The First Amendment; Louis Lyons

The First Amendment and a free people call weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program has produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Brownie group and. What's the situation of the American press as it begins to look ahead to its decade of the 80s and press that had a tumultuous nine hundred seven days and has been implicated in the view of many commentators in the political process itself not merely reporting but many people say that it along with the courts for example was one of the. Major influences on turning in American politics. I'm delighted to have as my guest today to look ahead a bit with me. Mr. Louis Lyons who was the second curator of the Neiman Fellowship Foundation at Harvard University the first of course being Archibald MacLeish I think. Mr. Lyons is perhaps

the most renowned well-known curator of the Neiman fellows to date. He started out on the Springfield Republic and was associated for a number of years with the Boston Globe. About half of Mr. Lyons career has been in the newspaper business and in the other half has been in the business of electronic journalism especially associated with WGBH in Boston and the network that it is associated with. Again I'm delighted to have you here Mr. Lyons. Perhaps I might ask you a simple question first. Are you optimistic that the press has a handle on its major responsibilities after the tumultuous 70s. Why yes I think in general that can be said I would say it. It shows itself more responsible than it did in my earlier days Morris. The papers are responsible. Of course there are fewer papers and some of the less responsible

plans have dropped out. Well in the in the days when you started as a reporter it was the field of journalism was not especially the field of political power although people like William Randolph Hearst attempted with some success to use newspapers as the base for political power and and others did as well. Pulitzer and so on. But most reporters saw themselves as merely reporting and not part of the political process. You may note that columnist political columnist has been a development. Yes. And whether you call it power or not I would say he certainly has a readership and in some cases a strong influence which used to be confined to the editorial page and in olden times the editorial pages were very partisan for parties and a lot of people fell in between and sort of took them for granted I think. But most newspaper publishers today of a major metropolitan newspaper a publisher of that kind of a. Journal considers himself a very important figure

in the community and when he decides that a certain play should be given to international development in the editorial columns or if he decides that he's going to invest more money in overseas reporting or in Washington reporting he doesn't see this merely as a reporter. He sees himself something of a public servant doesn't he. Well when he decides to spend more money on overseas reporting or whatever he decided to spend it on. That certainly is a very strong impetus to push the paper direction. But I would say that in general in terms of editorial control that the modern publisher is much more likely to think of himself as the businessman who provides a budget and leaves editor or editors in charge of editing for one thing the whole business side has become so much more complex it demands talent and one of the publishers go out and find talent to do all these things. Now I would say there was much more of leaving the editors alone by

publishers and there was in in my day what would you say then that the editors see themselves as much more politically significant and I'm not trying to force the issue. Maybe you don't see it that way but I think being an editor today is something different than it was a quarter or a half century ago. Especially in a major newspaper. Well I suppose it differs a good deal on race relations stories and international stories and on stories on the economy people depend upon the newspapers. Yes they do and the newspaper can have real influence if as in the case of the Boston Globe right here it goes into investigative reporting in a serious way as the globe has over recent years. Now the politicians have to pay attention when things are exposed and the readership know what's going on. In that sense I think the newspapers what we think of what Watergate Washington Post and The New York Times investigations an exposé during the Vietnam War Well those.

Yeah. Certainly had great influence on readers and at least indirectly on politicians and on the whole trend of the political climate. In a recent conference sponsored by the Institute for democratic communication Davis Taylor of the globe the publisher of the globe. Said the globe has made important strides for example in the race relations area and they decided to play a play the straight the and straightforwardly the desegregation story telling it as it was and trying to tell the importance of the story. When that broke he said at one point we counted up we had 10 bullet holes in the facade of the globe building. But he looked upon that and other experiences that the globe had in hiring reporters and in breaking racial barriers as part of the social significance that lies behind publishing. Yes. Now Davis Tate and I worked for him and his father for half my life is undoubtedly

an exceptionally responsible and responsive man in the whole area of social relations. The globe has stuck with Judge Geraghty to fight on this segregation issue and they undoubtedly have lost or lost lots of readers on it that hasn't deterred them after many years of taking no political choices. They came out against Louise day Hicks for male white is now MIA on this school segregation issue. And Davis Taylor said he did this as a matter of principle. He had felt until then that as his father had that the paper ought to stay out of politics and stick to the factual situation. You know that's involvement in our own community here for those who are listening in other towns across the country. That's the Boston story. But let's take the Los Angeles story of the Chicago story. We don't have people like Colonel Robert R.

McCormick anymore of the old Chicago Trib days in Chicago. Yeah. How are they so you know my comic of course was a real tyrant in publishing the paper that was an instance of a publisher who did insist on pulling all the strings and making all the demands and having the maximum influence on policy and politics. And the Los Angeles Times as you say as one of their really spectacular stories of all the growth of a newspaper and of one family in the Chandler family owning it to tremendous influence and not only in Los Angeles but in Washington their Washington bureau and their tie up in the Washington Post and their syndication has given the national influence on one question. I'm glad you brought up the Los Angeles Times of the Chandler family the Chandler family and its enterprises are counseled one group always on the lookout for daily newspapers in other communities to buy to make part of the

chain. New York Times does that. The Washington Post does that by radio stations TV stations and other newspapers. Are you worried as we look ahead into this this decade about the conglomerates we've heard a lot of talk about it and they are massive Now they make some of the make that top list of the Fortune 500. Are you worried that this business that you referred to earlier may become too dominant. Well I think the conglomerate well invade in fact has invaded the journalism field as it has everything else mergers also which are sometimes on the way to being chain. And yes this can you can eliminate further the diversity which has been so largely eliminated in the press where we have come down to one newspaper cities. Yes I'm afraid that is going further. It may be

offset by what we were calling a while ago the underground press the new small paper. Which doesn't require as much money and doesn't cover as comprehensive a field but I find that they are getting the young people with their cultural critical music drama and such articles and rather pressure at least in Boston. It seems to me pressing they the more conventional papers to do more of that. You know there is a criticism as well that the conventional papers are getting to be very much like any other element of showbiz and providing so many of the side lights of reporting that they don't stress enough the the news the hard news. Yes I think that is that that's a very real feature of recent

development. And I lay out quite logically broadcasting take football game or anything of that sort. The newspaper editor knows his readers have had a chance to see that game yet it's not news to them tell them who won it or even how they want it. So he looks for a feature what happened in the locker room afterwards and all that sort of thing seems to me he's to some extent he's he's almost obliged to go into featuring and to turn his newspaper more like a magazine which has happened of course all over in order to hold the reader in order to give him something new lines. The press has been under attack. It has been vital in the Watergate story. It is vital in the Iran hostage story. Electronic Press and the print press are under attack by the courts. There have been all sorts of new permissions to allow police to search newsrooms and most of the most of the press

now of the press corps assumes that it is necessary to go to court there's probably more litigation entered into by newspapers and other press media organisations than was ever true 30 40 50 years ago. Some of the press corps are complaining that there's too much reliance upon court cases to defend press rights. How do you see the situation. Well I think it's quite right that that there is more pressure on the press or more attempt by the courts to limit what the press can do in relation to the court. And there seems quite recently in the Burger court in the Supreme Court to be a real bias on the question of freedom of the press. That is freedom as the press sees it to report without restriction. I think the press has some responsibility for some of that in spite of the

immense public value of such investigations as followed the Watergate case. I think at times the press has seemed rather too big for his britches in town and naturally the politicians would be have been the first to be jealous of all of this. I I don't know at all and he was no answer. I think that the press and all the rest of us are quite entitled to pressure the courts to say that the First Amendment Israel has carried out Justice Douglas who just died. I was doing a program on him just a day or two ago and felt that the Bill of Rights was absolute. He wouldn't allow any censorship even against of sanity. And in the case of the Pentagon Papers he said secrecy was the

most the most serious thing about a government to let them get away with it. What the public should know I think the press has a very real function and responsibility to say that the public don't let things be covered up. But I think too there's been perhaps recently an attempt to imitate the major investigations of it by papers and situations are hardly justified quite such a sensational play. I've got a two part question. Much the same general subject the first part I'm asking you because you brought great and rich journalistic tradition to the electronic media to your reporting. I was brought up on Elmer Davis where also was I could say more in five minutes than most of us can or 20 you know.

As a matter of fact he used to do it he had a five to nine to nine to log and he would say with the clipped accent at the end. Well that's the news. Yes I remember when when television first caught up with Alma the next day I think it was the New York Times printed a picture of him and the caption man it worked. Nothing had changed about Elma. Just television set radio right now bringing that tradition of reporting straight reporting to the electronic media. Do you subscribe to the theory that the press can be divided into two parts. Far as the 1st Amendment is concerned the newspaper print press magazine press and so on. Which goes to court when it has a problem and is not regulated otherwise except in the most general sense. And the Electronic Press which has the Federal Communications Commission and all the rest of it. Many absolutes like Nat Hentoff say that the press is the press and that to inhibit one with more regulation than the other is

wrong. What I wholly agree with that I've been saying so for years although the broadcasting is as you say regulated and the newspapers are not or theoretically are not. I think that as you say it that it's all the same that in the public interest they all should be free as free of regulation. And lacking that as we don't like it that the broadcaster must act as though that were so he must stick his neck out he must take a risk he must say I do have the same freedom as my friend the reporter across the street. Now there's one hitch about this as you know and that is that the number of possible spaces on the air is limited and somebody has got it it's our know how they're going to be failed or else I'll all be crowding each other out. That's a technical problem I don't know anything about and far as I know is the one excuse for keeping on this regulation.

You know the second the second part of this question has to do with the deregulation first. I asked you about regulation now there's a movement on sponsored by some members of the Federal Communications Commission to deregulate radio and television to leave the forces of the marketplace to determine whether they'll be public affairs or other programming. I find myself antithetical to that I don't agree with that at all because I feel that there are many people sharp artists who will just deliver white bread no matter what. Meat and vitamins are needed this pulpy stuff will be all that they will deliver for profit. I wondered if we used another word rather than regulation or deregulation. What if we said that both parts of the press under the First Amendment should be the same under the same conditions. But an additional condition is given to the electronic press that however it does public affairs without regulation it must provide a certain amount of

public affairs programming. Then once they provide the programming they're on their own take their own risk says any newspaper publisher would. Do you think that that was how I responded. That sounds very complicated to me. I think that there's no doubt that the Broadcasting can be exploited and since it comes right into your living room it's it's more vexing. You can skip an ad in a newspaper very easily when you just glance at it. It's very hard to skip the commercials you have to get up and don't turn them off. And I most offensive homes now it seems to me that such regulation as you as I thought you were suggesting can be handled by the Federal Trade Commission are not yet here as well as we don't need an FCC for that. That's what my offhand feeling. Right so you are then generally agree that while conditions should be set they ought not to be

set in the in the mode of examining content which is really what even though the FCC says we never want to look into the contents of a program it's still the Federal Communications Commission. Yes and of course the newspaper press has always had competition from the most sensational press it's had to overcome it or yield to it. You've had to depend on the readership sufficiently informed sophisticated to make a choice. I don't see how you get around that. You think that we're at the edge of whether it's in the 80s or the 90s some sort of an amalgamation in the technologies of the print and electronic so that newspapers will come through a slot in a well I'm told trial. I don't know anything about it really. But it's very old technology actually to provide materials that can come out of a machine that you have in your your own home.

Well I my my feeling about it is that it's all sounds like magic now but like solar heat and some other things it's probably right over the hill but maybe foreign over so we can't see it. At least I can yeah. How how do you see public television and radio what would you urge you to do that it hasn't done before in the public affairs area. If if it has a role to be innovative or different or distinct. Are you satisfied with what it is doing. On the whole. Well that on the whole if it means in comparison with what the commercial networks are doing I would say yes but of course nobody is satisfied with anything. And those of us who are on the air always feel you are have more time for public affairs and I think we should and particularly the news broadcasts even the broadcasters like Cronkite and the others if they only had two more minutes you know could make things the news mean something to if they didn't have to stop after 35

seconds for a commercial cut across. I think some of that kind of scheduling is is nonsense and I would hope it would it would have to go. I think some of the entertainment programs like Masterpiece Theater and so on that the public broadcast puts on are magnificent. The problem of financing is basic to expose everything. But it does boil your doobie. Almost all the time the contributor to the public broadcast even though you feel it needs the money and you like it like to do it and short of having the government step in and do more which perhaps most of us wouldn't want. I don't know the answer to that regard to an earlier comment you made. Walter Cronkite follows in the tradition of Edward R. Morrow. In that he does take time out whether it's for vanity sake or to keep his hand in as a professional to do radio work.

Several times during the week with the radio pieces of two or three or four minutes and I guess it is to keep his credentials alive in his own mind practicing journalist. Yes one chance or two they're both go do a magnificent job. But it seems to me the limitations on time of time and the intrusion of the commercial is really devastating. Is anybody going to replace Eric Sevareid pithy commentary in what was it a minute or a minute and a half of your time on the evening television CBS. Well in a real sense I don't know. I suppose so. You know we had to go to the problem of is anybody going to replace wall upon the philosopher of the press of the news and I don't know if anybody has a David Broder and a few other people a room perhaps large but I think you would find right away. An adequate substitute but I'm sure I want to

develop it. Walter Lippmann was I guess most people don't realize I'm an academic journalist his book on public opinion came out I think about 1922. He approached it from a different angle Indeed I think he approached his work from the angle that you do and that is one must understand the backgrounds to things rather than super concentration on what is coming on over the wire. Oh yes he told the Washington correspondents that they must do the homework that people ought to do for themselves and don't try to try to make the news mean something but I'm not I take it as whatever it is and some of us who haven't specifically had a a particular piece of time for just philosophizing have tried to make the news mean something or give some background to people like David Broder. Many political science classes use his little book on political parties called the party's over as a basic text and wills and people are going to start. I shouldn't start naming CONOVER I think James Reston would be right up at the

top of the possible. Do you miss Remember do oldies like a. Herr McCormick. Oh yes column. Yes. And do we mention Dorothy Thompson which both those names remind us that it is new to have women in journalism and contributing mightily. You could name some others but it was a long time ago too when you know him a comic was the foreign affairs columnist at the time. His new highlighting on women reporters especially Katharine Graham is the subject of a new book called Catherine the Great which for one reason or another is not being pushed by its publisher nor Well punctuality by its author as you say publishing rather than editorial around Mission and in the case of the Herald Tribune Mrs. Reed who is the owner or a part owner she may have pushed Dorothy Thompson in but those people were herded

there just like sissy Patterson who came in. Yes but I would family. I'm sure you don't want to put her no important no no she is the either the subject or the victim of a rather interesting new biography but she seems to have been a most flamboyant type flamboyant to the nth degree whereas I know him McCormick basically was a good reporter. I calling Fredericks is basically a good reporter. Well so he was of the McCormick family the Washington extension and extended in other directions to round it out. What about the question of our own individual freedom as listeners and as readers. Is the press doing enough for us or are they sometimes frightened off stories. For example when President Carter decided not to campaign because it was not good for the country to have a general discussion in which he would engage while these

very serious Afghan Afghanistan and Iranian crises were going on the press generally agrees with that. But we might find a year or two from now that we might be thinking we were wrong that that at the moment of crisis that we need the greatest public discussion of all figures. Well I think that columnists have been taking a poke at Carter on that a number of them the year. Well perhaps as you suggest he's been getting away with more than than anybody suggests it's an open question. We want him to do his job as president at the same time he may have a moment or two free to discuss it with us. Yes they are rallying around the flag and country right or wrong that kind of patriotism looms up when you've got a crisis and you get a real one. And you know really has as the Iowa caucus showed and I suppose there's no answer to that and it's certainly better than it's ever going the other way.

It's better I suppose in the public interest people on National Public Radio listen to you Louis line because they know that you're going to pick out from the news what is very salient when you start to prepare one of your programs. What is the research philosophy that you have as to what is important to present to your listeners on a given day on any given day. Well Public Affairs primarily and I determined that this time around I'm not going to get hocked for a half a year on these primaries every Monday to talk about tomorrow's primary and every Wednesday yesterday's primary. But that kind of knows some much of it is compelling you have to do it. But I think the whole range of public affairs is is to me very important. I gather that when you prepare one of your programs you you are just as Lisa comes over the radio just as excited by the discovery. You're like

an archaeologist looking for a great discovery. As you prepare each program it comes over the air that way that you are you want to bring this to our attention and you want to get it right away. Well I suppose every reporter has ace a sense of wanting a scoop that course that was terribly overdone wanted to get there first and to be excited if something that he particularly is interested in or know something about has happened now he he can really give that something to talk about right. Yes I think you have that feeling. Well I think it's kind of a scoop in the best sense of having Louis Lyons on this program because I have been as many people our secret admirer at the other side of the radio and television sets for many years and I thank you for your opinions. I hope that you can come back again for this edition. Bernard Reuben. The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The engineer for this broadcast was Margo

Garrison. The program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast has produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University which are solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.