Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (110 page)

It must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the national knowledge. Through news, documentaries, and specials, they have often used their power constructively and creatively to awaken the public conscience to critical problems.

The networks made “hunger” and “black lung” disease national issues overnight. The TV networks have done what no other medium could have done in terms of dramatizing the horrors of war. The networks have tackled our most difficult social problems with a directness and immediacy that is the gift of their medium. They have focused the nation’s attention on its environmental abuses, on pollution in the Great Lakes and the threatened ecology of the Everglades.

But it was also the networks that elevated Stokely Carmichael and George Lincoln Rockwell from obscurity to national prominence. Nor is their power confined to the substantive.

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 a government policy.

One federal communications commissioner considers the power of the networks to equal that of local, state, and federal governments combined. Certainly, it represents a concentration of power over American public opinion unknown in history.

What do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the commentators, most Americans know little, other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence, seemingly well informed on every important matter.

We do know that, to a man, these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City—the latter of which James Reston terms the “most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.” Both
communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. We can deduce that these men thus read the same newspapers, and 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….

The views of this fraternity do
not
represent the views of America. That is why such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the president’s address—and how the networks reviewed it.

As with other American institutions, perhaps it is time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve.

I am not asking for government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that forty million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.

The questions I am raising here tonight should have been raised by others long ago. They should have been raised by those Americans who have traditionally considered the preservation of freedom of speech and freedom of the press their special provinces of responsibility and concern. They should have been raised by those Americans who share the view of the late Justice Learned Hand that “right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection.”

Advocates for the networks have claimed a First Amendment right to the same unlimited freedoms held by the great newspapers of America.

The situations are not identical. Where the
New York Times
reaches 800,000 people, NBC reaches twenty times that number with its evening news. Nor can the tremendous impact of seeing television film and hearing commentary be compared with reading the printed page. And in the networks’ endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask, What is the end value—to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result—to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitement, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability?

Gresham’s law seems to be operating in the network news.

Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crisis settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the
confrontation that results in a strike—or, better yet, violence along the picket line. Normality has become the nemesis of the evening news.

The upshot of all this controversy is that a narrow and distorted picture of America often emerges from the televised news. A single dramatic piece of the mosaic becomes, in the minds of millions, the whole picture. The American who relies upon television for his news might conclude that the majority of American students are embittered radicals, that the majority of black Americans feel no regard for their country, that violence and lawlessness are the rule, rather than the exception, on the American campus. None of these conclusions is true.

Television may have destroyed the old stereotypes—but has it not created new ones in their place?

What has this passionate pursuit of “controversy” done to the politics of progress through logical compromise, essential to the functioning of a democratic society?

The members of Congress or the Senate who follow their principles and philosophy quietly in a spirit of compromise are unknown to many Americans—while the loudest and most extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every man in the street.

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 antics for the next news show.

We have heard demands that senators and congressmen and judges make known all their financial connections—so that the public will know who and what influences their decisions or votes. Strong arguments can be made for that view. But when a single commentator or producer, night after night, determines for millions of people how much of each side of a great issue they are going to see and hear, should he not first disclose his personal views on the issue as well?

In this search for excitement and controversy, has more than equal time gone to that minority of Americans who specialize in attacking the United States, its institutions, and its citizens?

Tonight, I have raised questions. I have made no attempt to suggest answers. These answers must come from the media men. They are challenged to turn their critical powers on themselves. They are challenged to direct their energy, talent, and conviction toward improving the quality and objectivity of news presentation. They are challenged to structure their own civic ethics to relate their great freedom with their great responsibility.

And the people of America are challenged too, challenged 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. This is one case where the people must defend themselves, where the citizen—not government—must be the reformer, where the consumer can be the most effective crusader.

By way of conclusion, let me say that every elected leader in the United States depends on these men of the media. Whether what I have said to you tonight will be heard and seen at all by the nation is not
my
decision; it is not
your
decision; it is
their
decision.

In tomorrow’s edition of the
Des Moines Register
you will be able to read a news story detailing what I said tonight; editorial comment will be reserved for the editorial page, where it belongs. Should not the same wall of separation exist between news and comment on the nation’s networks.

We would never trust such power over public opinion in the hands of an elected government—it is time we questioned it in the hands of a small and unelected elite. The great networks have dominated America’s airwaves for decades; the people are entitled to a full accounting of their stewardship.

Punch Sulzberger—so nicknamed by his grandfather Adolph Ochs, first successful publisher of the
New York Times
, as counterpoint to his sister, Judy—was president and publisher of the newspaper and its related publications and broadcasting stations from 1963 to 1992, when he retired as publisher, continuing as chairman and chief executive officer. A former marine, he made the decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971; in the firestorm that followed, he said, “We gave away no national secrets. We didn’t jeopardize any American soldiers or marines overseas. These papers are a part of history.”

In his lifetime at the
Times
, he was more businessman than reporter; on March 14, 1977, he spoke to the Detroit Economic Club at a time when many corporate executives were persuading themselves that journalism was printing more bad news about business than good. His theme was “Is the press antibusiness?” and, remembering his reporting days, he put the story in the lead.

***

IT’S GOOD TO
be here in Detroit, the home of the “Big Two”—the
Detroit News
and the
Detroit Free Press
. About a year ago, I was looking through a newspaper, and I came across a story that gave me my topic for today: Is the press antibusiness?

The story that triggered that question in my mind was a report of the dreary 1975 earnings of the New York Times Company.

Happily, I can address that question today in a more objective frame of mind. The 1976 figures, as reported in the paper, show circulation,
advertising, and earnings on a satisfying march upward. The article about it looked decidedly probusiness. In fact, I cannot recall a morning on which I read the
Wall Street Journal
with greater pleasure.

Is the press antibusiness? That question breeds another: How can the press be antibusiness when the press is business, and often big business at that? After all, like many of you in the room today, we, too, face boards of directors, union leaders, the EEOC, the SEC, and stockholders. It’s hard to remember a
Times
annual meeting which Evelyn Y. Davis missed.

But the fact that the press is often big business itself does not really enable us to duck the question: Are we antibusiness? A great many businessmen suggest that a new tone is creeping into journalism. They find that the big corporation
too
is often portrayed as the villain and the consumer movement the hero; that bad news is reported with glee, and good corporate news is relayed grudgingly; that the profit motive is
derogated
by writers who seem to prefer more government control and, at best, have little or no training in the world of finance. Too often they feel the deadline conflicts with accuracy, and the deadline too often wins. It is argued that a general public distrust of institutions is being
focused
by the media into a lack of confidence in all American business enterprise.

Let me pass along a tip on how to detect bias in any speaker on this subject. If he talks about “the media,” he’s against us; if he talks about “the press,” he’s for us. I speak to you today as a member of the press.

Let me grant this at the outset: press coverage of business has changed and is still changing. A more analytical—a more skeptical, sometimes more critical—approach is being taken. And this is not only true with business reporting; government, education, the courts, and the press itself are subject to this new scrutiny.

The printing of handouts—or “editing with a shovel”—is on the decline, and that’s good.

But why, journalists are asked, don’t we play up the good news? Why does the corporate bribe or the drop in earnings get the big headline—while the advance in technology or the rise in earnings gets buried?

One answer, of course, is in the nature of news: we give more space to a plane crash than to a report on the thousands of safe landings made every day. I would never suggest that “good news is no news,” but I would suggest that bad news is often big news.

Another answer is in the changing nature of the news business. In every field, editors are emphasizing two basic questions. One is
How
? How will this affect the reader’s life? And newspapers respond with more service columns, more pieces on personal investing, and more columns on the significance of business news on readers’ lives. The other is
Why
?

Why did they abandon the merger? Why did they fire the boss? Readers, investors, and creditors all want these answers. And as business becomes more complex, more international, answers to these questions become increasingly important.

On this point, I should add that not all reporting of good news is necessarily welcome to businessmen. For example, when the Bell Telephone System became the first corporation in history to earn one billion dollars in a single quarter, we thought the achievement ought to be recognized, and displayed the story on the front page. But a New Jersey public-service commissioner saw it there, and rejected a rate increase on the ground that profits were too high. Bell System executives might well think it would be wiser in the future to hide their light under a bushel. So, I don’t think “Why don’t you play up the good news?” is a valid question. That’s not our function. Our job is to give the reader accurate information he can use about what is important and what interests him. That is also an important goal of business.

Let’s get to basics. Fifty years ago, an American president could say, with much justification, that “the business of America is business.” We’ve gone beyond that. The business of America is freedom.