So we find that both fortune and misfortune are fleeting in politics and in the presidency. Sometimes it even takes time for a president's fame to spread to all corners of the

land. I recall for instance my first trip to the LBJ ranch a few months after Lyndon Johnson became president. It was the spring of 1964 and the president was in and a brilliant expansive mood. Everything seemed to be going well for him. So we had all of the correspondents who were covering him journey from Austin to the ranch for an outdoor press conference and along party along in the early afternoon newsmen with Eastern deadline's had to return to Austin Defilers story. But the president insisted that a few of us stay on to enjoy the festivities to visit adjoining ranches to watch the deer cavorted twilight and to enjoy his hospitality. It was a beautiful warm spring day and it was pretty hard to reject such an exciting invitation. So I stayed but the hour finally came when I had to call my story into my newspaper which then was the Los Angeles Times with a deadline. Three hours later

than east coast publications. So the president suggested that I do so from his study sitting at his desk beside a great stone fireplace. I got the local operator on the line and asked her to make a call for me to Los Angles to the times when she asked the Los Angeles Times operator will you accept a call from Mr. Thompson. The lady in Los Angeles wanted to know where the call was emanating from the operator in Texas. Her voice filled with that special Texas pride said the LBJ ranch. The operator in Los Angeles then asked Is that near Fresno. General Eisenhower was the first president I covered and that was because as a junior reporter in the International News Service Bureau I was handed an assignment that nobody else wanted the regular White House correspondent and other senior members of the bureau were happy to cover the White House and to journey with General Eisenhower across the nation or for a spring vacation in

Augusta Georgia or to Europe or Asia or Latin America. But none of them felt the strong inclination to be tied up on weekends covering the president when he went to Camp David in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland or when he went to church in Washington given the pompous verbosity of the president's pastor. It's no wonder that nobody else wanted that assignment that even was a wonder to me that I can Mamie went to church except that the pastor had one sure safe sermon. When the president was in his congregation and that was to denounce Godless Communism I was at the Gettysburg farm when General Eisenhower took General Charles de Gaulle on a tour of the fire as the two men roamed through the barns. President Eisenhower was beaming with pride as he pointed out his prize cattle and hogs. While President de Gaulle gazing austerely down his long Gaelic nose presented the most perfect picture of

him of imperious boredom that I ever have witnessed a far different picture was presented however when Nikita Khrushchev went to Camp David with General Eisenhower in September 1959. Those two men the two most powerful in the world at that particular moment in history got along like a couple of fellow Kiwane at a convention through their interpreters. They chatted amiably and then strolled like the closest friends along the wooded paths where the leaves already had begun to turn bright crimson gold and orange. That was a day when all of us had renewed hope that the United States and the Soviet Union could find ways to work in harmony and thus diminish the danger of nuclear war. It was an unforgettable moment for all of us who were there but unfortunately the spirit of Camp David soon evaporated in a cloud of

animosity and Ike's projected trip to Moscow exploded a few months later in Paris amid a torrential tirade by Nikita Khrushchev against America's V-2 reconnaissance flights over Russia. I saw the same hope bloom and eventually fade. Nearly a decade later in New Jersey went on the hottest of weekends in 1967 we kept our vigil at Glassboro while President Johnson and Premier Cosequin sought to iron out the difficulties between our two nations especially those in the Middle East where the Six Day War had just ended. And in Vietnam where we already were mired in combat. Later in the White House President Johnson spoke to me privately of his hopes that Glassboro would usher in a new era of understanding. But he added that he never knew. During those two long vital days at Glassborow whether he actually was talking to the number one man in the Soviet

Union or the number two man if the high hopes of the Khrushchev visit in 1959 were not fulfilled. That visit at least began to open up channels of communication that had been closed since the days of Joseph Stalin. I think Henry Cabot Lodge has an interesting and valid comment on this matter. In his new book of memoirs the storm has many eyes may maybe says lodge his visit opened a new relationship in which the value of talking was to become more appreciated then lodge adds. I have often asked myself where would we be if Khrushchev had not been asked to come. Surely we would be more worse. Surely we would be worse for not having had it. I think that is a true assessment. It also would be a true assessment of the meaning of Glassborow for Glassborow mark the genesis of what was to become

known as salt. Was two strategic arms limitation talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. During most of the Eisenhower years I was assigned to Capitol Hill where I had an opportunity to watch our congressmen and senators at work. And it was there that I met John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson and others. But however much one may love the halls of Congress and enjoy being associated with the men and women who sit in the House and Senate. The real center of power in our nation and truly in our world is the White House. So I was not about to reject the chance to become White House correspondent for The New York Daily News when that opportunity came immediately after John Kennedy's election. Strange myths have built up around the personality of John Kennedy since his death in Dallas. Myths that tend to make him seem superhuman or more recently myths that tend to

make him seem frivolous and a naive perpetrator of outmoded cold war policies. In reality he was of course a very human man with many of the traits both good and bad that we all share. Before his death it was difficult for us as communicators to gain any real perspective on Mr. Kennedy's presidency after his death. It became even more difficult. His three year presidency was not a glowing success in terms of legislation or foreign policy accomplishment. But John Kennedy did have the ability to exert a kind of moral sometimes almost visionary leadership that neither of his successors has possessed. It is ironic I think that John Kennedy who was a perceptive student of history considered Woodrow Wilson a failure because Wilson had

failed in his most cherished objective American participation in the League of Nations. It was ironic because in retrospect Mr. Kennedy is remembered as a president much in the mold of Woodrow Wilson a symbolic figure who while failing to achieve many of his goals set in motion a vision of a more excellent society that made public service seem the cleanest and most honorable of callings for a whole new generation of Americans. But with Mr. Kennedy as with all public personalities the news media's immediate judgment judgments sometimes were correct sometimes incorrect. At the end of 1961 I spent a week covering the Nassau meeting between President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. A meeting of which two men who were a generation apart in age and standard of reference struck up a warm and friendly

relationship. A meeting at which the United States and England chartered a new Atlantic security program in which the Sky bought missile was to be halted and a multilateral nuclear force to be established among NATO allies. The president and the prime minister also sought to chart a new Equador economic course based upon Britain's presumed entry into the Common Market. During those busy sun filled days in Nassau it appeared that the Atlantic Alliance had found a new birth. But the western world had been led into a new age of security. On the last day of the conference President Kennedy and prime minister Macmillan sent a cable to President de Gaulle outlining their agreement and asking him to join them in this new mission. Less than a month later the Gaulle gave his answer when

he announced that France would have no part of a multilateral nuclear force and that it would veto Britain's entry into the Common Market. Eventually the goal even ousted NATO from France. Most of us in the United States at that time were irate in our newspapers and on our radio and television programs. We denounced Charles de Gaulle but in retrospect we must realize that the Nassau accords between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. McMillan constituted a personal affront to a French president who was proud obstinate jealous suspicious and wholly obsessed with the illusion that he was France and that France was Western Europe. Much of the criticism that we directed at that time toward Charles de Gaulle should have been directed toward John Kennedy and Harold Macmillan because both were highly educated students of international affairs

who should have understood that their bilateral attempt to try to find a new solution for NATO security as laudable as it was would only provoke provoke a man like Charles de Gaulle who as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill discovered was impossible to deal with. When he was in exile and did not even have a country to leave John Kennedy's shining hour in the White House of course was during the Cuban missile crisis in the autumn of 1962 I shall never forget that how harrowing week in which none of us including the president himself knew whether we might suddenly be pushed off the brink into nuclear war with the Russians. Things were so tense and so taut around the White House and throughout the government that I even suggested that my family leave the Washington area.

Certainly all of us could see that we were getting closer and closer and closer to a confrontation that could have resulted in Holocaust for half the population of the world plans or even considered for the president and the White House press to go to a highly secret fortress that if that had been constructed deep in a mountain as an American communications command center in nuclear war it may have been with luck as much as with wisdom. But John Kennedy certainly made the right decision in replying as he did to Nikita Khrushchev love's ultimatum and certainly Khrushchev made the right decision in backing down the way he did but not in my lifetime or in the lifetime of any of us have we human beings come so close to such a tragedy as could have resulted from that meeting of force over the missiles in Cuba. I was not on the trip to Dallas when President Kennedy was killed. I had been

with him in the previous week in Florida. But certainly nothing could have been more traumatic than hearing that the vigorous young president had been shot in Dallas within a couple of hours. I was on a plane to that city from Friday night until Sunday morning. I kept an almost constant vigil at the police department where Lee Harvey Oswald was being held as the assassin of the president. Then on Sunday November 24th all the news men present were herded into the basement of the police department under the heaviest security to watch the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald to another jail across town. I was standing possibly 20 feet from that frail insignificant looking little man when he walked out the door and suddenly he was greeted by the gun gun blast that killed him as he

dropped to the floor. Police and sheriff's officers overwhelmed the plump golden gun wielding figure of Jack Ruby. A man like Oswald himself who previously was totally unknown outside Dallas for someone who had known Jack Kennedy as I've known him during the previous as I had during the previous three days. I found the atmosphere in Dallas exceedingly cold cold in the sense that it did not seem to me that there was much feeling of grief or tragedy. So when suddenly I saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot down in front of me my first thought was thank God somebody in Dallas cares. In retrospect I realize that was an unfair thought. A swift and incorrect judgment. I know that you can't condemn a whole community for an act of one man. And I know that people feel things deeply without ever

showing up. Certainly the first year and a half of Lyndon Johnson's presidency was exciting no man who previously occupied that office ever had worked so hard had been in so many places and done so many things had been active on so many fronts as Mr. Johnson was in that period setting policy passing a great legislative program running against Barry Goldwater talking privately to reporters and holding impromptu press conferences almost everywhere in the world. He was like an octopus you couldn't escape him traveling with the president was truly an experience for any intersection where there was a crowd he might jump out of his car and plunge into thousands of people shaking hands or he might climb up on top of a car and invite everybody to come on down to the speaking. I remember particularly one Sunday in Phoenix after he'd gone to church and was

motoring motorcade ing through streets filled with thousands and thousands of people. We stopped at one little neighborhood where a Mexican-American woman came out with a banner she had saved since 1960 which proclaimed Lyndon Johnson for vice president. But she had cut the word Vice out. So now read Lyndon Johnson for president. Well he grabbed that banner and he jumped up on the top of the car and shouted to the crowd around him. Look she's no longer afraid of my vice I suppose the most memorable time for me during my years in Washington was a trip I made with President Johnson in November 1966 to the Asian Pacific summit conference in Manila for three weeks. We zoomed from country to country from one tumultuous ovation to another from visiting Samoa and New Zealand Australia the Philippines Thailand

Malaysia and South Korea. Throughout the journey there were hints and rumors that the president would visit South Vietnam thus becoming the first president to visit combat troops in the field during the war. But no decision was announced or even indicated privately. Then one morning while we were in Manila for other correspondents and I were notified that we would go as pool reporters with Mr. Johnson to visit the cemeteries in which I buried the American and Filipino boys who died in World War II to visit the International Rice Institute and the once embattled island of Corregidor. The rest of the reporters covering the presidential Odyssey were to remain in Manila and we were to brief them upon our return. So off we went in helicopters first to the Philippine National Cemetery where the president paid tribute to the Filipino boys who had fought and died in the war and then to the American

Cemetery. A sad but inspiring place beneath those rolling green fields lie the bodies of 17000 American boys and on the gracious colonnades of the memorial are engraved each of their names plus the names of 19000 others who were listed as missing in action some of whom had been my personal friends in places like Guadalcanal Peleliu and the lady gull. Our next stop was the International Rice Institute which has developed a heavy strain of rice that could one day revolutionize food production in Asia. Then on to Corregidor that hot dusty pinnacle that rises from the water at the entrance to Manila harbor for one who had served nearly four years in the Pacific and had participated in the liberation of the Philippines. It was a dramatic experience especially in the company of the president of the United States. We stopped

for a brief commemorative ceremonies beneath the stark lonely tree where General Wainwright signed the US surrender to Japan and then proceeded proceeded up to the barren decaying tunnels which were the last outpost of American and Filipino forces in 1942. Then amid swirling clouds of dust and dirt we drove by jeep to the battlements with which our forces made their final feeble attempt to save the Philippines. Then back to our helicopters then to her and a return flight to Manila. Five hot weary news men encrusted in dust who still had to brief the huge throng of newsmen that had not journey with the president on the full day around the Manila area and also to write our own story. We came into one airport in Manila in preparation for landing but just as we were about to hit the ground we zoom back up again and very mysteriously cruised on for another five or

ten minutes. Then we landed in another spot and as we did we were informed by the White House aides aboard our helicopter that we were to go aboard Air Force One. As we stepped out there we were parked right next to the presidential plane on which all the shades had been drawn. We hustled aboard and within minutes were airborne for South Vietnam. As soon as we were in the air we washed some of the dust from our hands and faces at least enough so that we looked human. Then we were ushered into the private presidential compartment where we found President Johnson dressed in a Japanese commando waiting to have lunch with us. With him were Secretary of State Dean Rusk undersecretary of defense Cyrus Vance Avril Harrabin and other officials of government as we saw it over the far reaches of the Pacific. The president talked about his dream of bringing the war to a successful and honorable conclusion and

his hope that through our presence in Asia the small developing countries in that part of the world could achieve stability free of communist encroachment at Cameron Bay. The president addressed our servicemen honored those who had been in battle and dined with the enlisted men. That was a remarkable day not just because the president visited the troops in the field but also because in the most dramatic manner it telescoped World War Two into the Vietnam War it tied together the hot dusty rocket Corregidor with the hot rain swept fields of Cameron Bay it link the spirit of those who fell in the Pacific a quarter century ago with those who were fighting and dying in Vietnam in 1967. It brought the whole Vietnam adventure into a remarkable perspective

for the seeds of war in Southeast Asia were planted in 1945 when the leaders of World War II agreed to let France resume its colonialism in Indochina. I think it also demonstrated the wisdom of words spoken a century ago by Abraham Lincoln. I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me. The point is I think that while Lyndon Johnson may have deceived the American people and certainly did not communicate properly with them he was confronted. A year after entering the White House with committing American forces or letting South Vietnam fall to Communist aggression I know of no White House incumbent of the last 25 years or no aspirant for the presidency in the mid 1960s who would have left South Vietnam for as strange as it now seems

in light of the bitter and violent protest of the last seven years Mr Johnson in 1965 feared the right wing and not the left wing because his primary point of reference was Harry Truman and Korea. It's almost impossible to describe Lyndon Johnson unless you knew him and knew him well. But suffice to say that having covered or known personally Harry Truman Dwight Eisenhower John Kennedy Richard Nixon Hubert Humphrey Adley Stevenson Barry Goldwater and George McGovern. He was the most overwhelming most complex most complex most aggravating most fascinating man I ever have come across. He was a compulsive talker a vivid storyteller and a walking encyclopedia of recent history. Although all of it was colored by his natural expansiveness his

proclivity for exaggeration and his personal prejudices of all his accomplishments Lyndon Johnson's greatest pride was in what he did for minorities who have suffered discrimination. A son of the old Confederacy. He was the greatest civil rights president in the history of this republic and also the first to appoint a black man to the cabinet and a black man to the Supreme Court. And how touching it was at his funeral in the National City Christian Church in January to find myself surrounded by all of those dedicated responsible leaders of the black community the stalwart warriors in a magnificent cause. All of them bowed in sorrow because they knew they had lost the greatest friend they had had in the presidency since Abraham Lincoln. The point I would like to make is this. No president whether his

name be Lincoln McKinley Wilson Roosevelt Truman Kennedy Johnson or Nixon wants to harm his country or send boys off to die on a battlefield. He wants to build not destroy but often events build to a crescendo where the president no longer can control them. Where he is their servant rather than their master for all his vast power and resources he can become the victim of faulty advice or a misreading of history. He can be deliberately misled by his lieutenants. He confounder on the shoals of his own faulty judgment or he can find himself caught up in a tide against which even a president cannot swim. I believe with all my heart that we in the news media must probe behind the secrets to learn what commitments our presidents have made what the seats they may have perpetrated what alternatives they have faced

what options they have accepted. I think they way they should be criticized for their mistakes and their politically motivated actions and that their policy decisions must be debated freely frankly and responsibly. This is one of the reasons. In view of recent court rulings why shield law is so important to the news media. If a reporter cannot protect his private sources of information he is robbed of one of his major weapons in exposing scandal and skullduggery he is prevented from serving the American people in his most basic role as a Trast transmission belt for information that the people must have if they are to make wise decisions. We should all keep in mind that without the tireless tough sometimes thankless probing of our free pass press the tawdry Watergate scandal reaching directly into the White House might have been dismissed

as just another political caper. A free society is not served by cover ups whitewashes or lethargic news media nor is it served by irresponsible and ill founded attacks such as many of our presidents have been subjected to. I may disagree violently with the actions of our presidents and often do. But I must admit that whether I like or dislike the man in the White House I do feel a certain compassion for him and I do attempt to achieve a fair balance in what I write and in the guidance I give as an editor. I recall some words President Johnson spoke to me one afternoon as we sat together in a small informal study just off his office. It was early in 1968 the time of the Tet Offensive and his popularity was declining precipitously almost every time he left the White

House. He heard the tongues and jeers of his opponents and he heard himself repeatedly branded as a murderer shaking his huge tuj head sadly he said it's not what you are that counts. It's what people think you are. I think those words probably sum up the frustration that sweeps over a president in the lonely isolated hours when it can seem to do nothing that is accepted as right. I think every modern president has entered office with the dream of establishing peace and world order. Their policies differ drastically. Some succeed some fail. But each in his own way harbors the same dream and envision his own rendezvous with history. Each must stand or fall on his own judgment and his own decisions. This is true today of Richard Nixon.

It certainly to me is one of the great paradoxes of our history that Mr Nixon whose early political career as congressman and senator was constructed almost wholly on a strident opposition to communism should be the president to find his way through the bamboo curtain and to open more widely the Iron Curtain. It is ironic to find a man who once accused Harry Truman and George Marshall Dean Acheson of selling China out to the Communists being forced to preside over Taiwan's ex-buddy's expulsion from the United Nations and becoming the first American president to visit Peking and Moscow. Not Lyndon Johnson or Hubert Humphrey or before them John Kennedy or Adelaide Stevenson could gone as far as Richard Nixon has gone in seeking to restore the traditional goodwill that once existed

between the United States and mainland China without suffering terrible political abuse at home. President Nixon must I believe be commended highly for breaking with his past folks focusing his sights on the far horizon and demonstrating his profound comprehension of the fact that the future security of the world may well depend upon better understanding between the United States and a mainland China. Armed with nuclear weapons and inhabited by the largest population on the globe if we were to reduce the dramatic developments in the Far East to the simplest terms we would come up with this single equation. China fears encirclement by Russia for in the volatile lands of the Western Pacific where the American eagle to the Chinese dragon have been an almost constant conflict confrontation for the past quarter century. The shadow of the Russian

bear is becoming more apparent with each passing day. This is the most important fact of political life in Asia today and one in which the Chinese see grave danger. A year ago following President Nixon's historic visit to Peking I visited Tokyo Manila Hong Kong Taipei Saigon and Bangkok as part of a four man reportorial team. Our mission was to determine the impact of the president's trip on those nations that lie on the periphery of China and which have lived in fear of China for years. We talked with people at all levels of society and had formal interviews with the top leaders of government. In countries we visited and everywhere the story was basically the same. The Soviets were on the move seeking to become a military and economic power in the Pacific and thus isolate China within a stockade of Russian influence rather than opposing Soviet entry into the far Pacific. The leaders out there were anxious to establish broader trade

and cultural relations with Russia while China lives in fear of Russian expansion. Thus without in any way detracting from the statesmanship of President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger in executing the diplomatic coup of our generation it must be said that the timing was right for China and the United States to end the animosity of a quarter century and enter into a new and more friendly relationship I've covered Mr. Nixon at various points in his remarkable career since 1955 when General Eisenhower suffered his first heart attack. And I was one of the wire service reporters assigned to watch the president night Vice President night and day. But I cannot say that I know him perhaps more than any president since Herbert Hoover. Mr. Nixon is a very private man although he has been in public life for 27 years. And in 1968 I

made the most stunning comeback in modern political history. He remains a man who shuns personal contact and who carefully guards his emotions. But when one talks of Nixon the man one is talking about two men one is the statesman who can be spectacular in his handling of foreign affairs a man of vision and idealism who has school and the enlightened internationalism of Woodrow Wilson. This is the man who has made the most important moves in American foreign policy since Harry Truman. Yet Mr. Nixon also can be myopic in his approach to domestic matters that involve partisanship or what he likes to describe as the Puritan ethic. This I think we see in the Watergate case when I use the term Watergate of course I refer not simply to the break in at Democratic National Headquarters

but to the overall network of conspiracy sabotage bribery and espionage that is unprecedented unprecedented in the history of this republic. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that this scandal and all its sordid ramifications was a direct result of a direct assault on our sacred democratic processes which ultimately devolved into an assault. Also on the institution of the presidency I was one of those who seriously and legitimately criticized George McGovern's judgment in policy matters and in the selection of people around him especially Senator Thomas Eagleton. Now I must confess that Senator McGovern's errors in judgment were pallid almost trivial compared to President Nixon. For in truth the Watergate affair has destroyed

Mr. Nixon's entire second family. He still has Pat Trisha and Julie but that band of men so proudly hailed by the White House as the president's most trusted advisers has been banished from government and from the president's official life. When you reel off the names of those who one way or another have been touched by the shoddy mess. John Mitchell Richard Kleindienst Patrick Gray H.R. Haldeman John Ehrlichman Dwight Chaplin John Dean Jeb Magruder Herbert Kalmbach. You are listing men who in the overall domestic domestic political arena of government were closer to Mr Nixon than any others during the past two weeks. I have attended meetings of the American Newspaper Publishers Association in New York. The editors of the Hearst newspapers in Baltimore the America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington. I also made a speech in

New Jersey. In each instance responsible informed people privately and publicly have asked the same question Is it possible or probable that the president will be impeached. The circumstances are not the same as when the militant right wing demanded Mr. Truman's impeachment for firing General MacArthur. Or when the militant left wing demand of Mr. Johnson's impeachment for going into Vietnam. The difference is that those who now are asking the question are thoughtful serious individuals both Republicans and Democrats who resides somewhere near the middle of the political spectrum. What the question indicates to me is that many of our citizens have grave doubts about the innocence of President Nixon as regards the original Watergate incident and even graver doubts

about his innocence during the 10 months of cover up that followed the campaign techniques that propelled young Richard Nixon to fame and notoriety have come back to haunt an older Richard Nixon who is the leader of this great republic and supposedly this symbol of American morality. I think this tragic the president is guilty either of not telling the truth or of closing his ears to the truth. He is too tough too pragmatic too suspicious of a man to plead total ignorance. Had he months ago listened to the press and members of Congress or heeded the heeded the warnings of Judge Sirica and the grand jury instead of paying attention only to those in the White House who presumably lied to him. The Watergate affair may have become just may not have become such a scar on his presidency but seemingly He chose instead to isolate himself from the truth.

He as much conceded this point when following his televised speech to the nation he asked White House reporters to continue to have confidence in him and to continue to give him hell. Like any other citizen in this land the president must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Therefore we can only conclude that he has learned the hard way. But many of his predecessors learned long ago that there are those around a president who will lie to him or deal on half truths because they want to promote their own careers or their own causes because they are inclined to tell him what they think he wants to hear or because they want to cover up misdeeds. In this instance the president according to his own explanation has suffered a costly crisis of confidence because he trusted the wrong

people and shut himself away from those outside voices that were trying to tell him the truth. His hatred for the Washington Post and other publications may well have blinded him to the fact that those publications were doing him a far greater service than the men he trusted within the house within the White House and the Justice Department. It is a blindness that too often has tended to pervade Mr. Nixon's view of domestic affairs. Yet I for one do not believe that we can subject Mr. Nixon to trial by newspaper that we can permit our own prejudices be what they may to lead us into what the distinguished criminal lawyer Louis Nizer has called McCarthyism in reverse. We must continue to seek the truth but we cannot assume our president to be guilty until we know the truth. Having proved once again that a free press

is one of the most vital forces for truth in this nation. We must not forget that responsibility is the corollary of freedom. We must learn all the facts. But if in our zeal we set out to destroy the reputation of the president we may also destroy the reputation of our country. Like most of my colleagues I have become exercised at times over Vice President Agnew's attack on newspapers radio and television. But perhaps my reasoning is a bit at variance with some of my colleagues. I don't mind the vice president criticising us because in this free society we have a right to criticize him. My concern is one of perspective. If Mr Agnew or any other political leader wants to make a truly credible attack on the news media then he should chastise those on the right who slant the news to fit their ideology with the same

fervor that he reserves for those on the left. That may constitute a constructive act an act of fairness and statesmanship. The trouble is that Mr. Nixon and Mr. Agnew basically are at war with the New York Times The Washington Post and certain networks yet in waging this war they are brought into question at least before the Watergate. The credibility of the entire news media. This is a paradox of course because nearly three quarters of the newspapers in this nation supported Mr. Nixon last year. Scuse me and the networks I thought were exceedingly fair. Now we argue a great deal among ourselves about objectivity versus subjectivity. But what we really should be talking about in this instance is whether we are fair or unfair in our coverage of the news. No one is totally objective and only a columnist commentator or editorial writer can afford to

be totally subject. I think we have a responsibility to print news as news information has information. We also have a responsibility and space set aside for philosophical commentary to interpret and analyze that news investigation and advocacy may complement one another. But they are not the same thing. We can do both and we can do them fairly and honestly we can provide the American people with pure clean facts and pay them the honor of letting them make up their own minds on issues at the same time we can provide them with views ranging from those of Bill Buckley to Tom Wicker from John Chamberlain to Mary McGrory. Is there a better way for a citizen to achieve a balance in thinking and therefore in judgment than to read or to hear opinions covering the full spectrum of ideological comment. I think not. I am encouraged that this balance

is being achieved more and more in newspapers radio and television. I of course do not like threats against the media from this or any other administration but we will survive and will prosper. Since George Washington every president has had his private war with the press of this. And despite the attacks of Spiro Agnew clay Whitehead Patrick Buchanan or indeed George McGovern and many of those who served in his campaign we will remain free the most free and unintimidated press in the world. But we will have to fight to maintain that position as we always have. We will have to fight not just for ourselves but because if we lose our freedom then the American people will lose their freedom and let us not forget that the American people have for nearly 200 years managed to rise above bigotry prejudice

chicanery to maintain the rights and responsibilities that were granted them by the Constitution. As long as this nation keeps its eye on the horizon as long as it seeks to extend equality of opportunity to all its people as long as it rejects the narrow isolationism and protectionism of the past as long as it arises up in wrath against corruption as long as it sets new goals and new objection objectives for a better system as long as it does these things America will have a great destiny. John Steinbeck once wrote a dying people tolerates the present rejects the future and finds its satisfaction in the great past greatness and a half remembered glory. A dying people arms itself with defensive weapons and with mercenaries against change. When greatness

recedes so does the belief in greatness. A dying people invariably concedes that poetry has gone that beauty has withered away. John Steinbeck who probably knew as much about the soul of America as any man of his generation wrote those words shortly before his death. But he did not believe we were dying a dying people or a dying nation because we were not satisfied because our restlessness still was with us because angry rebellious young Americans still were as he said searching like terriers near a rat's nest. A nation that can send men to the moon and feed hungry peoples in Africa and Asia a nation that can institute the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe a nation that can construct the tallest buildings the largest aeroplanes the most modern hospital fiddles and the greatest of highway systems. A

nation that can throw up pride itself on being the oldest and most successful democracy in the world certainly can muster the understanding and the wisdom to expand its vision of human need and human progress while protecting its treasured institutions in such a nation as John Steinbeck said. Poetry has not gone and beauty has not with it. Our first speaker today is one of America's foremost communication researchers. Dr. George Gurnard is professor of communications and Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining pan and 1964 he taught at the Institute of communication research at the University of Illinois the University of Southern California and

a number of other colleges in California as well. He has served on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers and was a member of the Office of Strategic Services in World War II. Born in Hungary came to the United States in 1939 and holds degrees in the University of California and the University of Southern California. He has directed U.S. and multinational mass communication research projects under contract and grants from the National Science Foundation the US Office of Education the National Institute of Mental Health. The Eisenhower commission on violence and the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on television and social behavior. His current research on cultural indicators is described in an article on communication and social environment and the September 1972 issue of Scientific American. And if you haven't seen it I would highly recommend it to you. We're very fortunate to have Dr. Gribben are with us today and I'm sure his remarks will be enlightening. Dr. Gardner.

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. Now celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Boston University School of Public communication. And let me use this opportunity to extend the invitation to all of you to help us celebrate the same anniversary at the University of Pennsylvania only 16 years from now. Speaking of different perspectives reminds me of one experience I've had as a communicator. At one point I was editing a daily journal for the American armed forces in Europe and a commanding general was Mark Clark. And at one point it was some kind of a celebration of his birthday and in a story I had they his age was garbled so I wired headquarters in good terms. Cable is how old Mark Clark. And the answer came back in a few hours. All right. Mark Clark.

Fine how are you I would like to discuss with you. And by that I mean initiate a discussion in some preliminary remarks that will make a perspective from which our research stands and then its implications for all of us not only as students and observers of the communication is seen but as practitioners scholars and researchers. And on this occasion particularly as practitioners as I hope to learn from you about what you see the implications of this perspective and some of our research and some of our findings are some of which I will be discussing with you for the first time since they're just coming out and

I have taken a few facts and figures brought them with me to be able to discuss them with you in the last few years. We have begun to see the earth in a different light. The globe itself from a different perspective from the perspective of the satellite. And as I look at our earth and those pictures and I'm sure all of you have seen I have tacked up in my study. I look at the world in which we live. The cloud cover and the haze over much of it that we begin to recognize and diagnose as a kind of physical pollution of the environment. I tend to see our world in terms of another environment more important to our humanity than even the physical environment in many ways invisible.

And I looking at the picture of the globe I kind of substitute this other environment for the clouds and for the haze and for the ecological veel that arose mostly out of concern with the management and occasionally the pollution of the physical environment and that is the symbolic environment the symbolic climate in which we live is I believe what makes us what we are. We reflect on things we interact with one another as human beings purely via the symbols that we produce and that we have in common these symbols in a very real sense determine such humanity that type of humanity that we will acquire in a culture. This is why a culture is called a culture in which like microbes grow in cultures.

Types of humanity grow and develop and are cultivated along different cultural and cultural ways. And when there is a transformation in the making of this symbolic environment then there is a major change in a kind of symbol systems that we discharge into the mainstream of common public consciousness. There is a change in the process of humanisation the change in the process by which we become or we make our children and their children become the kind of human beings that they will become. And of course we have been engulfed in precisely that change for the past 250 200 hundred fifty and very much the past 25 years. The time that a school of public communications

is developed in response to the challenge of this change that other schools of communications that communication as not only as a field of diverse activity but as a serious intellectual domain as an emerging discipline that's developed in response to the changes in the symbolic environment and its production in response to the changes and the challenge of historic changes in the process of humanisation that have been taking place and have been accelerating and still show no sign of leveling off basically in its most elementary sense to change that. I'm talking about is the change of the industrial revolution in the field of culture just as the industrial revolution in the field of commodity production has totally transformed the quality of life made it possible for many more people to produce more and share more. So the

industrial revolution beginning with the primary industry which is the book incidentally it's interesting to note note that the book is the first industrial product of the Industrial Revolution the mechanisation of the word the industrialization of symbols preceded the rise of factories not by very much. But it was one of the first and still one of the most typical mass production of symbols. The industrial revolution in the sphere of culture has changed the way we produce symbols and we way we share them and it has created a common basis for human interaction through symbols a common basis that now has transcended all boundaries with print with its selectivity with this channel with its requirement of face to face transmission of some kind of a material product. It could still cultivate a much more highly differentiated sense of community with broadcasting

cutting across all of these and literally broadcasting across all previous boundaries class ethnicity region. Educational level and in a future even countries. We have transformed the basis of humanisation we have transformed the ways in which we establish some sense of identity some sharing of collective meaning and collective sense of strength or weakness among people who never have and never will be able to meet face to face. This is an historically totally unprecedented step. The rise of new modern mass publics which are loose aggregations of people who have nothing in common but their messages may be totally different in every other way. But having messages in common and that doesn't mean agreeing with all those messages but having a basis for interaction namely messages

having a sense of collective perspective sharing the bases of these sharing the inherent issues and definitions and the agendas of life and of society that these message systems the common message systems cultivate it leads to the rise of not only of the nation state it leads to the rise of a totally new collective life system of government with which we are still experimenting and a new process of humanisation in which the creation of this symbolic environment symbolic climate's symbolic culture in which we live does not happen spontaneously out of tribal or folk need is not subject to the immediate local revisions and modifications of face to face or even much of recorded written discourse. But this is highly centralized inherently so

it's collective and whether the activity that produces it is a private corporate collectivity or a public governmental collectivity. And as you know in many defense societies the arrangements are made in many different ways in which therefore the way in which we organize our media production the way in which we structure the policies that produce the message systems that cut across all previous boundaries at the largest possible aggregations. Speaking of television practically the entire nation has in common being the only thing that they have in common has more to do with the corporate structure of the industry or the corporate structure of the government ministry or the corporate structure of whatever organization produces it than ever before. And so being a result of

essentially Heiler much more highly rationalized and planned procedures than the spontaneous production and use of cultural products have ever been before it also becomes possible and necessary to subjected to unprecedented public scrutiny. And most of our research is devoted to building the basis of procedure basis of ideas the basis of some intelligence operation against which public scrutiny of the way in which we organize our cultural life our mental life our Humanisation can proceed in the future because I submit that there is no area of public decision making in which important and significant and far reaching decisions and policies are established on the basis of as little systematic cumulative comparative periodically reported

information as in the field of the common culture and without advocating we can discuss that later one or another method of suggestion of control of supervision. I'm saying that no method can be intelligently discussed until there is some basis in knowledge some basis in systematic ongoing cumulative and comparative studies that will be able to sustain judgment no matter how those judgments are to be exercised. This is what we call this. This endeavor is what we call cultural indicators. And of course being one small group of researchers we have to take only a part of this vast field we can we have concentrated mostly on television drama but we're also interested and have conducted some studies and expect to do more in the press and in other areas. But essentially we consider television and particularly television

drama a key area of this whole new symbolic environment. Television has reorganized our total cultural habits. Sometimes I feel that talking always about television makes television a scapegoat for all our problems and all our ears and that's very true. But it's not entirely undeserved because although television is not responsible for everything it is responsible for reorganizing so much of our cultural life it has become a symbol almost everything and one can discuss most of our cultural activities in terms of television which now encompasses all the areas in our culture the best and the worst the most monotonous and repetitious and has fiction that has drama it has it has news in its functions as the great collective unifier of the basis for discourse even if not necessarily the individual and group views that are brought to the

discourse of the basic agendas and issues. Television is comparable in terms of its contribution and its massive contribution to this symbolic environment. Television is not really an inheritor of the elite cultures of the past and those who look forward to television to do that I think are profoundly mistaken. Television is a new religion. Its only comparable to the social functions that only religions have performed in a more primitive. If you want to call it that in a non industrial or preindustrial a more tribal more face to face culture and by that I mean that it encompasses the total cultural perspective it has all kinds of products and it has its rituals it has its myths its has its cults and has its sects the rituals. And so I look at it kind of anthropologically as one would look at religion try to be as involved this as possible and nobody can do that except that we

try to look at it in as many different societies as possible so that we can recognize what we have much better in comparison to what others does rituals is what I call the television drama. And drama is hyper repetitive is highly formula written. Highly ritualistic. This is what I consider it is what we call a news. And by that I don't mean that news is invented although much of it some of it is so highly selective that it might as well be invented and you can and you can provide to us three or four different versions of the world each day. All of them true all of them quite different which is always possible that it doesn't make very much it really doesn't make much difference whether you invent or you select you can have what you want anyway. Now myths the mythological the mythic function is a very crucial function. Myths are not false myths work myths are functional. They

are a mixture of highly selective fact information and in a context that when we look at other societies has been recognized. Greek mythology Nordic mythology and so on we are recognized as kind of legendary or exaggerated or false looking at our own society. It's not so easy except on occasion when certain things break through and then we recognize what we have lacked or what we have missed or why. In other areas these breakthroughs can not take place with as great regularity as when private governments scrutinized public governments which is what is going on right now and in Watergate and so the news picture is what I call the mythic picture whose primary function is to give some verisimilitude some credibility to the ritual we find in our study is a high degree of correlation between what goes in fiction and drama and what goes in news. There are trends. Their fans their fashions and when something becomes

hot in the news for too long you find it crops up in fiction and drama and vice versa. They call it a kind of combination of the two that clustered around particular types of actions particular types of practices. The sects are of course to defend brand names and defend conglomerations and corporate entities that have some slightly varied points of view all within the overall sense of what I called the new religion. And a few of the cuts that we've been investigating is essentially is like looking at this symbolic environment as one would look at the real world and look at its its practices what kinds of things happen in this symbolic world as seen through the eyes of television drama. And I think the kinds of things that you see there it is my contention are not too different from or at least not too

complimentary to what you see what we read in the news. So we look at this world look at its demography and look at its geography and look at its actions and its practices and what happens to whom and what kind of people are portrayed and what kind of roles. Then we ask the question since most people most of our people live more in that world than in any other. Think in terms of a single unified world one can say more of our people live in the world of television the symbolic world of television than they live in the world of work school sleep of home in the sense of active symbolic interaction actual amount of time put into living in the television world is immense and it dominates our use of what is. Ironically called leisure time because much of this is not leisure. Much of this is the acculturation process that every

culture has to do which of course is nice if you can persuade people that that what they have to learn any way they should learn with pleasure and voluntarily. So we look at the world as what one might look at a census taker a real world or an observer or investigator a real world and then ask the question to what extent does living in this symbolic world form or shape or cultivate peoples conceptions of social reality. Not so much not at first. Their attitudes their beliefs of what is right what is wrong there whether they can be persuaded to think forward or by this or that. But first to what extent does living in this world affect what people think are the facts of the case in the real world. Since most of those so-called

facts of the case in the real world in the real world world today for all effective purposes is largely outside of our personal experience a very large extent what we do and what we experience as individuals first hand is we know is already a result of a much larger set of forces about which we know or seem to know a great deal. So the question is To what extent does living in this world. In what ways does living in this symbiotic world cultivate conceptions of social reality are the facts of the case or the issues that are important. The definitions the assumptions that we make about the world then based on those definitions and those assumptions of course people will line up in different ways and that's a secondary preoccupation I think and too much of our research we jump to the second step without looking at the first step because I would contend that the critical questions of life the really most critical questions of life is what is it that we're going to be concerned about. What is it that's worth fighting about what is on the agenda what is

highest on the agenda and what is lost on the agenda. Chances are I never get to it. These are these are the things that really fights and struggles are about any group of people that can determine what the agenda is will be able to come to grips with it. And then of course the next question is if if that is if the agenda is determined how is each issue going to be presented. What facets what factors what elements of each issue or each situation of each value of each practice in life that is portrayed in fiction drama and news. How is it going to be presented and therefore How's it going to be defined. So the first thing is what is it that we're going to be talking about. Second how are we going to define these items. Once we decide those two I contend most of the decisions are made not in every case but what you what you're going to talk about and how you're going to present it over a long period of time will determine what and how most people will deal with these these issues

and the individual and group differences which are inevitable because of Defense differences in perspective and point of view. What kind of randomise out and the big differences among cultures. The biggest difference is much more than within cultures are essentially even in terms of our studies of new is not whether one is more objective than the other. What is it that you're going to be objective about. The key questions. So then we look at this symbiotic environment and I want to say a few a few words about what we find in it and a few words about what we find people living in it more than others. They have it yours versus the light and non viewers what do they think about certain aspects of social reality. And then I'd like to leave with you with some very few provocative but inconclusive comments leave it with you the question of what are we going to do about it. Which I would prefer to have you handle and tell me they are the aspects that I like to mention briefly are who

are the people what is how is this symbolic world cast as it's casting and one thing about the symbolic world that distinguishes it from the real world is that everything in it is on purpose. There's nothing accidental and accidents on purpose. Therefore everything in it reveals a purpose the purpose that it reveals is a corporate purpose. If you look at it systematically rather than individual decisions you will see a pattern that is a corporate pattern by corporate I mean essentially a collective organization whose pattern is translated into the symbols that provide this environment. So how has it cast the purpose for which people live in the symbolic environment. It's not that they're born and they die they're created for a purpose and if they die they're killed for a purpose. And those are very highly standardized and highly systematic as you will see in a minute. What about men and women but young and old. Why are men and women created and for what purpose and what roles they play. What

functions of the cultivation of some view of social reality do they fulfill. And young and old and black and white. What kind of interactions. Conflict violence. Do they have what kind of values. Or at least some of them. Do they hold. What about drugs as an expression of a certain set of values. What about science. The Scientist. What about teacher education and so on and these are a few things I'd like to mention that we have derived from our studies of the symbolic world and then quickly go on to a few of the findings of what with respect to some of these things those who are exposed to a much heavier dose of the symbolic environment than others think about certain relevant aspects of social reality. Well casting the symbolic world here I'm talking primarily about the world

of primetime network television drama which we have now studied for the 68 consecutive year and therefore we were beginning to discern not only patterns but trends in it which I'm not going to deal but just a few highlights about the nature of that world and its population it's casting. And any society seems free to those who run it and can accept that as an axiom and freedom means the availability of a large number of choices and the opportunity to implement them with impunity. And so the casting of the symbolic world in terms of fiction and drama demonstrates and cultivates certain notions about who are the dominant individuals and what is the meaning of freedom. They are the president in the largest numbers and who are the freest to call on to pursue.

A greatest variety of values goals and occupations. And again when I I'm talking about fiction and drama in a sense I'm talking about the style that all cultures have found the most effective for cultivating their notion of reality. The reality of values and the reality of goals and aims and purposes in that society. In order to be able to write a story or to create a story to be able to demonstrate a particular lesson such as lesson of a value of a sense of morality of rightness or wrongness which is what all stories do. You must be free to select or to invent the facts and to construct the story in a way that is the most suitable to the demonstration of that value. This is the function of fiction in being inhibited or constrained to communicate

factual information a story of high facticity as compared to the city you are constrained to demonstrate by selection. Obviously when we are in a story of high facticity you don't just take things at random. You select those stories that suit the lessons of a particular society. In all societies and ours is no exception and so when not looking at fiction and drama. We're not looking at fantasy we're looking at fantasy for a social purpose the social purpose of fantasy is to enable us to construct and to construe they quote fact encored of life of people and of society in a way that will communicate and demonstrate the reality of purposes. Two thirds of all characters are male white middle class unmarried in the prime of life

very expression of power in our society. Being kind of freewheeling living in a loose social context. They can do anything and they can go to a safari any time you know it's hard to go to a safari with a baby strapped to your back. But if you're if you're if you're free of that kind of responsibility or of any other human obligation then you're free to be engaged in the greatest variety of roles your feet are free to. If you're not inhibited by an obligation or any human kind or by dependency then you're also free to be as anti-social and anti-human as you want to be in order to pursue your purposes which is of course what most of them do. Precisely. Seven out of ten of these majority type males are involved in some kind of violence because violence as I will try to illustrate in a minute is a demonstration of power of the power structure of our society. Violence is not just at motion. Violence

is an act. The difference between motion and act is that motion is a physical change an act is a physical change interpreted by human beings in a symbolic context and the symbolic context in which violence in which we interpret and use violence has a great deal to do not with emotion but with who does what to whom under what circumstances and what happens and what is likely to be the outcome for whom. So it becomes a lesson every act of violence a human in which human beings are involved. Is a lesson in hierarchy is a lesson in power. And that lesson in power has to be demonstrated by the by the people who are the freest to engage it. And there is this kind of dominant majority males being a woman has several handicaps. First of all males in the world of television the symbolic worlds in news even more so much more so but television outnumber females by about four to one.

And the reason is that females are so easily castable in a great variety of roles they are specialized they're specialized to sex and family and unless the genre that you're dealing with has a large amount of romantic and family involvement it's very difficult to cast a female in it. And if you do suppose there's a bank president or a gangster or something and you make get a female under present conventions of storytelling you have to spend the rest of the story explaining why that is so you can go on to any other. Any other message otherwise people will just simply don't believe their eyes and say well something is coming up. I need an explanation. We're much more stereotyped and conventional in our entertainment and we are in life because we underneath we understand that our entertainment has a serious social purpose I define entertainment as a celebration of conventional morality it has to be that has to be widely saleable therefore has to be conventional.

It is a celebration of what we consider to be a soothing relaxing enjoyable right moral upstanding. Every society has its rituals for many many thousands of years they all call those religious rituals. I think we have continued the same function in a secular sense but fulfilling the same functions under the heading of entertainment. If something disturbs you or something is out of line if something upsets you you don't call it entertainment and we don't consume it in as large quantities because it doesn't fulfil the same social purpose then it fulfills a kind of minority or counter counter of conventional morality cultivation social purpose which is extremely important to keep a spark of critical intelligence alive in any society and without that a society is blind. But it's a different purpose. So anyway back to women the

ability of the specialty of women limit stem to relatively few roles but it gives them it gives them a much more human or humane kind of a role to play especially in regards to anti-social activities. On the other hand if and when women are involved in violence they're much more likely to be the victims than men thereby serving in other powerful social function which is violence dramatic and fictionalized violence for the purpose of revealing and of cultivating true purposes in this society not only demonstrates power but teaches certain things without a demonstration of power itself is useless. Among those we've been I think overly concerned about aggression aggression is nothing wrong with aggression. We teach young and old people to be self starters to be aggressive to be well motivated.

And more. I think fundamental teaching comes out of television and general mass cultural violence which is the cultivation of a very very high level of fear and a very uneven sense of fear. It teaches some people to be victims. It teaches some people that their calculus of risks in life is different from the calculus of other people which is the basic generator of fear. It teaches women especially to be afraid. Women need not be any more afraid than men. This is a culture that teaches women to be afraid prepares them for the role of victims in a in an iniquitous and unbalanced way and this this is a very powerful lesson. Next time you watch your television every night you will find it demonstrated many times. I find it very disturbing that there is a fear that grips so many people. And of course once

the fear grips you as nothing to argue about it because I always say that illustrations and the demonstrations of justification are always in ample supply if not in place and on television and newspapers. If not there then in rumors and in actual stories it's always possible to substantiate that fear because it generates its own basis for existence. We find that they way in which the population is structured the way in which the dominant and are lesser roles in the social hierarchy are caste and then are presented to each a very powerful social lessons. It's not only that women are fewer and are more likely to be victimized they're more likely to be specialists in violence but that a large number of supply of

men and a large amount of violence and a large amount of crime both in news and on television also fulfill what I think are important social functions. I don't consider these although they are very different from real life I don't consider these distortions to look at them as distortions really looks at the at the less significant part of the side of the coin. They are highly functional. Every society has to teach its norms the best way that we have found to teach our norms just by continuous demonstration of violation and of the consequences of violation. This is why we're fascinated with crime. This is why large Kuchera Industries exist on both press and fiction existe on the selection and packaging of morality stories that go under the heading of crime do a search of a identifiable occupation's on television drama our specialists in crime are there as law enforcement people or as criminals and of course the two

a symbiotic existence. They can't when it can't exist without the other. And if you wiped out criminality is I think the most unhappy people would be the police departments both on television and probably in real life because they lose their jobs. And I think in a real sense they're both symbolic but most clear a symbolic expression of course is on our invented stories namely to demonstrate the norms of a society. And just to have enough about to have a tremendous amount of this demonstration of what happens in the symbolic life. And just to have enough in real life and to report it prominently enough to gain some verisimilitude some credibility as the cultivation of definitions of issues of norms and of the continual rehearsal and ritualistic repetition of that violation and the consequences of that violation. Let me shift to another area which we have done a little study because of the recent concern about it and that's drugs. And I think the drug culture

are the basis for the drug culture is not a minority cult it is the majority culture. It's going to be very difficult to fundamentally change it. I think we're just going to have to accept it unless the basis for its cultivation changes. I think the basis for its cultivation is very widespread value or notion that one of the most important things in life is instant gratification. Buy now pay later. Try it you'll like it unless you instantly get some benefit from it. It's really not worth the price which is what is the context of so much of our culture which is itself highly value oriented and functional. We call it commercials. But other cultures do it under other headings. And if the emphasis is different there is a way that every culture finds to convey the lessons the very lesson of the high value placed on instant gratification. The almost miraculous results that we x

x back from it is the large base of the pyramid or the iceberg of which drug use is just the tip we find. And once you have this large base I don't think you'll be able to do anything about the tip except to use it as another demonstration in which to people who otherwise are more likely to be victimized or more likely to not be able to get away with their transgressions. And this is where the lesson of violence comes in. You know the women also the old much more likely to be victimized than the young the black more likely than the white. You go right down the social hierarchy and it works out and you look at it systematically it works out in an almost uncanny way. Well drug use can and has been and may even be in the future be used as another instrument of control in which people with an equal chances will be simply demonstrating that

that some people can get away with others. Can't we find that of all the super heroes in comic books. Fifty four percent have attained their super hero status through the ingestion or injection of some kind of a chemical substance. It's nothing new about this. You know the five Ps and I call them potent potions for pleasure power and profit have long fascinated mankind you all kinds of legendary ways it's just the newest reappearance emergence in a mass produced way thereby blanketing the entire population rather then going along the tortuous ways of previous preindustrial face to face or more laborious type of communications that we are witnessing today. One out of every five of the superheroes not only becomes super but attains some kind of

omniscience. Eternal life. I'll try intelligence through some kind of a chemical intervention. And these are the heroes of the comic books that we have studied the giver's. I can't say pushchairs because in comic books you don't have that but you have to give her those who administer it that they are seen as a kind of evil intelligence behind all of this and they're most likely to be scientists. This brings me to the subject of the role of science and scientists and in popular culture and what kind of a social function they might they fulfill or cultivate. I think scientists the symbolic image of the scientist cultivates suspicion and mistrust of the independent intellect. I don't I've never seen a mad scientist work for DuPont a mad scientist almost death by definition works for himself. He figures out his notebook but

totally unrealistic ideas in his own basement laboratory. He is not under any kind of responsible corporate control which is exactly why he is dangerous and he is dangerous because he is a scientist and therefore potentially has power. And we looked at the image of a scientist and we find that in it's when they have power and when they and their intellect or intelligence is independent of what is generally considered to be some kind of a responsible social constraint then they are mad. Madness in that sense it has a social functional value which is to show that an irrational individual powerful act in a society is social madness and doesn't quite go hand-in-hand with our cultivation of individualistic intelligence. But no society likes or trusts any individual intelligence with any power. And probably for very good reasons

because it's essentially irresponsible. Now when you find somebody who represents a kind of intellectuality but has little recourse to the power that we attribute to science then you have a somewhat different image which which I have studied for 10 years and I'm very much interested in it both professionally and personally. And that is of the teacher the teacher presents the teacher as a symbol the scientist I think is a symbol of independent intelligence the teacher is a symbol of just a present state of knowledge and the value placed on knowledge and the dissemination of knowledge in a society. And in our society when we started this in ten different cultures in our society the teacher presents essentially the noble but impractical image noble because it's got to be noble otherwise. No he wouldn't. He couldn't disappoint us. Disappointing because he has no power. It's really in our power to implement

the grandiose grandiose ideas for which teachers and schools are supported. He has no power because we don't give him any power. We don't give him any power because we really as a society have no intention of fulfilling the promise of our schools. The historic promise of our schools is not just the spread of enlightenment but the reform of society. People immigrants people in lower more limited surroundings and circumstances have always looked to education as a way of creating greater opportunities. We often say if you want to achieve something educate people for it. We have sold and have supported our schools the last hundred and fifty years public schools on the basis of this is a kind of painless way to more equitable society. We could never afford to fulfill that promise. We undercut it by keeping them in a state of perpetual bankruptcy. And by portraying their major symbol the teacher

as one imbued with noble intentions which can absorb all the hopes and aspirations of our citizens. But really it comes right down to it is ineffective because these schemes are idealistic and because he doesn't have the power because we don't give him the power because we cannot afford to afford it we can't afford anything you want for something we say we cannot afford because we cannot afford to afford them because they might fulfill their promise. And this is then in my opinion in our analysis the social function of schools and education to absorb a great deal of idealistic ferment and to bottle it up so it can go nowhere. If if those who wish to schools to reform society would think for a moment that no society trains and teaches its citizens for some other society. It's not why schools are supported and

with any sense of realistic understanding you have to tackle the structure of society itself not one of its peripheral or one of its instrumental institutions. Either the media or the schools both the media and the schools are essentially maintenance operations. They express and serve and function to maintain an existing social structure with all its imbalances with all its injustices with all its superstitions and stereotypes. As long as they are functional theres no ignorance in our society. Under modern conditions that is natural inevitable and that is the result of some kind of lag or lack ignorance misanthropy prejudice in our society under conditions of modern mass communication is manufactured. It is cultivated daily because it serves a social function and a purpose. And this is what I would like to submit to you as a

final query as a result of our studies. Let me first say that in asking the question now these are some glimpses of the picture of the symbolic world as we put it together in terms of systematic study not single shows but single programs are single stories but the overall pattern that you see when you turn not a microscope but a telescope on this whole picture and the features the general features of this world begin to emerge and what what to what extent do people live in this world. Assimilate this hear if they if the early results that have I've just gotten in the last week the last few days proved to be sustained. I think we might be able to look forward to a major breakthrough in what we call effect's research at least to the extent it is concentrated on the effects on conceptions of social reality. We find tremendous differences very consistent differences between heavy viewers and light or non viewers

in terms of what they think about the facts of life for example. How do viewers consistently over estimate the percentage of Americans in the world population. Now the percentage of Americans in the world population is 6 percent. The percentage of Americans in American television population for understandable reasons is 68 percent. They those who live in that world just somehow assimilate not 68 percent but a significantly higher number than 60 percent in comparison with those who are relatively insulated or isolated from that world. And let me also say that these these two contrasting populations are matched on sex education and age. There are those who view television a great deal. I think that there are much fewer Indians living in the country and that there are a vanishing breed. The facts are of course the

opposite. And even those who don't view television don't they think that they're vanishing but by a much smaller margin those who view television a great deal think that they are in greater physical danger by a very large margin than those who don't. They are gripped more than the others by the fear that I was talking about. They feel that their chances of being involved in being attacked or being involved in violence is much greater than those who are again relatively immune or maybe who have a much more diversified kind of cultural habit pattern. Well let me leave the problem with all of us. Not trying to pass the buck to you. I am just trying to share it with you. Those of you who are in the practice of mass communications are the high priest of this new religion in your mind as well except that role. There's no use fighting it. You may deny it but that's

what you are. And I think you have and if and you assume inevitably a different kind of responsibility. My only suggestion is that you support. You certainly do not fight but to join and support that kind of effort. Let's say the pharmaceutical industries have joined a number of years ago which has put as much of resources as one can afford and maybe rather a little more than a little less into a responsible investigation of long range cultural climatic trends and consequences. I don't see it as a threat although it may turn out to be a threat for some for good reason. I don't see it as only an instrument of control although control is inevitable.

It's not public it's private. Mass production of anything doesn't grow on trees. But see it as the accumulation of a basis in information the basis in intelligence and intelligence that we now lack. And that alone can provide the basis for sound responsible judgment long range business judgment as well as responsible social judgment. But without that we're flying with the seat of our pants. We don't know where. And then finally the aim and the purpose of all of this for us is to recognize that the dreams that we manufacture have not only an important social purpose and the more entertaining it is the more important the purpose becomes. But a very important social function about which we know very little and which we have only begun to scrutinize and that our dreams that heal and dreams that hurt and that I

think it's time to begin to learn to find out and to know about the difference. Thank you very much. Now let me relax and may I ask Chuck Newton our chairman to moderate the discussion. And if there's anything that you'd like to ask me I would be glad to try to answer otherwise. Let's share the issues and see what help we can be to each other in thinking through and in tackling some of the questions and problems that I have suggested. That question is it looking at the symbolic environment and

television to try to categorize the methods of conflict resolution. There's varieties of ways in which conflict is resolved only to a very limited extent because they're not the ways are so various you resolve them by talking or by hitting or shooting and to resolve them by hitting or shooting is cheaper is more lively action that's where the action is you know action is a term that started in gambling that have spread has spread to violence and sex. And interestingly enough date the association of violence and sex has been discussed in a very superficial way. Symbolically they're both expressions of power relation they're relating people to one another and their plays on equality and inequality both. Now the most simplest dramatic resolution of any conflict you got a half hour minus commercials. You have to develop your plot. You have to have action into it. There's a cottage

industry from which you can order any kind of violence relatively cheap standardized and streamlined. Most cases this is what makes the point that what we're talking about what this conflict is about is a matter of life or death. Human integrity is at stake. Somebody is going to get hurt. I object to the facile and I think superficial translation of that of this kind of a demonstration to the notion that that it has primarily an imitative effect. Sure it has some of that that's inevitable but the primary effect I think is not imitative but it's a much deeper understanding that that there are issues in life that have to do with social power and with values that involve the question of human integrity and people do get hurt. And I think we all understand that hurt means hurt and violence is not at all the only or or even the most telling or effective way of hurting in real life. I think we translate that into a variety of varieties of

channels of deprivation of differentiation and of prejudice available to us which hurt more than any violence can but which cultivate the basis for social violence social violence is the violence committed against members of a group for the only reason that they belong to a group. The notion of the enemy the acceptability of the notion of the enemy means a high degree of acculturation to the notion of social violence not on an individual basis before people. And of course all through history people have been led being indoctrinated to accept the notion of social violence namely the enemy or the inferior group or the group that is that is somehow out to hurt us and therefore we must hurt them first. Whatever group is is in a culture becomes a target or becomes becomes

singled out as being menacing and fearful. You can predict that that culture is about to commit violence against that group. The best preparation for violence is to call your enemy first of all enemy and secondly violent and menacing. And then you built the justification for any kind of repression without this kind of indoctrination and it seems to me that the portrayal that resolution of a conflict by violence is a very effective and relatively cheap dramatic way that there are other ways. But our experience with with their effectiveness is that they're not as clear cut and not as effective and they take a great deal more talent you know to talk something out in an interesting and compelling way takes real artistic talent. Think you can afford to do that when you're given x number of weeks to come up with 35 episodes in which there is many stars it can be interchangeable as many sets that can be interchangeable the better it saves money and the budget you really have to do things in a very

streamlined and highly standardized way which is why I call it the ritual. It has to be. And most of that is discussion of the demonstration of equity and inequity. The demonstration of power and no superiority by showing great variety of conflicts and by resolving them clearly an ambiguously telling all of civilization up till this date. And I don't see any immediate signs of change a sign of changing has used this method and its legendary and in even in its real life way is no more real life violence is symbolic. It serves a lesson that we hope we expect those who committed expect will make others behave according to that lesson has been to build up the capacity for social violence for repression for essentially believing in and enforcing an iniquitous social order. There's no just society

that has yet been developed in which there are no inequities. And the purpose of culture is to make people acquiesce in these iniquities. You as the high priests of this new religion have to think about the question when is civilization going to dawn. Or is it when will the time come when culture does not crush anymore. That time has not yet come. It is not yet here. It must come because we are a global village and in that sense I think that the figure of speech is an apt one because we are closely so closely wired together that you know we need a line so that we can make sure that if there is a message that exterminates all of us is not by accident but by perp on purpose that tightly wired together so its going to have to come to a time when

especially those engaged in the mass dissemination of the new cultural environment and all of us who are concerned who started this picture have to ask the question when is was going to dawn when are we going to be able to invent and to teach all of our children and grandchildren a culture which will not make the invidious distinctions and and provide the basis for social deprivation and violence which all previous cultures including our own have always done