Mr. Agnew and the News

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Monday so that we may bring you the following special program. The day when the network commentators and even the gentlemen of the New York Times enjoyed a form of diplomatic immunity from comment and criticism of what they said is over. Yes gentlemen, that day is passed. If not the present type of control, news judgment, what would you substitute? Who would you have answered the question, a news judgment, a committee of politicians, bureaucrats, sociologists or what?

I think that I'd rather trust this to professional journalists and I think that the people when they finally get down to analyzing the possibilities, the alternatives would come to the same conclusion. I don't seek to intimidate the press or the networks or anyone else from speaking out, but the time for blind acceptance of their opinions is passed and the time for naive belief in their neutrality is gone. Our gentleman is Mr. Agnew a threat to freedom of the press, Norman Isaacs of the Louisville Courier Journal. Yeah, I'm afraid so and Mr. Agnew and Mr. Birch and I'm afraid they've already succeeded to some extent.

Fred W. Friendly of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I don't think any one man can be a threat to freedom of speech or freedom of the press in the United States. If there is a terror, it's out there with the American people and they'll have to decide whether there's a threat to freedom of speech or not. Bill Moyers, publisher of News Day. I don't think that Mr. Agnew can succeed in doing what every president from George Washington to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon tried to do. Robert Wells, Federal Communications Commissioner. I think it all gets back to the fact that in our society, how can one man, no matter what position he holds, be a real threat to freedom of the press? James Kilpatrick, syndicated columnist. Of course, he's not a threat to freedom of the press. Any more than Billy Graham is a threat to the freedom or the existence of the Roman Catholic Church. Frank Shakespeare, a director of the United States Information Service. No, freedom of the press is not an issue at all. What is an issue is whether or not the news media are reasonably fair and balanced in their

presentation of the news. That is the issue, not their right to be free. Good evening. I'm James Fleming, and these gentlemen in New York and Washington are going to consider with us tonight the phenomenon of Mr. Agnew and the news. In the past two weeks, in separate speeches in Des Moines and Iowa and Montgomery, Alabama, Vice President Agnew shook up the entire communications industry with his charges of editorial bias and bad judgment and network television news. This questioning of monopolistic radio, television, newspaper, and news magazine conglomerates. Well, much of what he said has long been of serious concern to many people in the news business. The smiling bravely, they say their major regret thus far has been that he and not they said it. Last year, the public broadcast laboratory produced a program called The Whole World is Watching. It was a serious examination of broadcast journalism and dealt with many of the same areas that concern Mr. Agnew. Let's begin with a look at some of Mr. Agnew's recent remarks and some thoughts on the

same subjects provided by members of the industry themselves on last year's PBL program. For millions of Americans, the networks are the sole source of national and world news. And we're Roger's observation, what you knew was what you read in the newspaper. Today, for growing millions of Americans, it's what they see in here on their television sets. Now, how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering perhaps no more than a dozen anchor men, commentators and executive producers, settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film and commentary that's to reach the public. This selection is made from the 98 to 180 minutes that may be available. Their powers of choice are broad. They decide what 40 to 50 million Americans will learn of the day's events in the nation

and in the world. I think that all we can really do is, in a half hour each day, as we can do the headlines, we can bring people up to date on what has happened that day in a running story, television news is a sort of mixture of what used to be movie theater newsreels, radio news broadcasts, some of the techniques of newspapers, some of the techniques of news magazines, and even on longer and a more extended program, some of the techniques in non-fiction books. I sometimes go on feeling that we are doing an inadequate job of reporting, because there are things that, perhaps, if we had another few hours, we would know more about. But nevertheless, we have to impart whatever information is available to us at a given time every day, and that does create certain difficulties for us, and it probably results

in some misinformation or some incomplete information being given out. How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their annex for the next minute? I think if you saw the amount of film that we turn down and do not use, which is, gee, weird, look at the bombs go off. Right, that look at the gun shoot. So much of what we don't use, we turn down far more than we do use, and it's just so inconceivable to me that our unit, and I think NBC News gently or CBS or ABC, would drop a good analytical report by a good reporter to use a piece of film film, because it's action.

I think that, generally, there is a tendency to cover the story that has action to it, and the story that doesn't have action to it, and the story that has visual values to it, as opposed to a story that does not have. If we are doing a very important story, and we are not presenting it in an interesting manner, in a manner that is attractive to the audience, then we're not going to hold it here. A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice. A caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of the government policy. Through the allow, there are biases to influence the selection and presentation of the news. David Brinkley states, objectivity is impossible to normal human behavior. Rather, he says, we should strive for fairness. I'm not objective. Make no pretensive being objective. There are great many things I like

and dislike, and it may be that sometime some indication of this appears in my facial expression or yours or anyone else's. If it didn't, we'd be in a pretty sad, pretty sad condition. Indeed, pitiful condition. Objectivity is impossible to a normal human being. Fairness, however, is attainable, and that's what we strive for. Not objectivity. Fairness. We do know that, to a man, these commentators and producers live and work in a geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C. or New York City, the letter of which James Rustin terms the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States. Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. But there have to be some people who belong to what we call in the United States, the national press. We belong to that. You belong to that. You have national concerns, and you tend to live in and rub shoulders with people who have other national concerns, and that's

Washington for us. And I can easily see why people in other towns around the country can develop a sort of almost a conspiracy theory about people who live at the seat of the national government. We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints. Obviously, the times is the New Yorker's security blanket. You wrap yourself in the times. There is only one New York Times. I think the main thing we try to do, which we've been trying to do in television for a long time, is to get away from two things. One, the AP budget, and whatever the New York Times says is fit to print, because neither the AP budget or with the New York Times says fit to print, is necessarily what's news. It may be, but there may be other things too. And I have the best story that I've ever heard about that is Tom

Petter used to work for him. He's seen it as now working again after his thing with Leo. It was once in Alabama, in some places, somebody on the desk somewhere in New York said, well, in the New York Times, it says, and Tom said, we don't get the New York Times down here. And the American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power in fewer and fewer times. Should a conglomerate be formed that tied together a shoe company and a shirt company, some voice will rise up righteously to say that this is a great danger to the economy, and that the conglomerate ought to be broken up. But a single company in the nation's capital holds control of the largest newspaper in Washington, D.C. and one of the four major television stations, and an all-news radio station, and one of the three major national

news magazines, all grinding out the same editorial line. And this is not a subject that you've seen debated on the editorial pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times. I'm opposed to censorship of television of the press in any form. I don't care whether censorship is imposed by government or whether it results from management and the choice and presentation of the news by a little fraternity having similar social and political views. I'm against, I repeat, I'm against media censorship in all forms. But a broader spectrum of national opinion should be represented among the commentators in the network news. Men who can articulate other points of view should be brought forward. What you put a conservative on, as often as you'll put a liberal on, you'll find them. You bet. If you can find them, that would have been a good one.

There's a problem though. How hard do you look? You look very hard. And what seems to be true is that most people who write well and are in the arts and in the business of communicating tend to be liberal. Conservatives tend to be businessmen and businessmen do not tend to write well. Gresham's law seems to be operating in the network news. Bad news drives out good news. Placidity is not news. News is the unusual and the unexpected. If an airplane departs on time or arrives on time, it's his news. If it crashes regrettably, it is. I don't understand that could point it all. Never have. Problem, the criticism we're getting today about, we don't show enough good news. We show only bad news. The problem is that the establishment doesn't want to share that information with the public.

They've always profited by being able to control that information and knowing where the source is information or what was happening in advance for the public. Now they don't know an advance any longer. They learn it and the public learns it simultaneously. And this is where the problem is. And the people of America are challenged to challenge to press for responsible news presentations. The people can let the networks know that they want their news straight and objective. The people can register their complaints on bias through mail to the networks and phone calls to local stations. I'm afraid of a process of self-sensorship developing. Not somebody telling us what not to do, but of reporters and editors and producers. Avoiding subjects or incidents because there's going to be a big who-ha about it and you're going to have to answer a subpoena. And who needs that kind of trouble? You know, even when we get a cat being rescued out of a tree and so on, we feel that way.

Now my friends, we never trust such power as I've described over public opinion in the hands of an elected government. It's time we questioned it in the hands of a small and unelected elite. The great networks have dominated America's airways for decades. The people are entitled to a full accounting of their stewardship. Well, we fight for freedom of the press. We're not fighting for our right to do something. We're fighting for the people's right to know. That's what freedom of the press is. It's not licensed to the press. It's freedom of the people to know. How do they think they're going to know? By putting television news, or newspapers, or any other news, or under government control? Well, there's a formidable agenda for you, gentlemen, of the panel.

In Washington, Frank Shakespeare, laid a senior vice president at CBS Television, now in charge of television for President Nixon's election campaign, and is now director of the U.S. Information Agency. Fred Friendley, who produced, see it now in CBS reports, former president of CBS News, now a journalism professor at Columbia, TV consultant Ford Foundation. And Bill Moyers, press secretary to President Johnson, now publisher of the Long Island Views paper in News Day. In Washington, Robert Wells, the recently appointed Federal Communications Commissioner, pointed by President Nixon, formerly General Manager of the Harris group of Midwest radio stations. Back in New York, James Kilpatrick, columnist, and former director of the Richmond News leader. And Norman Isaacs, he's the executive editor of the Louisville Courier Journal, and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Well, I'll put my first question to Washington, to Mr. Frank Shakespeare.

Mr. Shakespeare on September 26, then Detroit. You gave a speech that's now just beginning to be noticed a bit. And in it, you said, the overwhelming numbers of people who go into the creative side of television, tend by their instincts to be liberally oriented. Now, may I ask you, was that the first shot in a planned administration campaign to show their displeasure in television? No, of course not. Those are my own views, and I expressed them on my own volition without checking with anyone. I believe, by the way, they are correct. I noted in the series of shots that you had just before my coming on live here, Mr. Blaine Lightell said exactly the same thing. Well, now, back in New York, I think stewardship might be the key question we might just go to. And first of all, who controls really the television industry in the United States of America? Is it these newsmen we're talking about, Fred Friendly? Well, I think it's a very complex series of events and people that do it. It's the licensees who belong to a network and a network that creates a news organization and a news organization filled with producers, editors, correspondents like Mr. Cronkite, former colleague of mine, Mr. Brinkley, a very tough competitor of ours.

A whole series of people each doing their best, pulling, straining, doing the best they can. And there is one no one single force or point of view. It's worked out in the push and pull of a news organization doing the best it can sometimes exceeding sometimes failing as in newspapers and in magazines. Bill Moyers, I notice Walter Cronkite asked, is there any alternative to the present situation? Do you think the government or the vice president is trying to suggest an alternative? I'm sure that he'd like to have an alternative, but I think that he'll be unlucky and his search for one because these things tend to have a way of developing through the competitive process, through the process of elimination. And I just do not in my own mind or in my own experience come up with any alternative to the present system. I think that those of us who run newspapers or work in radio and television have an enormous obligation to constantly ask ourselves, are we doing the best with this enormous opportunity and this privilege that we have?

I think basically that's probably what vice president Agnew had in mind when he raised the questions and I grant you I'm giving him the benefit of several doubts, but it does seem to me that until we know that the administration is trying to develop some alternatives that none of us really need to feel intimidated by what he said he is not after all. The first public official and I suspect that he will never be the last to raise questions like these. In Washington, we have a new member of the Federal Communications Commission and of course Mr. Wells, one of the objections that was made in the shall we say establishment was the fact that the new FCC chairman personally asked the heads of networks for their copies of the comments after the recent speech by President Nixon. Do you think that was appropriate?

Mr. Birch, I brought that up to the commission after it done and he wanted to see them. He comes from the western country where you want something you ask for it. He asked for it. He got results and probably the side effects were things that he had not anticipated. It was perfectly plain and clear that he wanted to look at them and then circulated into the rest of the commissioners for our information. Mr. Isaacs, it was your suggestion to the president that he discharge not only Mr. Birch, Mr. Herbert Klein, his director of communication. I didn't include Herbert in that. Oh, no, not at all. I haven't found any reason yet to disagree with Herbert and what he said, I think he ducked and dodged but I have no fault to find yet with Herbert's position. Actually, I listened to the first part of Mr. Agnew's speech at Des Moines on television with some bemused satisfaction. It was only when he got around to the licensing that I started to get my commander up and when Mr. Birch piled on, I just blew my cork.

Because I think that was the time that President Nixon as a good referee should have dropped the penalty flag and blown the whistle on him because he's becoming prosecutor as well as judge. Now, earlier, first I'd like to make perfectly clear. I've been a critic of both newspapers and television for a long time. There's no secret about that within the industry. Nobody is chewed on him harder than I have. And Herb mentioned sort of wistfully on that program a week ago that John Chancellor and I had shared a platform with him at Colorado Springs and gotten a lot rougher than Mr. Agnew. Herb was right, but the difference was we weren't talking about licensing. Now, this thing to me is very serious because I think that the networks are in trouble right now because of these.

It's coercion because I'm almost willing to bet that the next time there's a presidential address, a great many of the affiliates are going to cut right away and not carry commentary. And this will be the test. In other words, Mr. Agnew and Mr. Birch may say up and down all they want to that they're not for intimidation or coercion, but they look up what they wanted. They'll cut off these people and silence the commentary and vast part of the country. And I'm scared of it. Mr. George Patrick, you're not only a syndicated columnist. You're a commentator for the Washington Post television. How do you react to the comments, Mr. Isaacs? Well, I'm a commentator for the Washington Post television station in Washington two times a week for two minutes each. I did not listen like Mr. Isaacs to the vice president with bemused satisfaction. I listened to him with absolute satisfaction. He was saying at the highest level of government some things that needed very badly to be said. And it is not like my beloved friend.

Mr. Isaacs says, Mr. Isaacs teased off on the newspaper industry and he has. Oh, he has. He is speaking within the family. And you know, this is the great difference. When Mr. Agnew teased off on the television industry, he is an outsider, makes all the difference in the world. Because I am a part and Mr. Isaacs is a part of the greatest bunch of cry babies in the world. When anyone from the outside picks on us, we scream to high heaven. We howl intimidation and everything else. It's all right when one of our own says critical things about one of our own. But you let a vice president of the United States say some unkind things about us after all the unkind things that have been said by the press about Mr. Agnew. Oh, brother. This is one of my blasts. And I think it was what Mr. Agnew was talking about. Is he essential unfairness? And Mr. Isaac said a moment ago that after the next presidential speech there might be no commentary.

Mr. Fleming. Gosh. I think maybe next time there might be fair commentary, which would certainly be a novelty on some of the networks. Mr. Shakespeare in Washington. Yes, Mr. Fleming. I was going to comment about Mr. Isaacs remarks and now about Mr. Kilpatrick about whether or not the affiliates will cut away after the next presidential speech. You know, there is an alternative for the affiliates and that is they can cut away and put on their own local man talking about the president speech. In that case, instead of having one or two men talking to the entire nation, you would have 200 stations each with their own local man representing the flavor of their own local community commenting. Perhaps that would be a more interesting way and a more balanced way for commentary to be presented to the American public after a presidential speech. Mr. Shakespeare wouldn't it also be a more incompetent way? Not unless you assume that local commentators are incompetent as compared to network commentators. I wouldn't hold that for a moment. I think it would be diverse. Mr. Shakespeare, in that same speech in Detroit, you said that I guess again your personal opinion that commentators might be hired on an ideological basis. Do you think you still hold that?

Well, that was a misinterpretation. Not a misinterpretation. Let me clarify what I said. Blaine Lightell said in the beginning of these remarks that people who go into the arts, people who go into the theater tend by their very instincts to be on the liberal side of ideology, people who go into business tend to be on the conservative side. And therefore, in the networks, you find that not the majority, but the preponderance of those who are in the network news departments in my judgment around the liberal side. That creates a very serious difficulty because it goes to the psychological question, contend liberals sitting in a room be consistently fair over a period of a year or 18 months to the conservative opinion. I think the newspapers that make a point of carrying columnists on both sides of the political fence, for example, they carry men like James Jackson, Kill Patrick, who's on here, like William Buckley, like David Lawrence, like Victor Rysell, like John Chamberlain. Those are men who are known to be on the conservative side. There are, of course, many liberal columnists also, but there's balance or there's reasonable balance in so far as the columnists are concerned.

Now, going to the question of network television news, do we think that there are nationally known television newsmen who represent the conservative opinion, the way the gentlemen that I just indicated represent the conservative opinion in nationally distributed columns? Lastly, is the really mix in television news, ideological mix, among the men presenting the news, writing it and making the decisions? Well, isn't it possible, Mr. Shakespeare, that right here is one of the great concerns people have, and that is that the government might even inadvertently be dictating to the networks and the stations about their personnel. Fred, friendly, do you know from your own experience that there's this liberal predominance? Well, I think Mr. Shakespeare, who was in on some of the decision making about programs that got on television and some that didn't, about nights when there would be news analysis after a presidential speech and when there would not. He was part of the working group at CBS, working for Mr. Aubrey, who helped people like me and others at CBS make decisions.

I think that Mr. Shakespeare mixes up editorialists, and when he mentions David Lawrence, he's talking about an editorialist, with news reporters. And I think Mr. Shakespeare knows better than that. I think for him to make what is really a pejorative statement that all broadcasts on all networks up, or predominantly liberal, that's one of those overstatements like Mr. Agnew saying that he speaks for the silent majority. I don't think there is such a thing as the silent majority, and I don't think that Mr. Agnew or any one man talks for them. I think that Mr. Shakespeare is trying to say that all the people who work at all in networks speak in one tone of voice. They do not. They never have. They disagree with each other. They disagree with me. They disagree with what Mr. Shakespeare is saying. They are reporters. Occasionally they cross the line into news analysis. They are not editorialists. They never make up the viewer or listen his mind on a course of action.

I think Mr. Shakespeare knows that. I read that Mr. Shakespeare at a recent convention, and I'll be glad to have him tell me it was wrong, said that at the 1964 convention, the broadcasts, particularly those at the company that he used to work at and I used to work at, were all against Barry Goldwater and were trying to make up people's mind on that. I hope he didn't say that. If he didn't say it, I'd like him to tell me that now. Fred, may I answer all these comments that you have just made now? Sure. Firstly, to go back to this question of the columnists, I think you are precisely correct. All of the men that I mentioned are in fact columnists and they are not news reporters as such. Point I'm trying to make, Fred, is that I think that there is not an observable mix of people with differing ideological point of views on regular network television. My judgment, that is what the basic cause of the problem is. We're not talking here about the freedom of the press.

Television is the most important social instrument of our time in my judgment, and I think in yours. And if any government ever tries to control television, television must fight back and refuse it. We're talking about, I'm coming to it, Fred. What television must do in my judgment is face squarely the question as to whether or not on a continuing basis, it is reasonably fair to the conservative positions in this country. There are many people including myself who think that it is not. You then go to the question of why not. If there is any correction, it must be within the medium itself. And I think it is fair comment for people to say, as Mr. Agnew has said, and others have said, that there does appear to be a liberal imbalance. The question as to how it should be corrected should be decided within the medium itself. I suggested a possible way. Balance of men with different ideas.

Would you interview them before you hired them? How do you stand on the war? Howard Smith would tell you that he believes in the war in Vietnam. David Brinkley might or might not. I really don't know how he feels about it. It might tell you something else. Would you interview them about race, about black, about young people, about college campuses? Is that the kind of judgments you make before you hire people to work for the United States Information Agency? Fred, David Brinkley said just before in the film clips before you and I started this discussion that was shown, that he did not believe any man was really objective. And I think that's true. Any man that's worth his salt believes in something. He has fundamental ideals. He's an activist. Particularly men that are good men. And you must get men who have varying shades of opinion, varying shades of political judgment because it's in that mix that you get balance. If all you do is have men on one side of the ideological fence, then the only way that you can get balance is by self-discipline and I think over a long period of time. That's a very risky way to try to get balance. It's better to get it in the ferment of ideas. The mix of different ideas and different people.

Can someone else get a word in edge-wise? I think if you don't mind. I like to get a word in edge-wise. It seems to me that we're ignoring the fact that there's a great American public. I think Saul Hurac used to say if nobody, if people don't come, nobody can stop them. Well, people vote with their tastes. They vote for personalities and you cannot, it seems to me, arbitrarily, put them on the air. And you cannot, it seems to me, if I may get into this a bit, invent a sort of anti-media abstraction which becomes a kind of political party that people hate. Mr. Moyers and then Mr. Kilpatrick. Well, I really think the discussion has wondered a far from some of the points that Mr. Agnew made. Mr. Agnew's speech contained many elements in it. And as one of my friends said, she thinks the truth of it lay not in between but all over. And I think that's true too. I think the imperfections lay all over also. There is one point to be concerned with concerning the objectivity or whatever you wish to call it about the network journalist. I happen to grant to him the same kind of professional freedom that I think a reporter for my newspaper should have. He has a journalist.

I would hope that he remains a journalist whether he's a conservative or a liberal. I hope he remains a conservative trying to get at what he or a commentator, a journalist, trying to get at what he thinks is the truth of a situation. But now you move beyond that, beyond the question of the political philosophies of Marvin Kalb or Dan Rather or Walter Cronkout or David Franklin into the question of what happens following a presidential speech. Now here I think the networks have an obligation apart from whatever their own journalists say about that speech to present viewpoints that do represent the spectrum of possible political reaction to that speech. I think for example, it is not fair to rebut a president speech only with W.A.V.R.L. Harman. I think that fairness and balance requires a network and the pursuit of truth requires the network to put on W.A.V.R.L. Harman and someone whom they know in advance is going to be sympathetic to the administration. I think you have two different considerations here. The journalist as a professional who works for a network and the question of what the networks do following a presidential speech.

I used to get furious when I was at the White House. It's some of the comments made by Mr. Friendly staff following presidential speeches. You had three networks all carrying the president simultaneously. What's wrong with the little analysis after that? I came to believe this was a good thing while I was in the White House even though I was angry and I would often call you or I'd often call a commentator and say I think you missed the point. I think you really glossed over what was the essential element but I also realized that it is a mistake to give the president of the United States who is after all a politician who always has many purposes in the construction of his speech. It's an absolute uninterrupted, unimpeded access to 30 minutes time in the minds of 50 million people because in this country the kind of reaction that you hope to get in a democratic give and take depends upon people trying to get at what the president meant and didn't mean. In this sense though I come back to the point that I think the networks do a great service when they offer James Gilpatrick on one side and myself on the other side in response to a presidential speech.

Well we're rendering an extraordinary service today with all of you gentlemen. I believe there's Mr. Gilpatrick. I'm going to try to be brief but I got so much to try to say in a few seconds. It seems to me that Mr. Magnew made one point the other night and one complaint and one prayer. His point was the power of network television which is prodigious. His complaint was that that power has been used unfairly. I believe it has. His plea was that they be fair hereafter. I just disagree totally with with my good friend Mr. Friendly. Mr. Shakespeare calls him Freddy. He's Mr. Friendly to me. When Mr. Friendly said that the networks do not speak with one tone of voice well they do speak with one tone of voice. He's been a part of this thing. I've been out there in my living room watching it watching all the networks just as one viewer and I say it in my opinion as one viewer. Yes they do speak with one tone of voice and I'm fed to the teeth with it.

Mr. Wells in Washington I note that the FCC sent a letter to a lady in Southwest saying that the commentary after the speech of President Nixon met FCC requirements. Would you explain that to us sir? Certainly before I came on the commission by unanimous vote the commission in two separate cases. I'm sure most are familiar with them. Disavowed any right of the government or the FCC in particular to intervene in network news judgment. In other words leaving this wide open it does not mean that their judgment is not open to question but that fairness should be the policy. And so this was by unanimous consent and it's on there. In view of this seven zero vote on this I personally think that there may be some of the clamors been exaggerated and it's not as much concern. Again we get back to what is fair one man's fairness as I guess is another man's prejudice but that is a basic question.

Mr. Isaacs what is fair it's clamor it's been exaggerated the other day I made a speech at the University of Michigan. And since then I've been the recipient of scads of mail many of them. Oh most of them disagree with me and quite a few have been thoughtful letters and there are two secretaries at home fending with it right now. But the sad and frightening thing to me is the sick male. And this morning I had a letter on my desk from Clark Mullenhof and I replied to it. And I told Clark about this and I what mischief has been cooked up because this sick male is vicious and venomous. And it's my first experience with volume of this kind that refers flatly to the Jew owned and Jew dominated mediums of communication and the open demand for censorship by government.

And I know Jack you shake your head at this but this kind of stuff I've never had it before and I don't think you have either. This stuff all at once coming in this is what we've cooked up now we I mean this this kind of thing now you know very well the agnew second speech now the first speech was cleverly written. The one among them right no no the what the first one the one in the morning yeah on TV was cleverly written it was well done except for my objection to the licensing part and he delivered it with unusual skill. That second one was a real turkey because he had a spacks all screwed up and for instance his and Arthur Salisberger got him right dead to rights on that one because he was factually wrong. In a number of instances and he was factually wrong about the Washington Post as you well know talking about one editorial voice well your editorial voice appears on WTOP all no.

What do you do on WTOP I do two comment areas a week of two minutes each Mrs. Graham doesn't read her newspaper look at her news magazine or watch your TV. What is he actually wrong this rag new was because he forgot to mention the owner station of Miami to well he's a dead shoddy research. And the vice president ought to ought not to be a bunger with facts. Mr. Moore I just would like to inject here an editorial opinion this is not the product of an objective journalist the opinion is that that Mr. Agnew really seemed to me to be more upset about people who disagree. Then he was with the general foibles and frailties of the press that's an editorial opinion which is deduced from the evidence of the inaccuracies in his speech as Mr. Isaacs just said. From the careful omissions that he made in that speech now here's a man who journeys to Montgomery Alabama to attack the Washington Post and the New York Times neither of which is permitted in Montgomery except under the cover of darkness.

But is silent about the concentration of power in the company that owns both the morning and the afternoon newspapers in Montgomery. Here is a man who takes on the Washington Post WTOP and Newsweek for being owned by one company which has basically been critical of the president norm and you do have to say that that's true. But he is silent about the concentration of power in the Washington star which also owns WMAL TV in New York and in Washington and another television station in Virginia which has been basically sympathetic to the Nixon administration. He is also silent about the concentration of power in the hands of the company that runs the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News both of which have been basically sympathetic to the administration. What I really think has got him worried and nervous is the views of his opponents and not necessarily the powers that lie out there somewhere in the news profession.

I think it's time we checked back with Washington. Mr. Shakespeare, you still with us? Yes I am. It seemed to me that in your suggestion earlier that we have a diversity of comment across the country you expressed a very good idea but also from a politician's point of view. Doesn't that give you the opportunity to have your let's say commentator opposition dispersed. You aren't fighting this skilled expert in ideas in Washington DC who might be better informed about all the background because the man and proper you don't might not have all the facts. Is that a little tactical thing that's underway? No. It seems to me that firstly I disagree with the vice president in so far as the networks having the right to comment immediately after presidential talk. If the president of the United States goes on a television network or all three television networks and talks to the country.

He in effect has a monopoly of the nation's attention at that particular point when he is through talking. It seems to me that there is a proper time for comment and I disagree with Mr. Agnew to that extent. When I made the suggestion that perhaps the affiliates across the country would like to go local that was to address myself to this question that I commented about with Mr. Friendly as to the diversity of voices. It just seems to me that the difficulty with network television at the present time is that there are so very few people and they tend to be of one persuasion and the corrective is in diversity of voices. There should be comment in my judgment after a presidential address. If it went right across the country it would tend to reflect the attitude of people regionally and locally which might be of more interest to them than the national attitude reflected from one place in New York or Washington or Los Angeles or wherever. You're talking about a network program.

Yes I am. I see it. So it was a vast president. I don't see why you couldn't have both. Yes you might Fred. Mr. Isaac says they're incompetent in Louisville to comment on these things. Answer that. I think Mr. Isaacs maybe really thinks that. Anytime Mr. Isaacs would let the Louisville Courier Journal in the Times run canned stuff from the New York Times or the star instead of their own local stuff on the grounds that the Louisville papers were incompetent he runs both. We get to New York Times service. We get to Washington Post service. Yeah but what is a guy get who's watching CBS or NBC or ABC that that's what he gets. He can have both if both station and that community chooses to do that. But he gets the same thing on all of them. That's not true. It seemed to me that the vice president was really attacking a very weak creature to begin with because I think what this country needs more. Is more boldness and more forthrightness fairness jack but also more forthrightness in its news and public affairs program. I wish the vice president in his next speech of this series would attack the interminable procession of mediocrity that we are offered every night on television.

And try to bring up to some degree of standards. That's some higher standard those those programs that are classified as entertainment look gentlemen what we're talking about here is not power but influence. The networks and the newspapers all have influence we agree to that. But they do not have the power to send half a million men to Vietnam. They do not have the power to spend $80 billion a year on whatever purpose they choose to spend it on. They do not order the priorities of government. It is the government in this country that has power which in its potential is far more greatly to be feared than the power of the press or the influence of the press. And as Mr. Cronkite said in the introduction of this show the press really must serve that need of the public to know what its government is doing. I think this puts them right on a conflict course. I think there will always be an adversary relationship between the government and the press but in my judgment I think that the advantage lies with the government. And I having been on the other side of this process of subtle manipulation know something about what managing of the news is.

And I say that the power of the press is far inferior to the power of the government. Well certainly the greatest power and communications the last few weeks has been Vice President Agnew. He's had astonishing power. Would you agree Mr. Isaacs? Yes he has and as I said this worries me. You know we've been talking for years and now Jack thinks that we've been talking to ourselves. I don't think so. We've had but all of us have had the same message in mind and we've been drilling at home as hard as we can. And there are five things really and I can dust over and very quickly. The five things are we've got to lose that inheritance of the past this passion for the scoop speed is it gets us all into trouble always has. Number two we have to separate news and commentary better in newspapers and on TV. We don't do it well enough in either medium yet. The third one is we have to teach our reporters how to use interpretation better so that they don't get opinions mixed up with their interpretation. The fourth one is in TV's guilty is the devil on this one their manners the reporters manners are foul often they're abrasive they turn people off.

And the fifth one is I go back to Bill's earlier comment we've got to learn to be fair to be balanced to be thorough and if we do those three things then Shakespeare's got his answer. And so that's that's the whole story of the things guts of it incidentally what did Mr. Molinoff say to you and his letter to you if we may ask. Molinoff Clark said that I had misunderstood his position and he in effect disassociated himself totally from this idea that I'm so aggravated about of trying to coerce or intimidate anybody. And I accepted coming from him and but I did write him a strong letter pointing out the mischief that has been done already out in the country. I've had some letters from editors here about 50 50 about half of them are plotting me and the other half so far are disagree with me on various reasons and I think they're missing the point. I think as Bill said earlier I think televisions freedom is just as vital as ours and if that is if they can be coerced eventually so can we.

What is fair play of the news red anybody that has to be told will never know I liked what Mr. Brinkley said a year and a half ago I liked hearing him again when he said you try you strive to be fair. There is no total objectivity except in the tomb I think this whole debate this whole climate that's been created and I think it has been very carefully created has been to create a climate and I think the one man who could put everybody's fears to rest is the president of the United States who has been silent. Look three things bother the American people the Lauren Vietnam which the prior administration forgive me Mr. Moyers had tried to conceal race and what's happening to the youth. No president and few governors are willing to and few mayors to put that all on the line it is the journalist job to do it the broadcast journalist has got a very tough job

and I wish some of them were on this program some of the practitioners to speak for themselves to do it night after night day after day with the voices and sounds of the war in Vietnam. The people in the streets of Watson Harlem in Chicago and with the youth at the campus at California San Francisco State in New York it's a tough job. They're never going to be loved for sometimes they get killed sometimes they get rocks thrown at them a few more of correspondence have been shot out in Vietnam. Then there have been politician shot at it Vietnam they try to be fair they try to be fair by doing interpretive journalism when it's required not letting a senator McCarthy and I don't mean any odious comparisons to anybody. Say there are 205 communists in the State Department and letting a outrageous unsubstantiated charge like that go unidentified for what it is. The broadcast journalist today has got the job sometimes although he doesn't want it that way of having to do it when the event is going on sometimes a day later a week later I think it ought to be labeled for not for editorializing which I don't think broadcast journalists do.

But for what it is news analysis as varying from straight reporting I think it's fair to do that and I think fairness is something you know in your gut you're doing you're going to fail doing it. I'm convinced that the broadcast practitioners in commercial television and those few in public television are trying to do it as well as they can and I don't think this debate makes it very easy. One last thing I think that Mr. Isaac said that he was waiting for the test of the next time there was a presidential speech and how the stations would react. I'm anxious to see how the broadcast is will react and I think that's the test of why these pressures have put on the next time someone says you've just heard a remark by the president of the United States. I'm anxious to see how the broadcasters who have this solemn and difficult job will analyze that speech and then I'm all for all the local stations and 180 CBS NBC ABC public television stations inviting you and as many other reporters and news and

journalists on to do the job as best they can. Mr. Wells in Washington the rule of fairness is it going to become more important do you feel the commission is going to participate more in judgments about the kind of issues we've raised tonight. I don't see how fairness can be more important than it always has been because it has always been a basic criteria in granting and renewing of licenses. The basic fairness and news and I think it's been touched on here of course is clear and more distinct separation of many cases of news and commentary and you get these differing opinions which is also a part of fairness. And something that the commission is federal communications commission is stressed for a long time and I say this from the point of a former broadcaster myself for a lot more years and I've been on this commission that if you get enough diversity you'll come near having that fairness and I don't think that fairness is any more an item of today than it was yesterday or will be tomorrow it's the whole basic issue of granting licenses the way I see it. Mr. Shakespeare the vice president said of course that it's the power of a small elite to this make decisions about broadcasting the refers to the network exactly as I believe that he objects to and Bill Moyers has just pointed out that the government has great powers.

Do you think the government on its side and communications as its own establishment of which you are part has this tremendous power on the scale that Mr. Moyers suggests. I think the government has very major power and communications and that's why I think it's critical that the press be free in this country. I would go to the point I think that one or two of the gentlemen raised a moment ago I believe it was Mr. Isaacs when he said that he believes that the freedom of television is just as important as the freedom of the press. Coming out of television and feeling as strongly as I do about its power I might even go further than that I think in our society today freedom of the television may be even more important than freedom of the press so I subscribe completely with that as to the power of government yes any government has enormous power because it has prominent figures who command attention whenever they speak. The press has to speak in reaction to that the press has to analyze it the press has to do reporting.

The basic issue it seems to me is whether or not the press has a bias on one side or the other ideologically that's what it comes down to does not come down to a question of freedom of the press even if they have the bias ideologically and I believe that they do they must be free they have the right to have the bias. But I believe that it should be commented about because of the enormous power of the press in other words I think just as politicians are fair game fair comment so is the press fair game fair comment a comment that Mr. Agnew made by the way. Yes, but Mr Shakespeare it's been said that the broadcasters have overreacted don't you think that the argument was started with such a tone and in such language and with such abrasiveness that reason often slips out the window I'd like to have that around table on that is there too much noise is everybody getting excited about this ought they not all to calm down how about that Mr. Guilton not nearly enough noise Fred. I like the way you put it I think a climate has been created it the agenda for it was set by the second highest office holder in the United States.

That agenda is set everyone is talking in harsh voices and it started there Mr. Isaacs yes I agree with Fred on this one I think probably some few people in the White House staff are charting about how they've given it to us and I can't help but wonder what they've given to the nation. Well, this is a raucous rowdy country and president wishes to have a silent disc to everyone to lower his voice is unrealistic in the first place. Shall we go to Washington Mr. Wells as your voice lowered tonight. I don't really I think maybe there's been some overreaction I think that's a the American public for years has been guilty of overreacting to about everything and maybe they have to this to some extent but it is a serious problem we get back it's serious one last word from you Mr. Shakespeare. The reaction to anything on television is so great all was that it seems like overreaction right.

I think gentlemen ladies and gentlemen that one of the great troubles is that the medium is just too darn powerful and when you're around the big atom bomb like this you should think slowly think carefully take your time this is James Fleming good night. This is from a day of swiftly spreading rumors. I hope that is yet. No serious breakthroughs of peace. We have asked John Scott about it. On it. And Bill Gill our white house. No one thing in and of something. All right. But we dropped it. If you drop 36 seconds there out of this spot itself. Well, I don't know what the exact time is. I want you to look at this time and. One.

One. Two. One. Eight. Two. One. Eight. Two. One. Eight. Two. Two. Correct from our newsroom in New York. In color. This is the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite. Good evening. From NBC New York. This is the news. This is NET. The public television network. Nationwide distribution of the preceding program is a service of the corporation for public broadcasting. Until a few minutes.