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16.Spiro Theodore Agnew: Television News Coverage

I think it's obvious from the cameras here that I didn't come to discuss
the ban on cyclamates or DDT. I have a subject which I think if of great
importance to the American people. Tonight I want to discuss the
importance of the television news medium to the American people. No nation
depends more on the intelligent judgment of its citizens. No medium has a
more profound influence over public opinion. Nowhere in our system are
there fewer checks on vast power. So, nowhere should there be more
conscientious responsibility exercised than by the news media. The
question is, "Are we demanding enough of our television news
presentations?" "And are the men of this medium demanding enough of
themselves?"

Monday night a week ago, President Nixon delivered the most important
address of his Administration, one of the most important of our decade.
His subject was Vietnam. My hope, as his at that time, was to rally the
American people to see the conflict through to a lasting and just peace in
the Pacific. For 32 minutes, he reasoned with a nation that has suffered
almost a third of a million casualties in the longest war in its history.
When the President completed his address -- an address, incidentally, that
he spent weeks in the preparation of -- his words and policies were
subjected to instant analysis and querulous criticism. The audience of 70
million Americans gathered to hear the President of the United States was
inherited by a small band of network commentators and self-appointed
analysts, the majority of whom expressed in one way or another their
hostility to what he had to say.

It was obvious that their minds were made up in advance. Those who recall
the fumbling and groping that followed President Johnson’s dramatic
disclosure of his intention not to seek another term have seen these men
in a genuine state of nonpreparedness. This was not it.
One commentator twice contradicted the President’s statement about the
exchange of correspondence with Ho Chi Minh. Another challenged the
President’s abilities as a politician. A third asserted that the President
was following a Pentagon line. Others, by the expressions on their faces,
the tone of their questions, and the sarcasm of their responses, made
clear their sharp disapproval.

To guarantee in advance that the President’s plea for national unity would
be challenged, one network trotted out Averell Harriman for the occasion.
Throughout the President's address, he waited in the wings. When the
President concluded, Mr. Harriman recited perfectly. He attacked the Thieu
Government as unrepresentative; he criticized the President’s speech for
various deficiencies; he twice issued a call to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee to debate Vietnam once again; he stated his belief
that the Vietcong or North Vietnamese did not really want military
take-over of South Vietnam; and he told a little anecdote about a “very,
very responsible” fellow he had met in the North Vietnamese delegation.
All in all, Mr. Harrison offered a broad range of gratuitous advice
challenging and contradicting the policies outlined by the President of
the United States. Where the President had issued a call for unity, Mr.
Harriman was encouraging the country not to listen to him.

A word about Mr. Harriman. For 10 months he was America’s chief negotiator
at the Paris peace talks -- a period in which the United States swapped
some of the greatest military concessions in the history of warfare for an
enemy agreement on the shape of the bargaining table. Like Coleridge’s
Ancient Mariner, Mr. Harriman seems to be under some heavy compulsion to
justify his failures to anyone who will listen. And the networks have
shown themselves willing to give him all the air time he desires.
Now every American has a right to disagree with the President of the
United States and to express publicly that disagreement. But the President
of the United States has a right to communicate directly with the people
who elected him, and the people of this country have the right to make up
their own minds and form their own opinions about a Presidential address
without having a President’s words and thoughts characterized through the
prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested.
When Winston Churchill rallied public opinion to stay the course against
Hitler’s Germany, he didn’t have to contend with a gaggle of commentators
raising doubts about whether he was reading public opinion right, or
whether Britain had the stamina to see the war through. When President
Kennedy rallied the nation in the Cuban missile crisis, his address to the
people was not chewed over by a roundtable of critics who disparaged the
course of action he’d asked America to follow.

The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this
little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to
every Presidential address, but, more importantly, wield a free hand in
selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues in our nation.
First, let’s define that power.

At least 40 million Americans every night, it’s estimated, watch the
network news. Seven million of them view A.B.C., the remainder being
divided between N.B.C. and C.B.S. According to Harris polls and other
studies, for millions of Americans the networks are the sole source of
national and world news. In Will Roger’s observation, what you knew was
what you read in the newspaper. Today for growing millions of Americans,
it’s what they see and hear on their television sets.
Now how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering
perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, 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 90 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. We cannot measure this power and influence
by the traditional democratic standards, for these men can create national
issues overnight. They can make or break by their coverage and commentary
a moratorium on the war. They can elevate men from obscurity to national
prominence within a week. They can reward some politicians with national
exposure and ignore others.

For millions of Americans the network reporter who covers a continuing
issue -- like the ABM or civil rights -- becomes, in effect, the presiding
judge in a national trial by jury.

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 an immediacy that’s the gift of their medium. They focus
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 powers of the networks equal to
that of local, state, and Federal Governments all combined. Certainly it
represents a concentration of power over American public opinion unknown
in history.

Now 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 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. Do they allow their 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.

Another anchorman on a network news show contends, and I quote: “You can’t
expunge all your private convictions just because you sit in a seat like
this and a camera starts to stare at you. I think your program has to
reflect what your basic feelings are. I’ll plead guilty to that.”
Less than a week before the 1968 election, this same commentator charged
that President Nixon’s campaign commitments were no more durable than
campaign balloons. He claimed that, were it not for the fear of hostile
reaction, Richard Nixon would be giving into, and I quote him exactly,
“his natural instinct to smash the enemy with a club or go after him with
a meat axe.”

Had this slander been made by one political candidate about another, it
would have been dismissed by most commentators as a partisan attack. But
this attack emanated from the privileged sanctuary of a network studio and
therefore had the apparent dignity of an objective statement. The American
people would rightly not tolerate this concentration of power in
Government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in
the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no
one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by Government?
The views of the majority of this fraternity do not -- and I repeat, 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. Not only did the country receive the President’s
speech more warmly than the networks, but so also did the Congress of the
United States.

Yesterday, the President was notified that 300 individual Congressmen and
50 Senators of both parties had endorsed his efforts for peace. 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.

Now I want to make myself perfectly clear. I’m 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 40 million Americans receive
each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their
corporate employers and is filtered through a handful of commentators who
admit to their own set of biases.

The question I’m 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. 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.
But the situations are not identical. Where The New York Times reaches
800,000 people, N.B.C. reaches 20 times that number on its evening news.
[The average weekday circulation of the Times in October was 1,012,367;
the average Sunday circulation was 1,523,558.] Nor can the tremendous
impact of seeing television film and hearing commentary be compared with
reading the printed page.

A decade ago, before the network news acquired such dominance over public
opinion, Walter Lippman spoke to the issue. He said there’s an essential
and radical difference between television and printing. The three or four
competing television stations control virtually all that can be received
over the air by ordinary television sets. But besides the mass circulation
dailies, there are weeklies, monthlies, out-of-town newspapers and books.
If a man doesn’t like his newspaper, he can read another from out of town
or wait for a weekly news magazine. It’s not ideal, but it’s infinitely
better than the situation in television.

There, if a man doesn’t like what the networks are showing, all he can do
is turn them off and listen to a phonograph. "Networks," he stated "which
are few in number have a virtual monopoly of a whole media of
communications." The newspaper of mass circulation have no monopoly on the
medium of print.
Now a virtual monopoly of a whole medium of communication is not something
that democratic people should blindly ignore. And we are not going to cut
off our television sets and listen to the phonograph just because the
airways belong to the networks. They don’t. They belong to the people. As
Justice Byron wrote in his landmark opinion six months ago, "It’s the
right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters,
which is paramount."
Now it’s argued that this power presents no danger in the hands of those
who have used it responsibly. But as to whether or not the networks have
abused the power they enjoy, let us call as our first witness, former Vice
President Humphrey and the city of Chicago. According to Theodore White,
television’s intercutting of the film from the streets of Chicago with the
"current proceedings on the floor of the convention created the most
striking and false political picture of 1968 -- the nomination of a man
for the American Presidency by the brutality and violence of merciless
police."

If we are to believe a recent report of the House of Representative
Commerce Committee, then television’s presentation of the violence in the
streets worked an injustice on the reputation of the Chicago police.
According to the committee findings, one network in particular presented,
and I quote, “a one-sided picture which in large measure exonerates the
demonstrators and protestors.” Film of provocations of police that was
available never saw the light of day, while the film of a police response
which the protestors provoked was shown to millions.
Another network showed virtually the same scene of violence from three
separate angles without making clear it was the same scene. And, while the
full report is reticent in drawing conclusions, it is not a document to
inspire confidence in the fairness of the network news. Our knowledge of
the impact of network news on the national mind is far from complete, but
some early returns are available. Again, we have enough information to
raise serious questions about its effect on a democratic society.
Several years ago Fred Friendly, one of the pioneers of network news,
wrote that its missing ingredients were conviction, controversy, and a
point of view. The networks have compensated with a vengeance.
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 Eldrige
Cleaver is worth 10 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 lines.
Normality has become the nemesis of the network news.
Now 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 entire
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.
We know that none of these conclusions is true.
Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the
offices of the Government in Washington but in the studios of the networks
in New York! Television may have destroyed the old stereotypes, but has it
not created new ones in their places? 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’ve 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 and their 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 the minority of Americans who specialize in attacking the United
States -- its institutions and its citizens?
Tonight I’ve raised questions. I’ve made no attempt to suggest the
answers. The answers must come from the media men. They are challenged to
turn their critical powers on themselves, to direct their energy, their
talent, and their conviction toward improving the quality and objectivity
of news presentation. They are challenged to structure their own civic
ethics to relate to the great responsibilities they hold.
And the people of America are challenged, too -- challenged to press for
responsible news presentation. 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 the 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’ve said to you
tonight will be heard and seen at all by the nation is not my decision,
it’s not your decision, it’s their decision. In tomorrow’s edition of the
Des Moines Register, you’ll be able to read a news story detailing what
I’ve 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?
Now, my friends, we’d 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 unelected elite. The great networks
have dominated America’s airwaves for decades. The people are entitled a
full accounting their stewardship.
　