SpiroTheodoreAgnew-TelevisionNewsCoverage-精選資料

1、spirotheodoreagnew:televisionnewscoveragespiro theodore agnew: television news coveragei think it s obvious from the cameras here that i didn t e 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 impor

2、tance of the television news mediumto 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 respo

3、nsibility exercised than by the news media. the question is, “are we demanding enough of o ur television news presentations? ”“and are the men of this medium demanding enough ofthemselves? ”mondaynight a weekago, president nixon delivered the most important address of his administration, one of the

4、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 long

5、est war in its history.whenthe president pleted 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 sta

6、tes was inherited by a small band of network mentators 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 jo

7、hnson sdramatic disclosure of his intention not to seek another term have seen these men in a genuine state of nonpreparedness. this was not it.one mentator twice contradicted the president s statement about the exchange of correspondence with ho chi minh. another challenged the president s abilitie

8、s 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, madeclear their sharp disapproval.to guarantee in advance that the president s plea for national unity wou

9、ld be challenged, one network trotted out averell harriman for the occasion. throughout the president s address, he waited in the wings. whenthe president concluded, mr. harriman recited perfectly. he attacked the thieu government as unrepresentative; he criticized the presidents speech for various

10、deficiencies; he twice issued a call to the senate foreign relations mittee 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 me

11、t 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

12、to him.a word about mr. harriman. for 10 months he was america s chief negotiator at the parispeace talks - a period in which the united statesswapped 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 anc

13、ient mariner, mr. harriman seems to be under some heavy pulsion 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.nowevery american has a right to disagree with the president of the united statesand to express pu

14、blicly that disagreement. but the president of the united states has a right to municate directly with the people who elected him, and the people of this country have the right to make up their ownminds and form their own opinions about a presidential address without having a president s words and t

15、houghts 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 mentators raising doubts about whether he wasreading public opinion r

16、ight, or whether britain had the stamina to see the war through. whenpresident kennedy rallied the nation in the cuban missile crisis, his address to the peoplewas not chewed over by a roundtable of critics who disparaged the course of action he d asked americato follow.the purpose of my remarks ton

17、ight is to focus your attention on this little group of menwho not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttalto everypresidential 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 millio

18、n americans every night, it s estimated, watchthe network news. seven million of them view , the remainder being divided between and according to harris polls and other studies, for millions of americans the networks are the sole source of national and world news. in w川 roger s observation, what you

19、 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, mentators, and executive producers, settle upon the

20、 20 minutes or so of film and mentary 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. wecannot measure this

21、 power and influence by the traditional democratic standards, for these men can create national issues overnight. they can makeor break by their coverage and mentary a moratorium on the war. they can elevate menfrom obscurity to national prominence within a week. they can reward some politicians wit

22、h national exposure and ignore others.for millions of americans the network reporter who covers a continuing issue - like the abmor civil rights - be es, in effect, the presiding judge in a national trial by jury.it must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the nation

23、al 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 coul

24、d 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 itsenvironmental abuses - on pollution in the great lakes and the threatened e

25、cology of the everglades. but it was also the networks that elevatedstokely 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

26、 can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a government policy. one federal munications missioner considers the powers of the networks equal to that of local, state, and federal governments all bined. certainly it represents a concentration of power

27、 over american public opinion unknown in history.now what do americans know of the men who wield this power? of the menwho produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. of the mentators, most americans know little other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presen

28、ce seemingly well-informed on every important matter. we do know that to a man these mentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of washington, , or new york city, the latter of which james reston terms the most unrepresentative munity in the entire united sta

29、tes.both munities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.wecan deduce that these menread the samenewspapers. 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 viewp

30、oints. do they allow their biases to influence the selection and presentation of the news? david brinkley states objectivity is impossible to normal humanbehavior. rather, he says, we should strive for fairness.another anchorman on a network news show contends, and i quote: you can t expunge all you

31、r 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 mentator charged that president nixon s campaign mitm

32、ents 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 th e enemywith a club or go after him with a meat axe. ”hadthis slander been madeby one politic

33、al candidate about another, it would have been dismissed by most mentators 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 concentrat

34、ion 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 -

35、 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 presidents speech more warmly than the networks, but so also did the congress of the united states.yes

36、terday, the president was notified that 300 individual congressmenand 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

37、 serve.now i want to make myself perfectly clear. i m not asking forgovernment censorship or any other kind of censorship. i amasking whether a form of censorship already exists whenthe news that 40 million americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corp

38、orate employers and is filtered through a handful of mentators 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 speec

39、h 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 handthat right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selectio

40、n. advocates for the networks have claimed a first amendmenright 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, reaches 20 times that numberon its evening news. the average weekday circulat

41、ion 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 mentary be pared with reading the printed page.a decade ago, before the network news acquired such dominance over public opinion, walter lippman

42、 spoke to the issue. he said there s anessential and radical difference between television and printing. the three or four peting 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, mon

43、thlies, 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 notideal, 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

44、 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 ofmunications. the newspaper of mass circulation have no monopoly on the medium of print.now a virtual monopoly of a whole medium of munication is not something that d

45、emocratic people should blindly ignore. and we are notgoing 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 viewe

46、rs 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 presi

47、dent 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

48、 presidency by the brutality and violence of merciless police. ”if we are to believe a recent report of the house of representative merce mittee, then television s presentation of the violence in the streets worked an injustice on the reputation of the chicago police.according to the mittee findings

49、, one network in particular presented, and i quote, “a one-sided picture which in large measure exonerates the demonstrators and protestors. film of pro vocations 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 m

50、illions.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 t

51、he impact of network news on the national mind is far from plete, 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 i

52、ngredients were conviction, controversy, and a point of view. the networks have pensated with a vengeance.andin 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 explorat

53、ion for more action, more excitement, more drama serve our national search for internal peace and stability?gresham s lawseems 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 pete with dissent. one

54、minute of eldrige cleaver is worth 10 minutes of roy wilkins. the labor crisis settled at the negotiating table is nothing pared to the confrontation that results in a strike - or better yet, violence along the picket lines. normality has be e the nemesis of the network news.nowthe upshot of all thi

55、s controversy is that a narrow and distorted picture of america often emerges from the televised news. a single, dramatic piece of the mosaic be es 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

56、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 i

57、n the offices of the government in washington but in the studios of the networks in newyork! television mayhave destroyed the old stereotypes, but has it not created newones in their places? what has this “passionate pursuit of controversy done to the politics of progress through logical promise ess

58、ential 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 promise are unknown to many americans, while the loudest and most extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every manin the street. howmanyma

59、rches 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 whoand what influences their decisions and their votes. strong arguments