Problems of Mass Media, Charles Tower, Ferris-Ralph Avalon, moderator

A program is nothing but a device to keep people glued to their chairs between commercials. If it happens to have some of the qualities that he says it has, so much the better. If those are the qualities that summon their largest audience with the greatest mucilage in this effect, if you might say so, that is the effort. Mr. Tower has given us, I should say, in this last statement, a very, very fair share of the conventional wisdom. It is more than ironic that today's dialogue on mass communications falls on a day when the threat of a newspaper blackout hangs over New York City. Unfortunately, for most of us, it requires this kind of an emergency to provoke serious consideration of our communications problem.

First I would like to introduce today's special guest, Mr. Charles H. Tower. Mr. Tower is an attorney, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, a member of the World Press Institute, and a member of the Board of the National Association of Broadcasters. He has been with the NAB for 12 years. He is at present executive vice president of the Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation and a director of the World Press Institute. In short, he is a man eminently qualified to represent the communications industry. To begin today's dialogue, I would like to introduce the center's vice president, Mr. W.H. Ping Ferry. To the center's friends, Mr. Ferry needs no introduction. Mr. Ferry has considered our rebel in residence. Most recently, Mr. Ferry has been associated with a committee on the triple revolution, whose recommendations such as the necessity of a government-guaranteed annual wage are considered inevitable.

Mr. Ferry recently reinforced his uncompromising image by resigning from the Democratic Party in protest over our involvement in Vietnam, and more recently, he has provided outstanding leadership to Santa Barbara's voluntary, sonic boom resistance lead. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ferry. It's all partly true. Mass communications, the occasional paper, which is our subject this afternoon, is the 144th publication of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. When the Fund for the Republic was transformed into the Center in 1957, a publishing program was not much in our minds. We saw the center as a home of practical philosophy, a mediator between the city and the university. Now the works of such an enterprise would show forth would be determined by the way it worked.

Methods were by no means for ordain. For the center was to be, and is, unique among American institutions, a home for non-specialized consideration of the basic issues. We had no publishing presidents and gave the matter little thought. That curve, now the president of the University of California, but in those less strife-filled days, almost as well known as an authority on labor. And out of a burly, theorist, non-pareil of the modern corporation, one of the first meetings of the fledgling center, there remarks on the state of the union and on the state of the corporation respectively, were so brilliant as to command immediate publication. These two pamphlets were instant successes, and with them was born a publications program that has now produced more than six and a quarter million copies of pamphlets, reports,

bulletins, studies, conversations, interviews, and other manner of information and rhetoric. The center has reinstituted the ancient art of pamphletering on a grand scale, and made it relevant and telling amid the resounding din of a hundred thousand competitors. Center publications go to everyone. Teachers, executives, students, nuns, prisoners, seamen, communists, lawyers, housewives, union, the new left, the old right, acrobats, dentists, everyone except legislators and judges, and even they can get onto our list if they only asked to do so. For a time, General Electric was our biggest customer. It may still be, for that matter I haven't looked recently. Our materials result from serious discussion at the center in Santa Barbara and are intended to produce serious discussion elsewhere.

It's a matter of surprise and satisfaction to note the attention paid to the things we put out. Though not, of course, in cities where newspaper strikes have become fashionable, nevertheless news of a good many of our publications have found its way to the front page of the New York Times, that paramount arbiter of news value. The main reasons I believe why center materials are thus respectfully received are two. They travel in no well-marked, doctrinal rut, and they take general, unspecialized swings at issues discernibly important to the nation. In a country densely populated by interest groups and specialists, these qualities are seen to be a great value. We have taken it as our function to try to clarify the issues, to clear away the undergrowth of received opinion, misinformation, and prejudice, and to put matters as plainly as possible. The task thereafter is that of dialogue, public and private, to set things right.

Mask communications, the document for you, is to be considered against this background. I shall outline its contents for the sake of those who are unable to do their homework. Mask communications, the publication, opens with a transcript of a conference held in Santa Barbara, with 15 for a newspaper man who had just completed up to a year, each, working on American newspapers. I discover just now through the courtesy of the Institute, which Mr. Tower is an ornament. These comments furnish a view of our press, that is critical, impatient, or vain, and often hostile and unsympathetic. Those who believe that foreigners look on the American press as the very exemplar of free expression, as a model worthy of all the world's emulation, will want to ponder the strictures of knowing man who have looked at it from the inside. The second part of mask communications is an essay called Maskom as Guru.

Maskom is a coinage by the author to spare him the monotony of writing down the cumbersome phrase Mask Communications several dozen times. Guru, an Indian word meaning respected teacher, provides the clue to the argument of the essay. To the author, Maskom is the largest and most influential education system any society has known. Two August texts, buttrists the author's thesis. Thomas Jefferson wrote, the press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social bee. Bernard Kilgar, president of the Wall Street Journal, recently said, the newspaper of the future must become an instrument of intellectual leadership, an institution of intellectual development, a center of learning.

One of its main functions will be to continue the education of an educated community. The author of Maskom extends Mr. Kilgar's prescription to the rest of the media. Maskom is found in this essay to be devoted to profits rather than teaching, to be allied with privilege rather than with Maskom's student body. With exceptions, Maskom is either disdainful or ignorant of responsibility that the author declares are implicit in the First Amendment. When England's press magnet, Thompson, recently acquired a television station in Scotland, he said, I've been given a license to print money. And Maskom in the United States nodded in understanding and envy. Maskom is seen throughout this essay as an enclosed garden of cliches, a bright growth without nourishment, threatening its consumers with intellectual starvation.

This catalog of Maskom's deviations from the paths of common responsibility concludes with several proposals by the author of ways it might get back on the track, none of them propounded with much hope. Maskom can make more money and not meeting its responsibilities than by doing so. The author concludes, American culture is marked by the compulsive consumption of trash and the enobling of such domestic practices as intentional obsolescence and such international lunacies as war, with such words the essay closes. There follows a discussion of this point of view by the author's associates at the center. None appears to view Maskom's situation in the light either of the visiting journalists or of the author.

Transcribed discussions of this kind are a frequent feature of center publications and demonstrate the dialogue as it is conducted in Santa Barbara. As effect and cure is the title of an essay by Harry S. Ashmore with which today's occasional paper closes. Many here will remember Mr. Ashmore as the little rock Arkansas editor who stubbornly insisted on the constitutionality of the constitution during the first days of desegregating public schools and who received a Pulitzer Award for his herternacity. Mr. Ashmore's more mellow outlook on his former Confederates shows here an agreeable contrast to the vinegary approach of the first essay. While in agreement on essentials, Mr. Ashmore by implication suggests that the author of Maskom would, if he, the author, were given the job of running a dominant instrument of the mass media, he would have no choice other than to do what the present operators are

in fact doing. This idea is conveyed by an empathetic review of the recent history of American newspapers. Thus Mr. Ashmore provides a dialectical view of the situation, which is almost wholly absent from the preceding argument. The most engrossing and suggestive portion of cause effect and cure is a recounting of Mr. Ashmore's efforts on behalf of the Benton Foundation to establish the private commission on mass media recommended almost 20 years ago by a commission on the freedom of the press established by Henry Loose of Time Life Incorporate. Mr. Ashmore recites the background of the proposal. The commission concluded that while the government could not and should not act in the critical area that borders on censorship, the public could not continue to rely on the media to set their own standards and appraise their own performance. The proposed answer was the creation of an independent agency without powers of legal

enforcement but armed with great prestige, to appraise and report annually on the performance of mass communications. Mr. Ashmore reports on his recent experiences in seeking to create such a commission, now enlarge to include television in association with a university, Harry shopped extensively in the Ivy League and discovered a good deal of sympathy, but no customers. He tried out the idea and other educational jurisdictions with the same result. A number of academic administrators candidly granted that while they wholly approved of the notion, Mr. Ashmore would have to take his business elsewhere, for they just could not face the controversy that would almost certainly ensue. Members of course were less forthright. I have never understood, says Mr. Ashmore, with an innocent it is really hard to credit. I have never really understood why the idea of collective judgment regularly rendered

has raised so much apprehension among those who agree that stringent criticism of the mass media is very much in order. In any case, the commission on mass media remains a plan on paper, a good idea whose time has not only come but is long overdue, an open invitation to a public service for which the media daily exhibit a demonstrated need. It should not be held against the idea of a private commission that the author of Mass Com also advocated it, although to be sure he did not think it is all that is needed if mass communications is defined its chief function as educator of the republic. I hope that the discussion that follows Mr. Towers remarks this afternoon will concentrate on the feasibility of such a commission or suggest a better alternative and indicate ways of bringing one or the other into existence.

The condition of their mass communications must be a constant interest to Americans and an agency rendering impartial judgment on their performance, as Ashmore says, stands as an inescapable challenge to all those who profess concern with the lowest state of the media, along with devotion to the tradition of the pre- and independent press. Mr. Charles Towers, our principal speaker, has already been introduced by Mr. Ablon. He has had, as you see, a distinguished career in commercial broadcasting. Mr. Towers is renowned in trade circles for his articulate and reasoned views on a mass media free of governmental restraints. Mr. Towers was not invited to join or to participate in a debate today for the authors of Mass Com and cause effect and cure have had their say, and their say appears in the document before you.

Mr. Towers asked here to present another viewpoint, we'll have time, I hope considerable time, after Mr. Towers comments, for questions and discussion from the floor. Mr. Ablon and Mr. Ferry, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ferry, I have learned one thing from this exercise and that is the meaning of the word guru, which was unknown to me before and I looked it up in the dictionary this morning and thus been instructed. Perhaps this measures the quality of the opposition. When John Perry called me last ten days ago and asked if I would participate in this session, I was happy to comply first because of my high regard for John who as I understand it recently joined the fund after an interesting and varied and distinguished career in Washington

and elsewhere. I'm sure John will bring a great deal to this organization, he's an able and articulate young man, we've disagreed on subjects from time to time but he'll make a large contribution to this organization. The nature of the organization, the moderator here, Mr. Ferry and the members of the board of this organization are obviously an impressive group and anything that they put out deserves, careful and conscientious attention and beyond that the subject is important. Science communications as term is used is clearly a vital ingredient of our life today and the quality of that ingredient does make a difference. I'm really not qualified Mr. Ferry to talk for all my ask communication because I have

professionally been only involved with broadcasting and largely television. Private media have my respect and my great interest. I'll take it upon myself if I may to say a few words about the print media but if there are others who represent the print media here who have more experience than I, I hope they'll accept my qualifications. Mr. Ferry in his essay says that his comments are not directed at the conscientious and striving few but at the thoughtless and irresponsible many. I assume I'm in the latter category. He also uses the phrase that the responsibility doesn't rest only with the titans of the mass communications business but also with the scribblers and the druggers and I also associate myself with them as one of the scribblers and the druggers in this area.

His mass communications or a mess come as he has put it together has always disturbed me a bit. We prefer the term popular media or popular communications as being somewhat more accurate and perhaps somewhat more felicitous. I would suggest here that perhaps we would use the phrase popcom except that I know what Mr. Ferry with the change of a couple of consonants would do with that one so I'll stick with his mask on if I may. The paper really has two sections aside from the discussion by the World Press Institute people and the midpoint discussion. Mr. Ferry's essay and Mr. Ashmore's essay, they are quite different. They are quite different in method. They are quite different in tone. They are quite different in terms of the target I think that they are shooting at. I take it as my function here to talk basically about Mr. Ferry's essay and I like to do it.

John Perry knows that I am not one to hide what I think or fail to say that which is on my mind when I think it's important to do so. So at the risk of creating a minor sonic poem Mr. Ferry I hope you'll forgive me if I'm quite candid as I see it. Mr. Ferry I'm sure is a very able man. He's with a fine organization. He has a distinguished record. I think in this paper he's really kicked one and the most I can say for it is that everybody is entitled to kick one once in a while and Mr. Ferry you've kicked yours for this week. As for the essay and I mean this very seriously, as for the essay I think it's in temperate undocumented, non-analytical and permeated with personal bias and let me try in a few brief words to say why.

First for those of you who haven't read the document let me quote briefly and I hope representatively from it because I think it sets the stage for a meaningful discussion. And I think these quotes not only take the tone, reflect the tone of the essay but also hit on the major points of substance. I'm going to run these quotes right together and then discuss briefly each of them separately. And I quote, it seems to me beyond argument and this is Mr. Ferry talking that Masscom is a chief contributor though not the only one to the social and cultural malaise lying on us all. But Masscom has signed up with the Yankees so to speak with the rich and the powerful with government, with the successful and the prestigious. The prime consequence of signing up is the stupid faction and brutalizing of the nation. Masscom's delight in the shoddy, the tasteless, the mind-dulling, the useless is well established. It is a direct consequence of Masscom's allegiance to organized repacity.

Masscom felt free to ignore or misrepresent the real plight of the Negro, North and South because it is white, rich and privileged because of sheer delinquency and because Masscom believes its audience dislikes disagreeable realities. I do not intend to go into our national policy in Vietnam and elsewhere. I only wish to note Masscom's posture with respect to these policies and events and the effect of this posture on the ethical standards of the country. Americans are killing, maiming and burning and torturing in Vietnam. We may even get into a nuclear war and eventuality that Masscom appears to believe may sometime be necessary, though of course unfortunate. These present and potential activities display no fundamental moral issue according to Masscom. In such circumstances, how harsh does one have a right to be in one's criticism? Well pretty harsh if one looks at the world from my point of view.

I think we are rapidly going downhill ethically. I think we are going toward war and I think that a great share of the responsibility for our general attitude towards cataclysm must be borne by the instruments and the system of Mass communication. End quote. Now that's tough talk and if it's right, we're in a hell of a mess in this country. Now before looking at some of these specific quotes individually, I want to give you the results of a little research that I did. Last Monday having read Mr. Ferries' essay over the weekend on my way through Grand Central Station, I stopped at the newsstand and I picked up some popular general interest magazines and I just brought them along with me here and I just like to reference them briefly. First readers die just, these were all in the newsstands in New York and generally on

most newsstands in the country on Monday last week. Readers die just, world press institutes supported primarily by the readers die just and Mr. DeWitt Wallace. Circulation in the United States, 15 million. I don't think anybody pretends that the objective, the purpose of the readers die just is like the nation of the New Republic. It's a very general interest magazine, generally light self-improvement, ethical kinds of stories. But in it are some things that I think would be regarded by even Mr. Ferries as critical of what he calls the apparatus. As a story on the FHA, the lead story is on the FHA, the stench at FHA. The second story, the story of an ex-smoker, I assume that tobacco companies, Mr. Ferries, would be regarded as part of your apparatus and I think this article is rather strongly

critical of those who smoke and those who are trying to encourage people to smoke. There's an article in here by Ivance Packard who is not regarded I think as a great friend of the apparatus or certainly not of advertising generally, not what you'd call a shattering article, but it's a seven steps to greater personal freedom. As a rather caustic interview from the U.S. news and world reports in this reduced digest on the moon race, is it worth it? It's not at all favorable to the administration's position, either the Kennedy position or the Johnson position, not at all favorable to the aerospace industry, which has such a stake in this sort of thing. Secondly, look magazine, the circulation, $7,600,000, this particular issue of look has in it at least four articles, lengthy articles of substantial interest, I think generally, cover a piece on the Ku Klux Klan, Richmond Flowers article, where he bitterly takes the

Klan to task. An article by our foreign policy is it failing an exclusive interview. This is the lead story in this issue of look, an exclusive interview with Senator Fulbright by Eric Severi, another article, Senate Revolt, a heated search for a Vietnam policy, and then an article of somewhat general interest in American cities and those of cities that have taken themselves and tried to do something in a constructive way with their problems. During the realities, the problems of today, I don't think you could say it about look magazine last Monday. Life, circulation, $7,300,000, major story on the Buddhist, and I would say if you read that story, not one designed to support the President Administration's course in Vietnam. Long story, lengthy story with pictures and texts, and a very interesting story, I may say, on Siberia and the life in Siberia.

I think an interesting contribution. Another story, both text and pictures, on the Black man's art festival in Senegal and Africa, interesting story, interesting contribution, I think, to diverse culture. Saturday evening post, $6,600,000 circulation, major scandal pollution on our dying waters, a rather interesting and detailed story on the pollution of streams and lakes and ocean. Lengthy story about Bobby Kennedy and South America, interesting story about South America and Bobby Kennedy. I don't think you could say that either of those are ostrich-like. Time you're all familiar with, large circulation, generally regarded as a Republican point of view magazine, don't know whether it's so or not, but covers the news, perhaps from a point of view, perhaps from the establishment's point of view, I don't think so too much. Newsweek, democratically-oriented magazine, perhaps, at least in terms of ownership, also a general interest news magazine.

U.S. news and world reports a lot of interesting things, whether you like the magazine or not. Here are some of the titles. Vietnam, agonizing reappraisal begins. As Goldwater analyses the war on Vietnam, military analysis of Vietnam, hard choices facing U.S., car safety, Cuba, winds of change for newspapers, the interview with Billy Graham and so forth and so forth. And finally, a Playboy magazine, just to show that everybody is interested in trying to teach these days. There are even in Playboy, among some other interesting things, is an interview with George Lincoln Rockwell. And I'd say an interview that doesn't do him too much good, and I think if you read it, you come away with a particular flavor of what this is about. So even in Playboy, General Circulation Magazine of somewhat specialized interest, of course, they're talking about some things that I think are significant. Now where does this leave us?

Well, let me just take briefly, if I may, some of the specific quotes. The first quote was, it seems to me beyond argument that Mass Com is a chief contributor, not the only one to the social and cultural malaise lying on us all. Is there a cultural and social malaise lying on us all? Is there one, is it more severe now than normal or isn't it? What is the evidence for this? What is the documentation that this is here? Would Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, for example, say, there is a cultural and social malaise lying on us all? Would John Kennedy have said so, do you think? But if there is one, is Mass Com so-called responsible? Secondly, it Mass Com has signed up with the Yankees, so to speak. I hope not the New York Yankees, because they're not very good people to sign up with these days, has signed up with the rich and the powerful, with government, with the successful and the prestigious. He says, in effect, Mr. Ferry says, that there is a wholly alliance between elected government,

military, big business, and mass communication. What is the evidence of this? Does General Agreement, by many of these people, on the issue like our activity and our course of conduct in Southeast Asia, indicate a conspiracy? What did the last election seem to show on this subject? Would the big industry, for example, have been more happy with Mr. Goldwater or Mr. Johnson? And what about the Kennedy victory? What does that show? I think when you make allegations of this type, when you use phrases like the apparatus to embrace a very broad concept, you're really obligated to get specific and document the case. I don't think it advances the discussion very far to leave it up in the year with a few generalities and a few curse words. The prime consequence, and I quote again, the prime consequence of signing up is the stupefaction and brutalizing of the nation.

Has this nation been brutalized or stupefied? What about the people in this room? What about you and me? Do we regard ourselves as having been stupefied and brutalized? And what about our neighbors and friends? What do we think of them? Or are we maybe in this area talking about somebody else, not about us, somebody else? I always worry when the point being made doesn't apply to us. It applies to somebody else. I wonder if it really does or whether it's just something we're conjuring. I don't think this nation has been stupefied or brutalized. Next, mass comms delight in the shoddy, the tasteless, the mind-dulling, the useless as well-established. It is a direct consequence of mass comms allegiance to organized repacity. Well, I don't know who he's talking about here. He's certainly not talking about the publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, that's for sure. And I don't think he's talking about most people in the publishing world that I happen to know.

I think his real quarrel is with, and I think it's evident, as you go through the piece carefully, I think his real quarrel is with the competitive profit system. And I think he's really saying that he doesn't believe that system can generate anything but what he would regard as organized repacity. Now I would simply suggest how about everybody else who's involved in the competitive profit system, my friend Mr. Abelon here, Mr. Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company, all the other people who participate in the competitive profit system, and also I think not only in their business lives, but in their extracurricular lives, make a real contribution to the welfare of the American people. Finally, Mascom felt free to ignore or misrepresent the real plight of the Negro, North, and South, and so forth. Mr. Ashmore answers this one later on in the paper where he says, you are quite right, and he means Mr. Ferry, in including Mascom in any general indictment of the general failure of American institutions to deal adequately with the race issue.

But I do not believe Mascom can be singled out for special abuse. On the contrary, a good case can be made that from the abolitionist forward, Mascom has behaved more responsibly and courageously on this issue than any other American institution, public or private, and today stands as the primary instrument of Negro progress. This is to say a significant and effective segment of the mass media has been and still is well ahead of public opinion, and this is by no means limited to a few conspicuous exceptions to be found among the liberal press. Finally Vietnam, I don't want to re-quote that, but let me just tie into the last of it. In response to a question in the document, Mr. Ferry says, in regard to how harsh should the criticism be, well, pretty harsh if one looks at the world from my point of view, I think we are rapidly going downhill ethically, I think we are going towards war and I think

a great share of the responsibility and so forth. Now, it's obvious that Mr. Ferry feels very strongly about Vietnam. He feels our present course is immoral, impractical, and will lead us to disaster. I would simply say this, what about those of us, and I happen to be one of the Mr. Ferry who don't agree with your view on the present course of conduct in Vietnam, and there are many such people I would gather a majority, and including the President of the United States. Is this present course right? I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. Only the far-out dissenters seem absolutely certain that their course is right. Fortunately, in a sense, they don't have the responsibility for acting here, and it's much easier to be certain of a course of action in a complicated matter like this when you don't have the responsibility for acting and the consequences, rather simply are standing

off from a distance and criticizing. I don't see how you can say, unless you're a pacifist, and accept the pacifist point of view, that the present position of the administration in Vietnam is immoral. It may be unwise, and it may run risks. The administration happens to think that the greater risks are run the other way, and so do I. I don't know, and I'm sure the President isn't certain. Now, all this is too lengthy, and I'm sorry, but let me say just one or two things. If I were given the task of measuring responsibility of mass communications, and I'm not saying it is completely responsible, little is in this country, and there certainly is plenty of room for improvement. But what I would do would be to set up some criteria, such as respect for fact, courage and tackling disagreeable issues, clear separation of fact and opinion, willingness to go below the surface of things, such criteria as these.

I would apply them to a representative group of situations, and I would try to evaluate the result free from my own particular personal biases. Now, as to broadcasting, I think I could have an interesting discussion with Mr. Ashmore. His paper is not new or unique. It repeats a good many things that have been said before. He quotes at length from the critics of television and radio. I'd just like to say a couple of things. The time does not permit me to do it extensively. First, radio and television and television, particularly because he gets most of the criticism in this area, is first and last a popular medium. It's more popular than any other medium that ever has existed by a wide, wide margin. Now this gives us room for expansion. It is also, to some extent, limiting. Commercial television is involved with reaching most of the people, most of the time.

Most of its fair, time-wise, is entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with entertainment. There's nothing wrong with gunsmith, or Dick Van Dyke, or the Virginian, or Dean Martin, or Red Skeleton. Nothing wrong with the football games and the fall or the basketball games and the winter. The contribution that commercial television has made to the entertainment variety of the American people I think is substantial, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. Also, of course, television has to do with information. There may be some of us, or maybe many people here, who wish the television would do more, perhaps in prime time, for example, in the informational area. It does more now than most people realize. If you want to comb through the Sunday television listings for a week, you can find a great deal there.

I won't try to dig it all out here. Television has some problems, and I, some of them are industry problems, and some of them are problems that affect the industry internally, affect advertisers, and most importantly affect the listing public. And I think there are two, and I'll just mention them. First I think the question of specialized programming for limited audiences. This has always been a tough one for television, and it's very difficult for a medium that is trying to reach most of the people most of the time, and I don't think we've been as successful as I'd like to see it in handling this problem. However, make no mistake about it. The audience for limited appeal programming is very limited, and if you don't think so, look at the ratings that the educational stations get, and there are many good educational stations in this country. Look at the ratings they get compared to what the commercial stations get. I'm not saying the educational stations shouldn't provide this service they should, and I hope they provide it more and better and with greater resources. Secondly, television as a problem has the matter of commercial content.

I think we as television station owners and managers need to devote more attention to this one. The amount and the placement of commercial content is a real long-haul problem for television. We haven't tied into it as forcefully and as effectively as we should. Now in closing, let me simply say I think mass communication, popular communication, popular media do have an educational function. It is part of their three-way function which involves the supplying of entertainment, the supplying of some degree of exhortation, commercial and otherwise, and the supplying of information. In the information area, obviously we are teachers in a sense. So as everybody who's trying to communicate, everybody is a teacher in a sense. We are not the only teachers and cannot take full responsibility as teachers in the classical sense, the schools, the home, and popular communications all share in this task.

We don't do as well as we should, and I hope we never do because we'll never have anything before us, and I think the essence of all human activity is to see before one area for challenge, for improvement, for gain. I don't think the solution to this problem is government, as Mr. Ferry perhaps may think. If it's as bad as he says it is, that's really the only solution. I think, however, the solution does lie in the battering of enough people and enough interested groups talking about these things, but doing so in a way that relates to the facts and puts the matter in perspective. Mr. Ferry, I hope you'll keep talking whether or what you say is 10% right or 90% right, we're interested in listening. And if it's only 10%, I hope we'll understand and pay attention to the 10% and improve because we've heard it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tower. Before we get into our discussion, I have one or two comments. Mr. Tower has, by implication, associated me with the establishment. I'm not sure what that is, but to whatever extent I am associated, I'd like to publicly deny any connection with Playboy, the Ku Klux Klan, or organized repacity. As Mr. Ferry has said, I'd also like to state that the statement that Mr. Tower made that there's nothing wrong with football and the fall and baseball in the summer and other similar things is not shared by my wife. As Mr. Ferry has said, this is not a debate. The purpose of the Center is to elicit as much discussion as possible. You've heard two very provocative presentations. We now throw the floor open for discussion or question.

My name is Victor Navasky, and I would like to hear Mr. Ferry's comments and Mr. Tower's remarks. I have only two comments, Mr. Tower, may very well be right. His sentiments are not unusual for people who are engaged in mass calm. There is one sentence and one sentence only in his comment, which I think we're in total agreement. He said at the end, there is an area of improvement before us, for improvement. I quite agree. But Mr. Tower suggests that the mass communications, and especially I take it, those aspects of it with which he is most familiar, has some homeopathic way of dealing with its ailments.

He suggests that these few fly spots that he mentioned toward the end of his remarks will be attended to by diligent man. He has no other prescription. The diligent man, obviously, are going to be man inside mass communication. I treat this with just the same amount of, I give this just about the same amount of chance that Mr. Tower gives my various prescriptions. I don't think there is the slightest chance, and the reason that this paper and Mr. Ashmore's paper are as emphatic as they are is because we see very, very little motion toward improvement. My name is John Henry Folk, and I would like to ask Mr. Tower, first of all, congratulating

on presenting what I thought was a very effective argument, but also of questioning him in the area that I fully avoided, Mr. Ferry's main point that the mass communications had failed us miserably, and informing the public, ask Mr. Tower, perhaps, to speak to the point that Mr. Ferry raises in relationship to the struggle of the Negro prior to the time that the Negro himself dramatized his struggle, and the evidences of the mass communications alerting the American people that this struggle was about to come back, come back before there was a genuine tragedy involved in it, and then on the subject of Vietnam War, when, how long has it been since Mr. Tower has heard a communist present a communist point of view in mass media, or indeed a member of the National Liberation Front present to the American people, the position of the National Liberation Front, because this seems to me the very essence

of what Mr. Ferry has contending has been the failure. Let me take the Vietnam problem first, if I may. I am not familiar in detail with what the National Liberation Front would say if they are only Huntly-Breakly Report, or Crunchyte at 6 o'clock, I have, however, the feeling that the opposition to the present course, present official course of action in Vietnam, led by Senator Morse and Senator Fulbright, has had far more coverage, far more coverage in the popular media than their numbers would justify, and I think you can almost take these magazines, and I suggest if you are really interested in finding out how much is in the popular magazines, go out, you can have these and read them through, or you can take this Monday's and read them through.

I think the opposition to the present official policy in Vietnam has more space and more time than its numbers justify, and I think is quite adequately portrayed, and I'm glad for that fact, I think it should be portrayed, by the very nature of the news business, the dissenters tend to get more mileage. This is just the nature of the thing, because it's more newsworthy. If somebody is pounding away at something, they get the coverage, more than those who are just sort of day by day trying to do their job as they see it, even though it may be wrong, which I don't happen to think in this case. Now as to the Negroes, and the Negro problem, I quoted Mr. Ashmore's view of this subject, and I think he would, we won't all agree, he's somewhat of an authority, and the Negro problem in the South, and he agrees that Mass Com should be not absorbed from blame in this area, but should not be singled out any more than anyone else, and then he goes

on to say, Mass Com probably makes a has made and is making a greater contribution to this problem than any other single institution in the society. I think he says somewhere in the document that Martin Luther King would still be addressing a small church group in Atlanta if it wasn't for the popular media. Now your question goes a little beyond that, Mr. Falk, and it implies as Mr. Ferry urges that Mass Com should, in effect, lead to do the forward thinking on these things. This is an interesting idea, and important, I don't want to shrug it off. I think it's probably asking too much for a popular media to take a long lead. Generally, it is reactive to cross currents of point of view. I think you look on the political machinery of the country really to explore the frontiers and that Mass Com popular media, radio television, newspapers, magazines will then pick up these

ideas and move them ahead in terms of the basics. You talk about poverty, the water pollution, the Negro question, popular media play a great role in these things, that they should look 20 years down the pike and pick out what's going to be important and exciting then and dramatize it today. I'm not sure that that's the way it's going to happen, and I'm not sure that that's a reasonable expectation as to what should happen. What agency might take this job? You just mentioned the pollution issue, Mr. Tower, it's an interesting one to issue, to interesting issues to raise. Lake area has been virtually killed by pollution. The rivers of this country are sewers, many of them. Now suddenly there is a surge of interest on the part of the broadcasters and media generally in this topic, but now our rivers are, they are sewers, they're merely reporting the news.

I believe in this early warning system, I believe that in a technical society it is indispensable to the health, to the survival of society. We might, you know, your outlook on society is a good deal more benign than mine. But would you say that the time for mass come to get interested in this is after the pollution has occurred and then say, well look, look at all we're doing, we're writing the stories. We are saying how badly these rivers smell and how hard it is to recover this water for human use. I don't understand this, are you? Who's in charge? I mean, who should have, if there is any responsibility in this curious society we're living? Who's this? I think it's principally, of course, obviously it's we the people and it's our elected representatives. I would hope that popular media could play a role and it has in some situations rather

a forward looking role, not as much as you would like and perhaps in some areas not as much as I would like. I don't think these things will be effectively done if we're looking to the mass popular media to play the major role in this sort of forward planning. I think it primarily has to be the political machinery and then once it gets out of the bag as it were and in some cases it may be woefully laid as in the case of water pollution. Once it gets out of the bag, then I think the popular media are in an ideal position to give it force, to give it currency in the nation, much more so than ever before. And I hope and I certainly would be against popular media playing a larger role in ferriting out these things and getting our political leaders aware of them. That's fine.

I'd be with you here in terms of hope. I don't assign quite the same degree of responsibility to it that you would. What are we dealing here with a difference in the extent to which the subject is controversial? I don't suppose anybody would object to leadership in terms of anti-pollution, but when you get to the more controversial areas, you have a number of different groups all arguing strongly for leadership, but all wanting leadership perhaps to go in a different direction. What type of leadership, but right here you had it. My name is Eli Pilchick. I'd like to evoke a comment from Mr. Tower. Mr. Tower, I am in a Neanderthal profession in the civilized mass commage. I'm a minister. And when I read this document, I was tempted to append a footnote to Mr. Ferry's sweeping comment about the stupid faction and the brutalization of our society.

And that footnote would have alluded to an infinitesimal sample as you folks measure things. Among other things, I've been teaching a confirmation class for some 20 or 30 years. These kids are about 15. My gang comes from the middle class and upper middle class suburbs. I have been reflecting on the fact that up until three or four years ago, when I would bring before them this famous quotation about beating swords into plowshares, I always got wide-eyed kids with a certain spark of idealism. In the past couple of years, they look at me as though I'm some kind of a cook and there are articulate responses, you don't really believe that, do you?

It seems to me some documentation of this stupid faction and brutalization, and I'd love to get your response. I think there are two parts to this problem. One is our policy in Vietnam, and I think Mr. Ferry's reference, use of these words, two words, referred to our policy in Vietnam, and he expanded a bit by a reference to Germany under Hitler, which I thought was somewhat drawing a long bow, but I'd like to set that aside, because I think that is really a very controversial problem, and I don't think it sheds much light on the problems of popular communication. Let's talk about gunsmith. Let's talk about the problem of youth and the allegation that is sometimes made that a well-known senator from my home state has very often made.

He is not making this particular one as often these days, that television, for example, has introduced a degree of callousness, a lack of sensitivity on the part of our youth. That substantially is the allegation to juvenile delinquency. I don't know whether this is so or not. I don't think it's so, and I've seen no substantial evidence that it is so, but I recognize it as a problem. There is, in all of us, under certain circumstances, a predilection to violence, and the civilized man recognizes it and tries to control it and channel it. In the young, aware these safeguards of character haven't been built, it's more evident than otherwise.

I have two sons, one of them, a real television house, much addicted to gunsmith and branded and all the rest. I don't notice this in him, and I hope I'm not overlooking something. I don't notice it in my older son, who also went through the television period before he had the work saw on. I don't notice it in their friends. I don't have the same opportunity that you do to see this. I think it is probably so that, just as the motor car, with children, youngsters, is potentially difficult to adapt to and creates a whole lot of problems. I think it's probably true that television, particularly where it's permitted unselectively, does create some problems. But all sorts of things in modern life create problems for youth, LSD creates problems,

makes life more difficult for parents and life more difficult for ministers, and these things we have to learn to cope with. I don't think we do it by cutting the TV set off or taking the gas away from the motor car. I think we try to do it in the home, in the church, and in the school to show young people what are the important values. I hope you're not right that, on the average, there is a much greater degree of propensity towards violence in the youth than there was 20 years ago or 40 years ago. I don't know that you're right or wrong. I have no evidence, and if there is any clear evidence, I don't know it. Television complicates our life, all sorts of things complicate our life. This is a tough world to live in, let's face it. And it requires a dedication on the part of everyone to responsibility, to self-control

and self-direction that perhaps no other age has ever required. I have a feeling that in this country, we're not as bad off as Mr. Ferry thinks, and that we will make it, but it'll take people like you talking as effectively as you can to those within your can to bring it off. My name is Stanley Frankl, Mr. Tower, this is addressed to you when the federal government allotted to individual applicants, the license to make money or the channel. This was not an eternity in perpetuity. This was as long as they conformed to the public interest, convenience and necessity, if you've heard many times. Now my question, kind of facetious question, would be what percentage of the prime time is devoted to news, information, public affairs, which may not be in the public convenience,

but certainly is in the public interest and necessity? I don't have the latest percentages on that, Mr. Frankl. I'm sure that commercial television, it's quite small in prime time, and it's a current running argument between the commission and broadcasters. I just want to say I don't think we should overlook this. Serving the public with good entertainment is in the public interest, too. Very much so in my judgment. If Danny K. can reach 17 million American homes on Wednesday night, I think this is in the public interest. I think this is important. This isn't the end and all of the public interest, that's for sure. How much we should do of an informational nature or a highly cultural, limited audience nature in prime time is much debated. I would like to see the industry try to do somewhat more.

It's very hard to handle. It's a tough problem. I worry about this problem. I would like to see us try to do something more. My name is Eugene Lang. There are two things that bother me that I'd like to submit for a comment. First, getting away from television for the moment and getting away from New York for the moment, I think we should realize that for a tremendously large segment of the American population, mass media contact with information and knowledge reduces itself to a very, very limited area. It may be one or two local TV stations and usually it will be a monopolistic newspaper. I'm not quite sure what can be done about it, but nevertheless it has always appalled me when I have visited outside of New York to see the extreme limitations in the choice of points of view that the average citizen has. That's one thing I submit for a comment.

The second on television, it seems to me the problem is that as long as television, the operation of television roots itself in its present economic base, it becomes almost an escapeable that programming has got to be directed at the lowest common denominator so that contrary to the purpose for which the franchise was originally given, it seems to me program is intended or has the effect generally of pulling down those from above who have no choice but what they must listen to the things that panders to the lower and more prorcient aspects of human nature. I think that perhaps one of the answers may be the fact that if the commercial can be divorced from the program itself so that the advertised and no longer is and what he

pays for time is no longer directly connected to the program itself, it may be that can be some sort of an independent choice on the part of those who run the television franchises to put on programs that meet a higher standard of human intelligence. I'd like your comment, Mr. Tara, particularly on the latter point. First, let me just quarrel a bit with your lowest common denominator prorcient related adjectives. I don't think this is a reasonable challenge contention. I don't really know what you're talking about, aside from a relatively few shows, one of which was on twice a week in the ABC network for the past couple of years and came from a well-known book. Most of the shows on television don't fit that mold at all.

It's interesting that the shows that endure, the shows that have lasted, I happen to be most familiar with the CVS shows, Dick Van Dyke, for example, or Gunsmoke. Those two shows, or the Red Skeleton Show, are two three different kinds of shows. There's nothing prorcient, there's nothing mean, there's nothing degrading about these shows. A Gunsmoke is a beautifully produced, well-written show with considerable moral value on it. Another produced, I will say, the most shows on Broadway, Week In and Week Out. The comedy show of Dick Van Dyke, it's not a Shakespeare, but it's a general, interesting, it's a Mary Poppins kind of thing, that's what the Dick Van Dyke show is all about, and that's why Mary Poppins was such a popular thing. Take Walt Disney in the NBC Network on Sunday Night, or at Sullivan. I don't see these adjectives applying to those things at all. I think these are wholesome shows, they're the best of them, are well-produced, well-written,

well-organized, well-thought-out shows, and I think they appeal to a very broad spectrum of the American people. I don't think we need to feel guilty about being entertained by Ed Sullivan, or Walt Disney, or Gunsmoke. There is, in our ethic, a trait coming from the Puritans, which seems to ring a little bell in our head whenever we find ourselves sitting down at something that is just enjoyable. Now we ought to have something else too, and nobody disagrees with that. But let's not downgrade this very wholesome, very important, and very entertaining kind of material. I must raise my voice at this point. I, Mr. Tower, knows as well as anybody does, that he is speaking irrelevantly. A program is nothing but a device to keep people glued to their chairs between commercials. If it happens to have some of the qualities that he says it has, so much the better,

if those are the qualities that summon their largest audience, with the greatest muscle edge in this effect, if you might say so, that is the effort. Mr. Tower has given us, I should say, in this last statement, a very, very fair share of the conventional wisdom. Mr. Tower does not take the argument seriously. He says that all is going for the best of all possible cultural deserts, and if anything needs to be done, we'll do it ourselves. We'll do it by, and at this point, although I agree with the statement made about Mr. Tower's argument, I thought it was a very good argument, and I intended to say so privately, afterward. He did not address except in one line what I spent months in writing, the intellectual structure of the argument he disposed of in one line, not because he misunderstood it. I perhaps he didn't have time.

But I must protest about this starry vision of what a wonderful thing we have, and what a wonderful thing it is for Americans at this time and their national history to be able to have this quality of entertainment. I scorn this as an absolute misstatement of what television is all about. Television is about something else. This is merely a symptom of what that's something else is about, and this is what we are here, this is the basic issue in about mass communications, as it affects television I give it to, Mr. Tower. The question whether such and such a program is entertaining or not has nothing to do with the case.

This is a self-correcting sort of nuisance, you know, if it isn't entertaining enough something else replaces it, but if the only standard is entertainment, if you're going to make the argument on this basis, I must say you've got off the track quite a long way, excuse me, this is the, it's only when this long commercial came in that you really got under my cuticle. There's an old gag from Madison Avenue to the effect that the only thing wrong with television is the programs between the commercials, and I guess Mr. Furry would agree with that, I don't. One more question. My name is Carol Geier, I wonder whether one of the solutions might be increased commercial sponsorship of public service programs, and I wonder whether any research has been done as to the repercussions to those companies such as Bell and Howell and Xerox as a result of their sponsorship of such programs, which might have been either of low interest as

far as television ratings were concerned, or perhaps even controversial. We are for sponsors, both for entertainment and information, and the more the better, and the more they can spend the better, the problem of sponsorship of controversial informational programs is a tough one. I don't know what the research is on the impact, adverse impact, if any, on Xerox, L.O.L. and others for their handling of the more controversial shows. I hope it hasn't been substantial, all sponsors are a little nervous in this area. Fortunately, there are some courageous ones who have stepped forward and been willing to do some things, and for them we're grateful.