The First Amendment; Roger Fisher

The First Amendment and the Free People Weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s produced by WGBH radio Boston cooperation of the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Rubin. What are the functions and the mouth functions of the mass media insofar as those of us who are concerned with the First Amendment are interested in or to help us tackle that problem I'm delighted to have as my guest Roger Fisher the Willesden professor of law at Harvard University. Those of you who follow Public Television know him as the originator and first executive editor of the famed advocates program which is which was started 10 years ago. He also was a caller originator in the executive editor of the find series of seven programs produced here by WGBH television in 1974 in 1985 called Arabs and Israelis which opened so many of our eyes to the.

Competing in collateral views of people in the Middle East he's taught a seminar on television of the law at Harvard Law School and is currently editorial advisor to a WQED production which will be in title Global papers and Roger tells me they will be on conflict resolution to be seen over the public television network soon. Roger Fisher Not long ago in a book published by Praeger called the Aspen notebook on government in the media. You had a piece on the public's right to know functions and malfunctions of the media and it intrigues me so I thought maybe we'd go down that list and perhaps. You have to do so or you put the function of the media into various categories and the first thing you say it's the public affairs function and you evaluate its ability to communicate with the citizens when we start from there. How effective is it as they are the media's communications with the citizens.

Well look I'm very glad because I think we're a start up and saying how well are the media performing their function. OK. And it's not just a business and not just of they have a right to do things but how well are they doing what they have a right to do living in our society in our society how well do they do it and they have the First Amendment. So that presumably so that our democracy can work better so that our country can do a little better. It's important that we have a free press not just for the presses sake and not just entertain us give us more sex and violence but to help our society do better. So I say that's the first most important function the media is their public affairs function and it is the first one to communicate to the citizens as a reporter to provide citizens with a balanced and maybe an accurate reporting of events now they're doing fairly well. I'll give a pass on that. Bibi minus. You say this distorted by journalist traditions. There are certain things that are style rate of fire in an auto accident as a style. Certainly television is distorted by where they

have pictures of it or not if they haven't got pictures of it. It didn't really happen. What's going on in parts of Africa are ignored because we haven't got the footage of them. Our American reporters aren't there so we know nothing about what's going on Ethiopia Eritrea Somalia because maybe the French journalist so there was not our stouts not in the in the mode we're all reporting on what's happening in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv but not what's happening other places there's a style in which we get caught up in what's of interest. It's like people who are people in news we report Jackie Onassis we report other people not those things which would help us citizens understand how well public officials are doing their job what the job is what needs to be done. They're reporting the events but they're distorted by the what people call news. Is that because of the not only of the habits of journalism but of the comp and competency of journalists.

On the whole I think that the journalist sees his job as doing what journalists have always done and not as what needs to be done. I was in fact at that same Aspen end conference which produced the book. Bill Moyers said Look journalists will decide their job. It shouldn't be anybody else who decides our job. I say nonsense. That's like saying a doctor will decide what his job is if the doctors decide to take care of skin rash and lead outside all the serious diseases. We shouldn't complain because the doctors like to do it. No no a doctor is free to practice dermatology and a journalist is free to report on auto accidents and fires unexpected human interest stories. But that's not the problem of our society where I want to know more about it. Now the next thing you point out is the watchdog function again you give a satisfactory rating to the watchdog function with the press as you say reports instances of possible error or wrongdoing by government officials.

Yes I think that is News and I think it's understood to be news and they're doing a satisfactory job. I do think that there has been. Style sometimes protecting sources and therefore not criticizing people in office. Unless you go after them. Nixon is not discussed until going after Nixon becomes in style what Governor King does may be protected until everybody gangs up on King may be in in style. I once and wash and I went to a senator's office he'd asked me to work on a bill we were both interested in and I called his office and they said oh the senators out of town. And I said I'll drop it off. I knew the senator fairly well I thought. And so instead of walking down four more doors to his receptionist and waiting in line I just knocked on his private door and walked in to drop the paper on his desk knowing he was out of town. He was not a town he was there with empty whiskey bottles around him blind drunk and very cordial. When I left the memorandum there excused

myself and went out and that day I was having lunch with a journalist friend and I said that I never knew that Senator so-and-so was an alcoholic. And he said Oh everybody knows that. I said I mean everybody he said Every journalist knows that. I said Has it ever appeared in the press. No he said. That he would never get another bit of information out of him every time said that. Now that's a protecting sources I think. I hope his vote as a man is no longer alive. Speak freely would he. I hope his voters. I think they should have been told he was an alcoholic and incompetent. Let me take it to another aspect of the watchdog function as you know Congress has an overseer relationship to public administration in this country federal public administration and yet in the atomic energy field in the environmental field in general in other areas the overseer relationship the watchdog relationship is just not exercised because it is too much. It's beyond the competency of

Congress. So we turn to the press. But I also have the strong feeling that the press is not equipped for that as we get deeper and deeper into the 20th century we tend to think of first amendment issues in terms of simple cases involving individuals when sometimes they involve massive groups of people and their rights. But to say the Three Mile River case I don't think the press digs in before I don't really think they dig in during nor afterwards in the typical situation they report with government officials say. But once the story dies down it is dead until another situation occurs. Yes. And the executive branch certainly there's a tendency to. To the battle of press releases you'll go to the atomic energy or now the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and then you go to the Concerned Scientists and you get press statements from each side and that's the reporter's job. They do their routine. They do the routine they do it's the natural thing and they get the statements. Even worse I'd say is the reporter covering Congress.

A congressman a senator like Senator Jackson knows how to get good press coverage. It is don't sit all day in a committee room working. Don't be time drafting a bill. Have your ear on the radio be the first one with a statement on every issue that's there. Have a press release be available for television that so that most of the public get the impression that Senator Jackson. He's all over the news he's saying as important positions on everything whether it's the Middle East or atomic energy or oil there is Senator Jackson has something to say. You get someone like Senator Mathias Republican of Maryland who I think is a far better senator in terms of doing in the public interest what needs to be done virtually unheard of virtually unheard of. Why because instead of calling press conferences trying to work on legislation on the Judiciary Committee or on some other problem and that the press encourages legislators state local and federal to give up serious work and play up to the

press to come on the Meet the Press come on this program that's more important and it means that being a congressman or to get re-elected and everything else you either satisfy the media. Now I would like to say next time Senator Jackson it was a press release. I would like the story to begin perhaps on page 12. That said Senator Jackson in his 30 5th press release of the week said yesterday that I think the press could would hit these people they would begin to do what they ought to be doing do you think that Senator Proxmire should be given a Golden Fleece Award for approaching release. This releases I would think Senator Proxmire who spends more time issuing press releases than any other activity whatever may be him and the press should report the way these people are trying to play up with the press rather than do their job. Well I somehow have a mental picture comes in my mind of Senator Proxmire spending the better part of the morning running into his office and then signing the press release and then meeting the press and then going to another run back home. That makes a good news story. They do the wrong things.

Well so as a watchdog and a critic you have your own views. But as a public forum one would expect the press to really shine because this is where they can present. After all it is the Public Media. And yet you say that television for example should be more open to outside ideas. Yes I think we need the television equivalent of the op ed page. The Boston Globe The New York Times more and more newspapers have not just regular columnists but they invite on a page. Letters to the editor discussing substantive issues. They have columns by contributors guest editorials a great deal more now television the last two or three years has moved more in this direction. They have political commentators the spectrum on CBS they have some people who say that but commercial television does not like controversial ideas they don't want somebody on the air very long for fear the personal change of channel and never get back. And therefore there's a very rigorous control. The networks do not delegate to any

editorial op ed page editor. A decision as to who to put on. They are so afraid that some viewer will come on critical. You know will be there will be unpleasant to many of the listeners but they'll change the channel unless it's some version of the some version I say of the traditional David Susskind approach where some moderator David says kind of Joe terrier says something like. So you're a 900 year old woman warrior who flies her own fighter plane and you know that's right the special guest the colorful people will come in. But the I think we need more. Different people who can give access the way you give access on this program to people and the radio public radio program is virtually isolated in the mainstream even of public radio in providing this kind of access. We had a story here in Boston just yesterday as you know. People went to welfare mothers and so on. People on welfare who are mothers went to the State House trying to see the speaker they were jostled in the hallway.

The public radio station carried it as a serious very well Bound program on the radio. A serious confrontation where they were pushed and shoved and whatnot a lot of screaming and demand for rights and the local senator coming in and saying I'm going to look into this. I heard it on a commercial station. Again the same thing happened. And now the women themselves were the culprits the villains and it was the innocent guards who were actually attacked. So when you turn from station to station public access on the same story can be diametrically different that one station one that helps to get to hear both sides. My ideal is that when it's a citizen Here's one side. To say to yourself I wonder what the fellow on the other side would say. I'd like to hear the policeman's version. I'd like to hear the guard's version I'd like to hear that woman's version. I did no follow up there once the incident ended nobody pursues the welfare mothers to say now what did that mean tell you what we're doing I think another criticism of the media is the news stops when you go to press

or when you make the 11 o'clock news or the 7 o'clock news and then that story is forgotten and tomorrow morning we look at it. It's going to headlines maybe the Three-Mile Island reactor but we don't deal with where do we go from here. The ceiling fell in an auditorium in New Haven. I would like reporter saying Whose responsibility is that to protect other want to check our auditorium ceiling. Who's Who should do something to make this problem less likely in the future. Who's got the ball now. How do you relate the news to public action. If an accident the if the ceiling is falling on a building. We should. The news story comes down the page and then draw a line and say who's got the ball who's got the action here our Inquirer reporter went around the governor as is his responsibility he said no the safety inspector he said no it's the city the city inspector said. I think it's the contract the contract said check with my insurance company and I would like that reporter to come around and put the pin and says all right which public official admits you know this isn't his department and what he can do about it.

Roger Fisher you have me worried now because well I agree with you. We're running in our commentary counter to the mythology of the press that there is this wonderful press digging out the stories reporters with the brims on their hats going in no matter what the Lou Grant approach to commercial television stories. And yet we know that for most of the important stories of our time where even our liberties are at stake they are handled just the way any other personality feature is handled. The luminescence rather than for the depth. I think we're becoming the press increasingly now there are exceptions like the Los Angeles Times does some nice long good pieces on some things that really go on and I know in the space they let the reporter have time and inches to deal with it. But that's not true when you're in Denver or you're in places that the whole news is boiled down to a flash in the pan a very short news. But the real point I'd like to hit where I think the press is falling down is as an aid to citizen

action really help democracy work. The tendency of the media is to treat except for let's say national elections and occasional referenda. Except for voting they tend to treat the citizens as spectators to be talked down to to be talked at. To be dealt with and when at the end of the news Walter Cronkite comes on and says and that's the way it is. And parent that likely is saying and don't you think you can change a bit of it I'm just telling you how it is. You're there at the receiving end of the knows you're not part of running this country. You have no role in it. You just sit there and we'll tell you how it is now. I think we need it may not be that way and it may not be that way but even worse to say that tends to inhibit citizen action. Citizens tend to believe one. There's nothing I can do. Two individuals can't make a difference. 3. I don't know how to go about doing anything. Who should I deal with where do I go. How do I get

involved. The press doesn't answer those questions. I would like to see in a play the Boston Globe or some paper a regular feature called Say upcoming choice. Not every hearing of next year's committee meetings include the unimportant ones the important ones but pick out some decisions going to be made the next three weeks or a month and say here's a decision that the registrar motor vehicles is going to make. Here's the options pending on his table. Here are the arguments pro and con would be nothing wrong with putting in fold out things that you could disregard and that those who wanted to pursue a subject could pursue there might be two or three fold folded sections inserted into the newspaper and we each of us go through a paper with skipping. It's now a smorgasbord. It's like a cafeteria no one can eat everything. If you read the papers today from front to cut from front page the last page you have nothing else to do all day. We skim through to look at the sports the comics I look at the editorial page of the foreign

news you may look at a little human interest maybe all they read and landers I don't know we go through it's junk food for the mind to keep you alive. But it's not the finest French restaurant is it. Well it's not it's not. I could cannot help but compare used to argue cases before the Supreme Court for the government for a couple years. And when we want a Supreme Court justice to make a wise decision we say to him Don't try to side the whole criminal law problem whole thing Here's one case. I will put one side of the case opposing counsel but the other side of the case will give you written arguments both sides and you know when you can make a decision and how we organize the material and we get pretty good decisions by and large. Now the average citizen is not that much smarter than a Supreme Court justice that he can make his decisions wisely with none of that information going for you would say Organization of the material is a requirement of the press but one requirement they fail to meet. I would organize it. I would try to have the press organized the way they think it would be most helpful for a citizen to decide is this

something I care about. But you know what our journalistic colleagues are going to respond. That's not their job. They cover what happens they cover what is How do you respond to their. That's that they're saying the doctor is more fun covering dermatology. I say if you want this country to work better. The only real resource we have is the citizens. We can't wait for better and brighter government officials. We had the best and the brightest trying Vietnam. Now let me let me. We can't wait for some better idea. The only way to make the country work better is to have more citizens applying more of their resources their brains and their time to what we think of as public problems. To do that I'm not saying everybody every problem but to do that our media half a page once a week should least tell those citizens who want to deal with something on how do you deal with corruption in state government. How do we deal with waste really. Who has some decisions to make. How can we affect the state budget. Not just I'm for lower taxes but mechanically how do you do it. Indicating what the choices are when they're going to be made

what the arguments are pro and con and the phone numbers of the organizations working on the people. You know up to a certain limited extent they would probably cooperate but beyond that when you're asking for a functional reorganization of what they do they're going to resist to the press by and large claiming that they do pretty well as it is. But you're saying something very intriguing you're saying that if you want our society to work well by implication you're saying through inadvertence or by design or through sheer era the press doesn't want our country to work well is more interested in selling its product whatever that is whether it's news or views or ads. Then in this more esoteric product called. Democracy working well I say that but in the you know over the years the press has said the First Amendment gives us the right to print anything we damn please. And I say yes it does. And now I'd like you to use your judgment. The paper should be entertainment. Yes it's a museum and fun sports entertainment.

Some chronology of events find file for the records fine. To some extent there should be some part of that paper in which you're saying. I think that one reason government doesn't cite his work letters is a failure of communication. People don't know how to get involved. They don't know that a citizen can make a difference they don't realize that six people working on a problem can make a very big difference. Part of our job is communication to the public letting them know those things which will make them better able to govern themselves. Not just every four years electing a president every two years in a national election. Those things which day by day the citizens committee of half a dozen citizens calling on legislature be worried about it bring in a draft citizen karate learning how to the skills of being effective citizen. We have a job to communicate to the citizens that information which we we are able to gather. So they can participate in improving the quality of our governing body. And that's right they're falling down. I say it's

not my job I say it is your job. Well but suppose suppose they agree it is their job but yet you and I know that perhaps the best way to get information is from one form or another of a book. A book means more than two headlines in three pages. Most of the reporters that we have experience have covered stories that we know about never dig into a book they're looking for the crim sheet the lawyers edition notes to tell them that they don't have to read the case and they're constantly examining it on the surface. Can we get these people to hire professionals to spend the time to read deeper into the facts rather than to say I've got to have this in by five o'clock therefore tell me what's in that book sir. Well there are a lot of institutional difficulties to be overcome. The deadline space the lead the sheer mechanics of setting up a newspaper in which the man who writes it has no idea how long a story is going to be. So he has to rewrite the story every time. But the least important at the

end so they can be chopped off from the bottom. It could be made a 12 inch story or a 60 minute story or 16 story and work either way. That's a funny form of communication where you have no coherence. But there are journals the Christian Science Monitor is able to say we want a piece on this. It's not for today. What's important for tomorrow is not just what happened yesterday but all of us need to understand things better. The most the best the news can do for us is not just to tell us those things that had the least time to consider the front page tends to say extra 10 minutes ago this happened. We know nothing about that so they call our attention to those things which they know the least about. It's very recent. They've got no judgment about it. They don't know what's important or not. They put the big headlines up. And in terms of the relationship between let's say Tanzania and Uganda means work so we had it I mean DOD on

various criticisms of it but what does it mean in Africa to have one country starting to knock over the government on its neighboring country. Africa's a Pandora's box. The borders the colonial borders respect no tribal lines. There's a great a deal of understanding we want to have as to whether we want to. Favor that or not that's not. Well that happened on Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday. And I think that they ought to be parts of the paper where the reporter is freed from the immediate. But again you may be right is the start of the whole paper now John Hughes or Jeffrey Godsell at the Christian Science Monitor might sit down and write a very introspective piece saying that that Uganda's politics consists of X Y and Z. Well that the leadership is faced with this proposition in its area. But on other papers they wouldn't even consider publishing that kind of an article Joseph C. Harsch must be anathema to most people simply because he writes that kind of a piece and has always written that kind of a piece.

But the style we can learn different styles we can learn to be interested in different things. I think one of the things that the television has done is to broaden people's area of interest. Public Television is led the way to make you know a Lehrer report or any other programs like in science Nova has now gone world in politics commercial stations are dealing with it. I think that even in sports. There was a time when tennis was considered a very elite sport. Public Television started broadcasting tennis and tennis has become a national sport. The much much wider. Now I think communication has to be leaders as well as followers. We're in a bus hurtling along a road with a lot of potential choices and changes forks in the road bypasses the tour that may or may not take our journalists are looking out the back and saying here's the what we came through. Let me tell you what the scenery yesterday scenery you want them upfront like I say when the bus driver and the bus driver works for the passengers and we passengers can influence that driver. I want the

journalist tell us what they know about these forks in the road that are coming along. They may not be good choices but their choices. And if he says this road involves that here's a fork coming up next month we can decide whether to do this or that. I'd like to know about that so we can tell the drivers which way we'd like them go suppose the bus driver using your analysis here yells to the reporters in the back of the bus at a certain point we're out of Guinness. Now we can't go any further we can't see any more then it be too late for them to come up there is very little time for them to change. This is gestures that you're making very pertinent I don't see much hope that they're going to be put into practice. We could I think if the press gets criticized they will respond to criticism. I think if we tell time when to put the Boston Globe. You should spend at least a piece of your paper every week trying to give your version of your answers to Fisher's questions. You might do it. Other papers might try. Well I hope that you hearing this is the Chicago Tribune Los Angeles Times The Atlanta

Constitution and journal. What other newspapers obediently interested in. Well The Washington Post why should you suppose it was all about. Under the local journal in Fairfax County called the Providence Journal and I as well as the one in Providence that's their No. I think they think they're good people doing a good job and they stressed slightly misperceive their job. She would have them read back issues of stones weekly until they get the habit that might help. I think that they could I think if they I'd like their answers to the questions. Where is a failure of communication part of our public process. That's what we can make a difference with communication. Well I certainly appreciate your comments and I can't think of any more important questions than the kinds that you are asking Roger Fisher Willesden professor of law at Harvard University. Thank you again for this edition. Bernard Reuben. The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media. In the

1970s the program was produced in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. I w GBH radio Boston which is solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.