The First Amendment; IDC Panel Wrap-up

WGBH radio in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University now presents the First Amendment and a free people and examination of civil liberties and the media. In the 1970s and now here is the director of the Institute for democratic communication Dr. Bernard Rubin. Welcome to this edition of The First Amendment and free people. This is Bernard Ruben. Today our our subject is corporate and interest group access to the mass media. Who are the officers in the storm. As regards the mass media I'm very pleased to have with me today Arnold Robert Smith and Carolyn Lewis all of the faculty of the school of public communication at Boston University. I'd like to introduce the subject by quoting just a little bit from. Servan-Schreiber new book The Power to inform which is subtitled media the business of information. And as regards a businessman he says

this clearly a new type of business leader will be needed. Who can hold his own during public debates in areas hitherto shrouded in secret insecurity. The new managing director will have the qualities of a public figure who knows how to get his point of view across. He will have to be a professional communicator like a journalist or a politician. When Ralph Nader attacked General Motors. The chief executive of the time James Roche was forced to go on television but 40 years in business had not prepared this reputable executive for such a television confrontation and he lacked the necessary verve and presence on the other hand when at his general meeting in one thousand seventy two I TNT had to explain the company's involvement in a political scandal. The oratorical skill of President herald of urging a stockholder's uprising. And then one more little quote defining Clifton Daniel got into a semi literary argument with Jerome Baron both of them. Baron is well known as a law school

dean who has written on the right of access Clifton Danielle as you well know is one of the executives in the New York Times. And in a recent bit of work called The right of access in reply he said this and I'm just taking two things out of context. But he's very critical about access rights and things that your own Baron may go too far in demanding access rights. When I was preparing his remarks he said as I suggested to my secretary that you buy a bushel basket and fill it with press releases petitions powerful telegrams letters many trips. I wanted to empty the basket here on this platform just to show you how many scoundrel scroungers and screwballs in addition to respectable citizens and worthy causes are seeking access to the columns of our newspaper. And then finally this two sentence quote representative groups what constitutes a representative group. Who is to decide. I would say that representative groups already have access to the press. It's the UN representative ones. We have to worry

about. Suppose I just start this off by asking Carolyn Lewis how she perceives this problem. I generally agree with Clifton Daniel on it coming out of journalism. I think I have in my gut a feeling that that democracy should allow some access to the media. On the other hand there is this lunatic element. If you're going to give access does everybody get access. I also feel that journalism is a profession and it's a profession which should be geared to evaluate those people and those ideas which are seeking access in other words I wouldn't want an unfettered free access to the airwaves nobody nobody's going to turn on radio or television if you're just going to have a lot of people talking a lot of nonsense. So my feeling is that interpose between those seeking access and the media themselves there must be a critical evaluation by professional journalists who will say no this is nonsense so this is valid. I know that means that you've got a traffic cop in the way and that probably is is

not what Jerome Baron would like to see. But it seems to me that you could clutter the airwaves you could clutter newspapers with a lot of nonsense. And the kind of thing that would be unreadable. And listen to Bill too. If you didn't have this critical evaluation I also think that journalists are trained or at least ought to be trained to challenge some of the statements made by for example corporations. You know statistics can lie. They can be manipulated. And I think that a journalist should interpose himself and challenge those things not just allow for example a corporation to come onto the air and say this is my case unchallenged. Well Otto you've spent a lot of years studying economic factors in the corporation. How do you think the corporation would feel if the big corporation about the premise that Carolyn just made the big corporations would challenge Carolyn and the reason for it is that they see the news people setting

themselves up as the sole arbiters of what is and is not news and they claim that news is too often divide defined as what is bizarre What is melodramatic what moves what is photogenic rather than some of the. Duller material which perhaps comes under the heading of economics. And so they they would challenge this position and demand some kind of access and when they don't get it they would want to fall back to advocacy advertising in other words a means of buying space. This of course makes the whole rationing system of who gets access work on the basis of price and here we have a counter accusation that corporations are in the best position to convert economic power into political power and of course you don't expect other groups to accept that

particular approach. The third member of this triumvirate is a Robert Smith who knows a great deal about broadcasting and mass media from that angle Bob how do you feel. Well I think the point of view the current is taken that the press should be the determiner and that there is a professional standard for determining what news is is a conventional one. And it is I think a very respectable one in the sense that the press takes up a good deal of slack in the society and when the marketplace of failure marketplace of ideas fails quite often we depend on the press to step in and somehow make it function. At the same time I think if we need as your original quote suggested burning a new kind of business man we need a new kind of public policy also. We've always in this country made a distinction between the marketplace for goods and services in the marketplace for ideas and we expect federal intervention and state intervention in the marketplace of goods and services to protect the consumer. And so we have the FTC for instance determining whether or not the claims made on commercials are valid.

We don't allow the FTC to evaluate whether political statements are valid. We have the Food and Drug Administration asking for the ingredients of prescriptions but we don't have any equivalent kind of federal service asking for the ingredients of new stories where we say the protection of sources is an important constitutional privilege. It seems to me that while we make that kind of distinction we have to expect a great many conflicts to come up that won't be resolved. And I think they come up primarily in the form of say the oil companies who have found that they are denied access to radio and television time to express their point of view. Since they have that's regarded as belonging in the marketplace of ideas rather than in the marketplace of goods and services. This is a totally false and I think unnecessary distinction but it's a fundamental one to Western society. But I think I let's refer to there was a recent case of mobile ware which is a perfect example of what you're talking about. Liz Trotta did a series on the oil companies on NBC in New

York and Mobil Oil took exception to what she said. You made a statement that I wanted to challenge because any good news organization is going to allow the right of reply. Mobil was allowed some time to reply to be questioned and cross to make a statement to be cross-examined in a new situation. Mobile refused to come to the party. It wanted to have its own free unfettered opportunity to just present its side of the case unchallenged by the news or journalistic element. So very often the cry is not that one is denied access but one is denied access in a form which is going to suit the corporation. And I think one of the problems with the business community and I'd like to talk to you about this too is that it's used to being a closed society it's not used to being challenged. And now we have an atmosphere where. Where business is being challenged where people say now wait a minute you may be a private corporation but it

affects the public good and the corporation doesn't want to be buffeted by the winds of the news media like everybody else like Lord knows that the government has been the Freedom of Information Act may relate only to government but it seems to me the corporations are experiencing some of the same kind of criticism and the demands for more and a lot of picking up of Carolyn's question but throwing a little hooker on it Carolyn represents the American news media which claim to be objective unlike you say the French news media or newspapers which claim to represent a point of view each newspaper a different theoretical point of view each magazine and other corporations taking a European point of view that they say we don't want to answer in your news format where you control the idea of what the news is. We want to answer in a European way where we represent our point of expression what the corporations are objecting to I think is that the news media are deciding what the rules of the game are. Now this is what corporations would like to decide I think we were also. Coming up to an attitude of corporations that they

like to carefully design what they say to the public and certainly in the form of a reply and in the case you cited they would have had much time to reply to the specific accusations made and this was part of their opposition I think they lack a spontaneity in going back to the question of whether the chief executive officers ought to be political figures. I think they ought to or at least more of them ought to at least some of the Fortune 500 corporations or two instead of having a background as an engineer and then marketing person and then financial person I think you're going to find more and more who have to be able to react spontaneously. When you talk about that I was reminded when I was in Washington covering the hearings and going out a bit. Yeah Janine is going to Harold Geneen was the head of T and it's a perfect example of what you're saying there were some

really devastating things revealed in those hearings on AI TNT and it really was the tip of the Watergate iceberg if you may recall that whole thing revealed a lot of the things that eventually surfaced in regard to government and and payoffs and so on. And Janine testified in the Judiciary Committee and then came out into the hallway we were not allowed to film inside. And the arrogance of the man when a question a simple question was asked by a reporter I don't have to answer that Who Do You Think You Are was his attitude of course. We just ran the film showing Harold Geneen with this rather arrogant attitude toward the press. And it seems to me that that. That had he some sensitivity to the necessity for the public to understand how I TNT works and its relationship with the government. A lot of the problems of AI TNT might it might have been less known he was arrogant but at those same hearings there were some questions as to huge amounts of money which went into Chile and other places of course to distort the process and this was done in the name of national security.

Now to ask both. All three of you this question. The modern corporate executive Otto hinted at this largely comes out of the controller's office or something connected with the controller's office not through public affairs or journalism or public interest. Are we going to make it in time training executives that know about the public interest. I suspect that the next generation of executives the people who are now in the in the the MBA programs across the country are probably much more aware of these kinds of problems and I'd expect. Them to describe their future roles if you ask them to fantasize a job description of what they'll be doing 15 years from now to include as part of that defending corporate policies on a public platform. I suspect that that is part of it. You know Bernie referred to another problem because the main approach has been that corporate officers are taking telecommunications courses so they can handle themselves on radio and television and before the media. But Bernie asked whether they're being educated along the

lines of understanding what the public interest really is and this is where I think there's a real lack because it's still the bottom line that counts and too much of their expression of the public interest is still seen as self-serving now for example when you look at urban affairs when cities were burning corporations took a great interest in urban affairs. Now at least we can say up to now that cities have not been burning they have slackened in their interest in urban affairs. So this makes me wonder just how deep their conviction. It is with regard to real concern for the public interest certainly in this country one would think would be rather easy to get money for the training let us take one specific example of minority journalists because obviously a corporation going to hire more minority people than they have to have minority journalists explaining with everybody else the program at Columbia University disappeared after a very short time due to the lack of funding there is in this

country no adequate training for people who want up and in to do so at the corporate level. They have kept out by their old traditions of Business at the low level they had kept up by the lack of training facilities. How are we to get proper access. I'm interested in one of the components of your comment Bernie and that is your assumption that in training you use journalists as an example of the corporations that would employ them that is broadcast organizations with large news departments or newspapers have behaved very much like corporations that is they have not invested in this guy. Exactly and we need I think in talking about the press whether it's the printing press or broadcasting to talk about them as corporate entities. We often talk about the freedom of the press as being a right that is naturally allied with the public's interest. And it may be but it need not always be because the press as a corporate entity has its own interests as well. I think you've touched on the heart of the matter which is as long as we are in this country. Living by the profit motive as long

as the profit motive is the highest goal of our society in economic terms is there any way that you're going to have a insensitivity to the needs of the public commitment. Would you say newspapers large newspapers of course they've got to make a profit so they're not going to do anything that rocks the boat in those terms. The same thing with it with an oil company it's not going to do anything it's going to shake up the system. Do you see any way out of it. If profit is the central thing and the central goal of our society is there any way really that any of these organizations are going to be going to be that considerate of the needs of the public. I'm not certain that profit is the real problem here it may be the tendency of any organization to stabilize itself whether it's profit seeking or a public service organization or a governmental department. And I think it may be simply that tendency toward which attending a stable state that any organization whether it's profit making or not has. And I guess I'm pessimistic.

Peter Drucker likes to talk about several goals of business one of them being profit making another one being survival. And I think the key here is whether you can bring businessmen around to realizing that. The larger goal the more important goal is indeed keeping a free enterprise in the corporate form alive and the only way they can keep it alive is to move along that continuum where on one side you simply have selfish profit motivation and on the other side you have socialism they're moving further toward what I call as a do it yourself socialism by recognizing social responsibility. When pressure grows and they fear government legislation or literally fear the survival of the system. This I think is the key to with that. That basically though the corporate the corporation and I'm talking about newspapers and broadcasting organizations as well have a vested interest in protecting the status quo they might give a little bit on the front of letting power come to ordinary people to poor people or to

blacks and minorities. But they're not going to give too much. And I think one reason we're probably around here discussing this at this time is there is a struggle going on in this country and the name of the game is power and the power is in the hands of those who are rich and those that the large corporations and what you have the rumblings of people down at the lower end of the scale who don't have a chance to get in. Isn't it true that what the corporation is going to do in terms of public policy. It's going to try to protect the status quo it's going to protect its right to manipulate the wealth and to hang on to its wealth. I would say up to a point because here if you draw a distinction between corporations that produce goods and services. And the corporations that run the media. The criticism of the first group is that the media corporations are giving more space more time to say a so-called third sector groups or public interest groups the social activist groups because that's the way they can

increase readership and increase one of the authors a lot of that is feature story stuff. But I think on the in the main I agree with Carolyn we are not being trained to see others who are not surviving to use your phrase we're not trained to understand them so they don't survive in vacuo. Nobody pays too much attention and we get instead. I heard Arthur F. BURNS yesterday on the airwaves and he's very dry and he's very very ponderous. Federal Reserve System and he told the congressman that we have the highest number of people working in our history and so on and so forth. But he doesn't see those who are not working and we are constantly taught to appreciate the corporate aspect of the picture rather than the people who are suffering. I don't think though Bernie that we should assume that there are power blocs or groups that work for power based on a static analysis that they will always be aligned or in opposition to each other. One of the things that comes to mind is that

access as the term was used in relation to radio and television came into usage in the 1960s largely in relation to minority groups or to citizen action groups and environmental groups and that's the background. It was an anti-corporate device the values of the people concerned about access were by and large reform values. Now with the discovery by the oil companies that because of the distinction made between Market Place a good marketplace of ideas because of that distinction the oil companies cannot talk about their editorial content. That is their economic ideas and their commercials all they can do is tell you to buy more oil or gasoline or whatever because of their discovery of that. They've become concerned about access. So suddenly we find that access is now a problem for some of the most powerful groups in the society. No one would have anticipated that for instance former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson in working with citizen groups would find himself allied with the oil companies it's the most unnatural Alliance one can think of and yet that's where we are.

You know Paul that's interesting because one of the things I've been trying to teach my students in journalism is to apply is rigid evaluative and journalistic standards to public interest groups as they do to the oil companies there is a band among the young you know to be sort of anti corporation anti big business that's kind of part of being adolescent I suppose and maybe I'm maybe a little bit that way too which proves where you're going but. But there was a tendency I think in the 60s to give uncritical access to public interest groups for example Ralph Nader who I admired greatly I think he's done a great deal for the consumer movement was allowed to spout all kinds of things which had not been challenged by professional journalists. Where is it. There's a tendency to challenge everything that the corporation does. And I think if the press is going to keep its role in this thing it has to apply the same rigid standards to public interest groups with self-appointed groups environmental groups for example do get a free ride on the media without a great deal

of investigation into the basis on which they make their claims and I think that we journalists really have to to apply that rigid standard to them. And give equal treatment to the corporations. So maybe there is a basis on which the corporations are overhaul or lots of people get free rides for example the environmental groups get free rides. People have just wild ideas get free rides people who want to protest get a certain amount of free rides and in keeping with making licenses look good and so on and so forth. But if you come forth and say what I want is a free ride for a basic explanation of X Y and Z. If you're not kooky if you're not an idea person like Nicholas Johnson. If you're not a John Gardner or Ralph Nader what category do you fit into one of the things we expect I think in both radio television and in the press is that the people who make editorial decisions will make them. By what by a standard we might call responsible and what we quite often mean I think is respectable We don't want to have a cookie that is unacceptable ideas expressed and so we define the limits of the

debate. And it's not defined intellectually it's defined I think by attitude and not only by attitude but also by a certain kind of specialized knowledge. Now I sympathize with corporations in one respect and this is that so often they have to talk about the economic side of things. Now you mention off the birds in his dry manner. Economist always represents. The reality principle as Freud called it rather than the pleasure principle now the reality principle is first of all unpopular and secondly it tends to be a dull it's disturbed father warning a child not to behave in a certain fashion So corporations are cast in this unpopular role. Now Moreover they often have to deal with reporters who lack sufficient knowledge of economics. It's been said that some of the reporters who ask corporate controllers about billions millions and

millions dollars of say new securities don't know the difference between a stock and a bond. Now you know you raise the question of responsibility and professionalism on the part of reporters but don't you have to upgrade. The knowledge of those reporters who are going to cover certain kinds of news don't you need a high degree of specialization among the news people so that you don't have a general reporter covering economic news for example. There's a trend in that direction how did you realize at least of the better organizations to have someone who really has an economic background. There is a risk of course that if you get too friendly with the people that you're covering you lose the adversary relationship. And the job of a reporter is not just you know a lot about economics and understand the corporate situation but to be able to put it in people terms people language and that's a very special gift.

Well let me take the complex emotional disorders and cover the corporation the way Walter Sullivan covers space for the New York Times. I'd be very pleased if I understand the black holes I understand vector lived on an airplane. I understand atomic energy. I'm not really into right now. So that's what I understand Walter Sullivan who makes me think that I understand he makes a heroic effort to deal with lunkheads like me on these mighty problems Bernie. I would like to put a word in for one of the better women journalists Eileen Shanahan who I think does that enormously well in for the New York Times and I think as I say I think the larger organizations the ones that have the can have the luxury of having a specialist are using people who do have inside knowledge and still have the gift of transmitting it. We make an interesting distinction in that we allow in the printed press the newspaper and magazines. We allow the editors to respond to make decisions on what belongs in there with a good deal of independence and we allow them to move back and forth from advertising to editorial content to straight news content. If we can make a

tripartite distinction with great ease and essentially trust their editorial their professional judgments in the broadcasting area we assume that the government has an affirmative obligation to assure balance and access. And that creates some interesting. Problems Yeah the Fairness Doctrine of course is use really as a chilling thing really what happens is the station says I would have to give equal time so many bother with this anyway. I mean I won't even start off with anything controversial. And what you get in bored casting and you probably agree with me is the sort of blandness you get long talk shows which they don't talk at infant eyed him with. With movie stars and rock stars and you know in that time kind of set up a good talk program with Arthur Burns you might get some lively give and take in some controversy. So what you get is a you know broadcasting basically a very difficulty with men who part their hair in the middle. Why am I why am I aware of that James there was first cartoon which was the first one published in The New Yorker showed a CEO at the head of a

bed and a man and wife in the bed and the seal was right at the headboard behind them and the wife turns to her husband and says he looks very disgruntled as all of the men did when faced with that. All right dear. You hear a seal bark but unfortunately in the press today when it comes to the coporation minority groups and other we don't have a seal barking. Anybody want to pick up on that Thurber cartoon. Well I I we can say there is a need for more sophisticated reporting. The other alternative is to say we need a public policy which would allow for that so it becomes a matter of policy to encourage it rather than to say it's the obligation of the individual journalist that you have to make a choice on whether we want a public policy in that area as we do in the marketplace of goods or that we want to keep it a free marketplace. And I'm aware that we might consider auto's remark that we had better do something because if capitalism was to spread of capitalist want it to spread then they've got

to do something against the creeping tide of socialism which seems to be on the upswing around the world or or other isms. I want to thank very much my three colleagues Robert Smith Karen in Louis and Jim for pushing back this front here a little bit and giving us access to some rather decent thinking. Thank you. VHF radio Foster in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University has presented the First Amendment and a free people. An examination of civil liberties and the media in the 1970s. This program was recorded in the studios of WGBH radio Boston.