Thursday, March 22, 2012
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Ooog the Caveman
Mastodon at 11...
In the JCOM 1500 syllabus, Dr. Ted discusses Ooog the Caveman and the sad case of Furd, whose demise under the flat foot of a mammoth was recorded by early “journalists” as pictographs on the walls of caves.
If you don't remember, check the Ooog story here.
It’s not really that big a leap from scratching Furd’s unfortunate demise depicted on the cave wall, to staring into the flicking light of a computer screen and typing emoticons on your Facebook page, is it?
The exciting news is that I have found documentation of Ooog's first edition of the Neanderthal News, and his first dissatisfied subscriber. Thanks to Non Sequitur and the amazing Mr. Wiley.
In the JCOM 1500 syllabus, Dr. Ted discusses Ooog the Caveman and the sad case of Furd, whose demise under the flat foot of a mammoth was recorded by early “journalists” as pictographs on the walls of caves.
If you don't remember, check the Ooog story here.
It’s not really that big a leap from scratching Furd’s unfortunate demise depicted on the cave wall, to staring into the flicking light of a computer screen and typing emoticons on your Facebook page, is it?
The exciting news is that I have found documentation of Ooog's first edition of the Neanderthal News, and his first dissatisfied subscriber. Thanks to Non Sequitur and the amazing Mr. Wiley.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
1500 Quiz1 FIXT
.
WEEK1 Quiz—Dr. Ted’s “answers”
JCOM 1500 Intro to Mass Comm Online (JCOM 1500) 9/6/10 Quiz1—The Syllabus
Here are my responses to these items. It wasn’t a real quiz, of course—just a way for me to see if you found and read all that opening stuff. Here are my thoughts on these issues, subject to your responses, too, if you feel so moved.
1. There are quotes from real people throughout the Smarts syllabus, including the four that lead it. Pick one of the quotes from anywhere in the syllabus that you particularly like, and that you can relate to your idea of why being “media smart” is important. (two pithy sentences +/-).
Dr. Ted writes: How to choose from among my children? I love them all. Each of these quotes has an important back-story. For example, “Question Authority” is a protest button and bumpersticker from the 1960s. Today, an engaged and alert citizen always should question authority and take everything with a large grain of salt (like when Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or Joe Biden starts spouting!). So if I’m feeling rebellious or ticked off, I’ll pick “Question Authority.” But you note that I have Tom Stoppard as part of my email signature: “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you can get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” Stoppard does a lot with this statement: care must be taken with words and language; as a writer and reader I appreciate this. And the thought that mere words can nudge the world—make a difference—is a powerful concept. I like so many quotes from Stoppard’s to Ginzberg controlling the culture, to the thousands of others I’ve collected over 15 years of Today’s WORD on Journalism. I also like Sir William Berkleley, because he ridiculously condemns both education and free thinking in one swoop. But E.B. White is one of my particular heroes. His quote about television, from the first time he saw it demonstrated in New York in 1938, was prescient, I think. Can you imagine worrying in such circumstances about how “messages, distant and concocted” would affect how people interacted with each other, and wondering if TV would be a “saving radiance” or a “disturbance of the general peace.” Smart man. And that’s exactly the kind of issues we examine in this class—how technological changes in media changed and affected the larger society.
2. What is a pictograph? And why might we think of Dr. Ted’s “Ooog the caveman” as the first journalist? What did he do that was revolutionary and different from other cavepeople sitting around the mastodon BBQ, grunting?
Dr. Ted writes: Some of you didn’t really think through this little fiction about Ooog and Furd and the pictographs. (These images are actually petroglyphs. There’s a difference, but both are rock drawings.) Ooog reported on the latest mastodon hunt news by scratching his version of events on the cave wall for others to read. It was revolutionary in terms of storytelling, because all previous storytelling was oral—grunts and whacks on the head. It was journalism because Ooog was selecting the news he thought important, and recorded events for posterity. The invention of cave drawings was a major deal, because instead of grunting to other cavemen face to face, stories now could be told to multiple people over long periods of time—the first form of “mass communication,” maybe. That’s why I say that Ooog and other cavemen who recorded their stories on cave walls were different from other oral storytellers. Their stories lived on and many more people read them. In fact, down south of Moab there’s a wall of pictographs about 50 feet square called “Newspaper Rock,” so-called because it records the stories of Anasazi life and hunts.
3. Before we even start, how do you think of your own mass media use? Do you use mass media a lot? What kind? What do you use it for, mostly?
Dr. Ted writes: There’s obviously no “correct” answer to this question. But here’s something to think about: The “Information Age” is a time when there is more knowledge available to us than has ever been true. But are we (are you?) better informed than our parents were? The question of how we use mass media is important, because are we using the information available to us for something useful‹to be better informed about our participatory democracy, for example—or are we “amusing ourselves to death” (the title of a book about media by Neil Postman)? A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young people (through high school) use electronic gadgets—cell phones, computers, TV, video games—7-1/2 hours a day!!!? So are those kids getting information? news you can use?
4. Some of you already have commented on the opening column (Under “Dear Students—Listen Up!” in the blog index), “Advice for a New Semester.” What’s your response to this advice? Be specific.
Dr. Ted writes: A number of you wrote that you wished you’d had this advice when you started college, which is a good reaction, I think.
5. While we’re at it, what do you think of Dr. Ted’s column about students, “The Dumbing of America”? Were you insulted? If students are “disengaged,” how can we professors re-engage them?
Dr. Ted writes: I really do want to know how to engage you better. It’s harder (for me, anyway) to do online than in person, but this is a continuing question for me, so don’t be shy.
6. Have you ordered the Folkerts/Lacy/Larabee text online? Every have either a hard copy book or the online one? What do you think about it so far?
7. This week you were plunged into Today’s WORD on Journalism, and received five of the daily emails. You can see them all here. Do you like any of these? Which and why?
Dr. Ted writes: Back-story: The WORD was concocted (“conceived” is, I think, altogether too grand) in 1995 or so as a way to get my students to pay attention to their email. Strange as it may sound, email was then a new and unpleasant disturbance of the general peace, and many students did not then spend 16 hours a day online. As a professor hoping to get and keep their attention while also instructing them, my object was that the WORD would give them something to think about before class, and which might go on their quizzes. I think it’s fair to say that this strategy was a dismal failure. Most of my students continue to ignore their daily WORDs and gaily accept point reductions on their quizzes for not knowing the day's wordish wisdom from philosophers ranging from Soren Kierkegaard to Brian Williams to Lisa Simpson. But I’m not too worried about that. The WORD has become rather frighteningly popular with non-students—grown-ups, mostly, who actually ask to be afflicted or who send email addresses of unsuspecting friends/colleagues/parents/bosses, so that they might be victimized as well. The same WORD that litters your inbox every morning is at that exact same moment tormenting people you’ve heard of (like Tom Brokaw and Orrin Hatch), and a bunch of college professors, writers, journalists and civilians on five continents (we once had a subscriber on Antarctica, but I haven’t heard from him for a while). About 1,800 subscribers now, mostly volunteers. More get the WORD on the website, and many more unsuspecting victims were forwarded the daily spam by “friends.” As if that weren't bad enough, now the WORD has its own FB page, and the Truly Deluded dig into the WORD’s archives, which feature billions of Old Words in a mind-numbing and impenetrable cornucopia. So that’s big news.
8. Speaking of fascinating humans, anything interesting in Dr. Ted’s bio? Dr. Ted writes: Nope.
9. Where did Dr. Ted earn his bachelor’s degree? In what?
Dr. Ted writes: I’m a recovering English major from UNew Hampshire (1978), but also I hold a Master of Mixology degree from the Boston School of Bartending (1975).
10. You should have watched (and maybe shared with your friends and other lumps of clay) the Stephen Colbert video on the Week1 list. So who is funnier—Professor Pease or Stephen Colbert? Why?
Dr. Ted writes: It’s a trick question. Clearly, me, because I hold your academic fate in my cyberhands. And if you believe that we need to talk...
WEEK1 Quiz—Dr. Ted’s “answers”
JCOM 1500 Intro to Mass Comm Online (JCOM 1500) 9/6/10 Quiz1—The Syllabus
Here are my responses to these items. It wasn’t a real quiz, of course—just a way for me to see if you found and read all that opening stuff. Here are my thoughts on these issues, subject to your responses, too, if you feel so moved.
1. There are quotes from real people throughout the Smarts syllabus, including the four that lead it. Pick one of the quotes from anywhere in the syllabus that you particularly like, and that you can relate to your idea of why being “media smart” is important. (two pithy sentences +/-).
Dr. Ted writes: How to choose from among my children? I love them all. Each of these quotes has an important back-story. For example, “Question Authority” is a protest button and bumpersticker from the 1960s. Today, an engaged and alert citizen always should question authority and take everything with a large grain of salt (like when Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or Joe Biden starts spouting!). So if I’m feeling rebellious or ticked off, I’ll pick “Question Authority.” But you note that I have Tom Stoppard as part of my email signature: “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you can get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” Stoppard does a lot with this statement: care must be taken with words and language; as a writer and reader I appreciate this. And the thought that mere words can nudge the world—make a difference—is a powerful concept. I like so many quotes from Stoppard’s to Ginzberg controlling the culture, to the thousands of others I’ve collected over 15 years of Today’s WORD on Journalism. I also like Sir William Berkleley, because he ridiculously condemns both education and free thinking in one swoop. But E.B. White is one of my particular heroes. His quote about television, from the first time he saw it demonstrated in New York in 1938, was prescient, I think. Can you imagine worrying in such circumstances about how “messages, distant and concocted” would affect how people interacted with each other, and wondering if TV would be a “saving radiance” or a “disturbance of the general peace.” Smart man. And that’s exactly the kind of issues we examine in this class—how technological changes in media changed and affected the larger society.
2. What is a pictograph? And why might we think of Dr. Ted’s “Ooog the caveman” as the first journalist? What did he do that was revolutionary and different from other cavepeople sitting around the mastodon BBQ, grunting?
Dr. Ted writes: Some of you didn’t really think through this little fiction about Ooog and Furd and the pictographs. (These images are actually petroglyphs. There’s a difference, but both are rock drawings.) Ooog reported on the latest mastodon hunt news by scratching his version of events on the cave wall for others to read. It was revolutionary in terms of storytelling, because all previous storytelling was oral—grunts and whacks on the head. It was journalism because Ooog was selecting the news he thought important, and recorded events for posterity. The invention of cave drawings was a major deal, because instead of grunting to other cavemen face to face, stories now could be told to multiple people over long periods of time—the first form of “mass communication,” maybe. That’s why I say that Ooog and other cavemen who recorded their stories on cave walls were different from other oral storytellers. Their stories lived on and many more people read them. In fact, down south of Moab there’s a wall of pictographs about 50 feet square called “Newspaper Rock,” so-called because it records the stories of Anasazi life and hunts.
3. Before we even start, how do you think of your own mass media use? Do you use mass media a lot? What kind? What do you use it for, mostly?
Dr. Ted writes: There’s obviously no “correct” answer to this question. But here’s something to think about: The “Information Age” is a time when there is more knowledge available to us than has ever been true. But are we (are you?) better informed than our parents were? The question of how we use mass media is important, because are we using the information available to us for something useful‹to be better informed about our participatory democracy, for example—or are we “amusing ourselves to death” (the title of a book about media by Neil Postman)? A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young people (through high school) use electronic gadgets—cell phones, computers, TV, video games—7-1/2 hours a day!!!? So are those kids getting information? news you can use?
4. Some of you already have commented on the opening column (Under “Dear Students—Listen Up!” in the blog index), “Advice for a New Semester.” What’s your response to this advice? Be specific.
Dr. Ted writes: A number of you wrote that you wished you’d had this advice when you started college, which is a good reaction, I think.
5. While we’re at it, what do you think of Dr. Ted’s column about students, “The Dumbing of America”? Were you insulted? If students are “disengaged,” how can we professors re-engage them?
Dr. Ted writes: I really do want to know how to engage you better. It’s harder (for me, anyway) to do online than in person, but this is a continuing question for me, so don’t be shy.
6. Have you ordered the Folkerts/Lacy/Larabee text online? Every have either a hard copy book or the online one? What do you think about it so far?
7. This week you were plunged into Today’s WORD on Journalism, and received five of the daily emails. You can see them all here. Do you like any of these? Which and why?
Dr. Ted writes: Back-story: The WORD was concocted (“conceived” is, I think, altogether too grand) in 1995 or so as a way to get my students to pay attention to their email. Strange as it may sound, email was then a new and unpleasant disturbance of the general peace, and many students did not then spend 16 hours a day online. As a professor hoping to get and keep their attention while also instructing them, my object was that the WORD would give them something to think about before class, and which might go on their quizzes. I think it’s fair to say that this strategy was a dismal failure. Most of my students continue to ignore their daily WORDs and gaily accept point reductions on their quizzes for not knowing the day's wordish wisdom from philosophers ranging from Soren Kierkegaard to Brian Williams to Lisa Simpson. But I’m not too worried about that. The WORD has become rather frighteningly popular with non-students—grown-ups, mostly, who actually ask to be afflicted or who send email addresses of unsuspecting friends/colleagues/parents/bosses, so that they might be victimized as well. The same WORD that litters your inbox every morning is at that exact same moment tormenting people you’ve heard of (like Tom Brokaw and Orrin Hatch), and a bunch of college professors, writers, journalists and civilians on five continents (we once had a subscriber on Antarctica, but I haven’t heard from him for a while). About 1,800 subscribers now, mostly volunteers. More get the WORD on the website, and many more unsuspecting victims were forwarded the daily spam by “friends.” As if that weren't bad enough, now the WORD has its own FB page, and the Truly Deluded dig into the WORD’s archives, which feature billions of Old Words in a mind-numbing and impenetrable cornucopia. So that’s big news.
8. Speaking of fascinating humans, anything interesting in Dr. Ted’s bio? Dr. Ted writes: Nope.
9. Where did Dr. Ted earn his bachelor’s degree? In what?
Dr. Ted writes: I’m a recovering English major from UNew Hampshire (1978), but also I hold a Master of Mixology degree from the Boston School of Bartending (1975).
10. You should have watched (and maybe shared with your friends and other lumps of clay) the Stephen Colbert video on the Week1 list. So who is funnier—Professor Pease or Stephen Colbert? Why?
Dr. Ted writes: It’s a trick question. Clearly, me, because I hold your academic fate in my cyberhands. And if you believe that we need to talk...
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Larry King Speaks
.
The Father of ‘Talk Show Democracy’
On the Line with Larry King
By Edward C. Pease
Note: Edward C. Pease was editor of Media Studies Journal when he swapped roles with Larry King, then the undisputed king of the on-air interview, to get King’s thoughts on what in 1994 was the “new” mass media’s role in politics and governance. Despite some dated references, King’s predictions about live TV debates between political candidates, two-way real-time video (Skype) and the impact of media in self-governance stand up as fresh and prescient. TP
In the aftermath of what surely was the most extraordinary presidential campaign ever for the American news media [1992], the Larry King story—like the man himself—has taken on almost mythic proportions: Horatio Alger Makes Good. Real good.
Today, the mantle of media greatness rests easy on the self-described “Jewish kid from Brooklyn” in the wake of events that defined the “top banana of talk show hosts” as the undisputed kingmaker of the 1990s. Consider: During the presidential race, Ross Perot announced his candidacy (twice) on “Larry King Live”; after belittling the idea, an uncomfortable (and, finally, desperate) George Bush came on the show late in a losing campaign; and Bill Clinton, mindful of King’s role in his victory, promised to be back every six months if he won.
Though self-effacing (“I’m just the interlocutor”), Larry King doesn’t reject the label of Father of America’s new “electronic democracy,” a revolution that came of age, he acknowledges, with Perot’s coy, on-air concession on Feb. 20, 1992, that he’d run for president if drafted. With that show, Larry King became an instant oracle, ranking second (after venerable sense-maker David Brinkley), Media Studies Center research found, among most frequently cited political pundits, while catching both grief from the traditional news media and loyalty of audiences and candidates.
“I don’t get carried away with it,” King told Journal Editor Edward Pease in an interview in King’s CNN office in March. “I mean, it’s wonderful to be a part of it—I’d be kidding you if I said I don’t love the attention and the pay and the wonderful things it brings you. And it’s wonderful to be in the middle of the hunt. . . . But you got to watch that it doesn’t go to your head.”
In 1994, with the role of interactive shows like King’s well established, Larry King reflects that what now is revered as “talk show democracy” is just an idea whose time took a while to come—34 years, to be precise, which was how long ago King developed the format he still uses. His 1960 radio show, broadcast live from Pumpernik’s Restaurant in Miami Beach, consisted of conversation with both stars and “regular people.” That basic format became the “Larry King Live” show that 400 million people listen to or watch daily in 1994.
“I’m not doing anything different than I did 30-something years ago,” King says. “Nothing. Before the Gore-Perot debate—someone said, ‘Boy, you must be edgy.’ Why? I did two guys running for Miami Beach mayor. I have had two guys punch each other. It’s nothing new—there are just different characters. I’ve always been inquiring. I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done except that now the avenues are so much wider, direct communication is so much more powerful than it was when I was in Miami Beach.”
In a 1989 interview with Media Studies Journal, King said of talk radio: “Probably we’re a better barometer [of public opinion] in that The New York Times will print only the letters that it chooses to print.” Shows like his, King said, were “a national, electronic town meeting, a chance for the public to get together and speak out.”
Talk shows in general and Larry King’s in particular have not been without their critics in the 1990s; it isn’t difficult to make connections between public resentment of the traditional news media and the growing popularity of “alternatives.” In his 1993 book On the Line, responding to the sometimes whining criticism from the press that shows like his make it easy for public figures to circumvent the press and avoid the tough questions, King concedes that, “‘Talk show democracy’ is certainly not without risks or flaws. Our callers ask better, more serious questions than some in the press have given them credit for. But some candidates and their handlers still think of talk shows as a way to avoid tough press grillings. Talk shows should supplement the campaign press, not replace it. There’s room enough for everyone.”
It is King’s view that direct-access exchange between citizens and public figures—even presidents—is good for society and press alike. That vision of the American people speaking to one another over the air has become the electronic and political reality of the 1990s. And political leaders are joining in, as the Father of the Talk Show Democracy discussed in this interview evaluating the presidency in the new media age and his own part in it.
Media Studies Journal: You have had a major influence in developing the promise of the “electronic town meeting.” Would you talk about how you see this new form having affected the ways that Bill Clinton governs?
Larry King: Bill Clinton’s great strength is his ability to communicate via television, one on one. Reagan had that strength, but his was perceived completely differently: Reagan was your really nice uncle who was a good guy and made you feel good. Clinton is your really bright cousin who listens to you, cares about the family, relates very well, calls, keeps in touch, is accessible. He’s a nice guy. Got faults . . . we all have faults—for example, even the Whitewater thing. But he’s extraordinarily likable. Even what we see as a little bit of a cad in him is kind of fun.
So, he will use to his advantage programs like “Larry King Live” and others. The more he communicates in an informal setting, the better.
I have no doubt that if this were the 1930s, Roosevelt would have been on our show a lot—fireside chats with Larry King. He would have taken it further and talked to the public. Clinton’s willing to talk to the public. He is the most accessible president ever.
MSJ: Do you think the president gets away with more on shows like yours because he’s so good on the air and can appear and sell his position pretty much without being challenged?
Larry King: You have to be good at that. But that same plus that allows him to go on and focus on himself also allows Whitewater to be the focus of the show this week. You got to pay the price of it.
MSJ: How is this immediate access of the public with news and newsmakers changing how the traditional news media deal with the president?
Larry King: There’s no “traditional” anymore. In fact, in a couple of years, we’re going to be called traditional, and something new will have come along.
Communications is so informal today and so one-to-one: When I was a kid, the last thing I’d have dreamed of would have been talking to a president. I mean, forget it. But that’s a distinct possibility today, that a Joe Citizen in Des Moines can talk to Bill Clinton. In fact, if his kid wanted to really work at it, he could make it happen, because Bill Clinton will be on phone-in shows and will continue to communicate that way.
We’ll continue to have these kinds of forums. Now, Whitewater aside, it wouldn’t shock me to see Hillary debate Robert Dole on the eve of the health care vote on “ Larry King Live.” Gore and Perot proved that the new rules are that there are no rules anymore.
MSJ: Where does that leave the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, NBC?
Larry King: Someone said—and I don’t know if this is true—that today we have more input of information in a week than someone in 1930 had in a lifetime. The more the merrier. We’ve never been better informed. The more channels open to us—the more C-SPANs, the more CNNs—the better. There will still be a Washington Post. There will be op-ed pages. There will be critics. But today, the newspaper has a different role.
MSJ: What’s that?
Larry King: The difference today is that Clinton could make three key TV appearances. Let’s say he appears on “ Larry King Live,” “Nightline” and the morning shows. Then there’s William Safire, two days later, on the op-ed page of The New York Times, telling you that he looked erratic. It’s meaningless to you, if he didn’t look erratic to you.
When I was a kid, all I had to go on was print: Time magazine told me what to think of Harry Truman—print was like the Bible to me. But now, all this competition forces the printed press to be better and smarter—the Los Angeles Times is 100 percent better than it was; the New York Times, infinitely more readable, a better paper, affected by television—the New York Times is doing graphics! The Washington Post is a better paper. So is the Chicago Tribune.
MSJ: So the “new media” are pushing newspapers to do a better and different job?
Larry King: Sure. I’m a crazy sports fan, but I don’t read game stories anymore. I saw the game. I saw the highlights on ESPN. So, the Washington Post tomorrow, in their story of the Bullets game, has got to give me something different. I saw the Clinton speech. How many times will you read the New York Times front-page piece on it?
MSJ: One feature of the “new media” is that these things will be available in full text, on the Internet, for instance.
Larry King: That’s what I’m saying—it keeps growing and growing and growing. We’re going to vote by phone. They say the newspaper will be delivered from the television in your house and, I’m told, you’ll get only the parts you want, what you want to see.
MSJ: So we’ll be able to pick and choose which “Larry King” interviews to see, or which question Larry King asks.
Larry King: Or it will be in a box and you can hit a button and say, “The last time Clinton was on, what did he say?” And you’ll punch that up. You’ll direct your own sports because you’ll have at home what the control room has.
MSJ: Are there other ways that you already see the “new media” changing the way public figures—especially the president—are perceived?
Larry King: There’s something about this medium that can change you. Perot has not been the same since that night [Feb. 20, 1992, when he said he would run for president on King’s show].
And Gore—I had a guy say to me today, “Wouldn’t it be a great break for the Democratic Party if Clinton could resign? Because Gore’s unbeatable.”
Who would beat Gore? What Republican? Nobody. I don’t think there’s a Republican who can touch him. He’s a loyal guy, he’s bright, he’s smart, he’s easily the best vice president we’ve ever had. And a lot had to do with that night.
MSJ: You mean when he debated Perot about NAFTA on your show?
Larry King: He took on a giant. The odds were against him. They were 30 votes behind [in the Senate on NAFTA]. And he won. Things can change overnight.
You know, I’m 60. I wish I were 30 because, God, I’m right at the cutting edge of this. It’s still strange to me, just to be a part of it, to have access to it and to be able to bring it forward. Especially since I’m not doing anything different than I did 30 years ago. I’m doing the same things I did in Miami Beach, except now the avenues are so much more open.
MSJ: To get back to the White House and to this President—he communicates well, he won the election with his electronic town meeting approach.
Larry King: He’s skilled at people-to-people.
MSJ: Now that he’s in office, now that he’s governing the nation, how is that different from how he used the media during the campaign?
Larry King: Well, he views it as always running. He loves it too: He likes campaigning. For Clinton, bad days are good days—that’s what makes him a tough opponent. Anything can bring a president down, but he’s not tormented by Whitewater, for example. He’s not sitting up going, “Oh, Jesus.” He’s going to get up tomorrow morning and take them on. And his instincts are uncanny.
Gore told me he had the idea to debate Perot [on NAFTA] and called Clinton and said, “I’ve got an idea. You know, we’re 30 votes down, Perot is obviously running with the ball. What if I challenge him? What if I went on ‘Larry King’ with him?” And Clinton said, “Go!”
They didn’t send it to staff. They get bogged when they get into staff. He’d run a better show if he ran it himself. He’s got very good instincts. He’s extraordinarily likable. He’s the opposite side of the [Rush] Limbaughs, the attackers every day, the [Sen. Al] D’Amatos. They’re appealing to a minority that just can’t stand the fact that they’re up against a guy who takes all the pounding.
Whitewater could change all that, but what’s never going to change is the way Gore will be if Gore were president, if Dole were president. I don’t think you could run for office today and not go on the “Larry King Lives” and the “Nightlines.” You couldn’t avoid that anymore.
MSJ: Perot talked about voting from your home.
Larry King: Probably soon you will vote from your home. There will be national referendums, there will be polling techniques, they will have computers where you’re able to get public opinion immediately.
And you cannot diminish the overnight factor. Suppose there’s a governor—who’s the governor of North Dakota? I don’t even know if he’s a Republican, but let’s assume that he’s a Republican. Nobody knows him. I can give you a scenario in which he’s going to be the presidential candidate of the Republican Party in ’96.
Here’s what happens: There’s a prison riot in Fargo and the prisoners take over the prison. They want to meet with the governor. CNN’s cameras go there, followed by CBS and NBC.
The governor lands in a helicopter and goes in alone. He’s a handsome, good-looking guy, in his 40s—Gov. Dumont—and he walks into their prison. Four hours later he comes out. Interrupt all programming—he comes out with the prisoners. They surrender, and no one’s hurt. The governor steps forward. He says, “They will be punished, but they’ve had some logical demands. And I’ve looked at crime inside there now, and I’ve got some things to say . . . .” And he’s very forceful.
That’s a Thursday. On Friday, he’s on “Larry King Live” and “Nightline.” Sunday, he’s on “ Meet the Press.” The following Friday, he’s leading in the polls. He’s on the front cover of Time, the unknown favorite. Why? Because of television. Thirty years ago, if the New York Times had told me, “You know about this governor who landed in North Dakota . . . .” Now I’m going to see him land. And I’m going to see him go into the prison. And there might even be a camera in the prison—we’ll watch him talk to the prisoners. Let’s put it on. He’s president.
MSJ: It couldn’t have happened with print?
Larry King: It couldn’t have happened with print. It couldn’t have happened with radio. It needs the dynamism of this—TV—in every home.
There’s no illiteracy with television—everybody’s hooked in. It still throws the people involved: We sit down with Clinton, and I get a call and say, “Auckland, New Zealand. Go ahead.” And Clinton goes, “Wow!”
I run into more people who watch it—in Frankfurt, they watch it in the airport. Here’s a true story I tell. It’s funny, but it’s true: I’m in Israel at the Wailing Wall, never been to Israel before. My mother never got to go. I’m Jewish, it was very emotional—me there with my brother. And there’s the Wailing Wall, and they’re praying and there’s a rabbi davening, down on his knees, davening. I’m standing there and he looks up at me and says, “What’s with Perot?”
Just one little moment showed me the whole world’s watching. “What’s with Perot?”
MSJ: In a lot of ways, you invented this. You did it 30 years ago in Miami . . . .
Larry King: Others invented the use of telephones on television. But we made it a part of the program. Donahue took calls for 20 years, but some days he wouldn’t take calls. For us, calls are always a part of this mix.
MSJ: And, almost by accident, you proved how powerful it was with the Perot interview. Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, and you’ve got imitators all over the place, but do you ever look at them and say to yourself, “What hath I wrought?” How does that make you feel?
Larry King: That’s fine. I like the business. I like to see more people in it. I see youngsters coming along, doing it. I’ll be leaving radio in October, I think, pretty sure. And I’d love to see some really young energetic guy come along and be “the next Larry King.” That’s always nice to hear.
I like the impact we made in talk radio—we began the first national talk radio show, and now everybody’s got a talk radio show. I’m very proud of it.
MSJ: Interviewing a politician is different from an interview with an entertainer. When you’re dealing with a political figure . . . .
Larry King: Although there’s a sameness to it. For example, Michael Keaton comes on my show to talk about his movie. It’s the same as Bill Clinton talking about his health plan: “Vote for me, this health plan is good for you.” Or, “This movie you will like.”
You vote for Keaton by putting down seven bucks. You vote for Clinton by calling your congressman. They’re both selling. I’m asking questions. There’s not that much of a difference.
MSJ: Do you have any reservations about being the bully pulpit, being the soapbox for any of the people—entertainers or politicians—who come on your show?
Larry King: No. We ask good questions, we’re not there to kill them, we’re not there to softball them. I ask the best questions I can. I always saw myself as the style section.
MSJ: You’ve said, “I don’t consider myself a journalist, but journalism results from what I do.”
Larry King: Right. I never was the front page. I’m not a journalist per se. I don’t go cover the fire, but I like to ask questions of the firemen. To report on the fire does not whet my appetite. But to get that fireman to talk about how he feels . . . .
MSJ: What about the critics, though, who . . .
Larry King: Talk about softballing . . .
MSJ: Right.
Larry King: You know, I’ve never understood that. What is a softball question? I just am me and I’m doing the same thing I’ve done all these years, which is being intensely curious. . . . For example, the postmaster general is on tonight—I don’t care who he slept with last night. If there’s a scandal about him in the paper today, I’ll ask about it. But I’m going to learn a lot more by getting his perception of it than by talking about my perception of it. What whets my appetite is not, what paper did Bill Clinton sign 10 years ago to put a down payment on Whitewater. What really fascinates me is, how does he feel tonight? That fascinates me more.
We need the guys who ask, “What did you sign 10 years ago?” But from my point of view, that’s one way not to get an answer. The best question is, “What’s going on?” If Clinton sat down with me tonight, I’d ask, “What’s going on?” Then I get his perspective, not mine. His.
MSJ: How do you view the traditional media’s response to that approach, and to the “new media” generally, which includes Larry King?
Larry King: Well, I don’t know why, but some seem to be jealous—some aren’t at all. One of the problems with the old media is, for example, the press conference. If you’re used to good one-on-ones, a press conference is boring. They’re too all over the place. They [reporters] don’t follow up each other; each one has his own agenda. But here, you’re just dealing with my question, you know, there’s no group agenda. They may feel that we ran an end run around them, but we didn’t do anything they wouldn’t do.
MSJ: Eleanor Clift of Newsweek has written a piece for this Journal in which she talks about Bill Clinton going to alternative media, and the White House press corps retaliating with what she called “unrelievedly negative coverage” of the president. What about that?
Larry King: Well, Eleanor probably believes that they feel left out, so they’re going to get even by attacking. But the whole White House press corps could hate Clinton, and if he goes on somewhere tonight and he’s effective, he’s bypassed them.
I don’t have that sense of my own personal importance. “Larry King Live” is an important show, but I want to be here tomorrow night. I’m not important tonight—[my guest] is important tonight. What he says is important.
MSJ: So, if Clinton can go around the White House press corps and get his message out effectively . . .
Larry King: I don’t know if it’s going around. I mean, what made them—or anyone—the be-all and end-all? What if I started getting angry and saying, “Hey, Clinton, you called a press conference today, why didn’t you come to me?”
MSJ: Are they irrelevant?
Larry King: No, no one’s irrelevant. We’re all part of the mix. But there’s no Walter Winchell anymore, there’s no make-or-break guy. David Broder can’t make, he can’t break. Larry King can’t make, he can’t break. Sure, there are more Larry Kings now than there were, so the David Broders have to take a little bit of a step back—the pie is more cut up. There are so many more viewers, more channels. You know, when Jackie Gleason went off the air, he had a 29 [share]. Bill Cosby never reached 29. The world changed.
So nobody is irrelevant. On the other hand, nobody’s the ultimate authority, either, anymore.
MSJ: Former GOP Chairman Rich Bond once told you that people are paying attention to the media differently now. He said, “They are so alienated from the national establishments of conventional media and conventional politics that they would believe more what was said on a ‘Larry King’ show than they would believe what George Will said on ‘David Brinkley.’” And you wrote in your book that many in the press feel that way, that the press feels you are “treading on their turf.” Can you talk more about that?
Larry King: CNN has a great image with the audience. While Brinkley’s wonderful, he also has [George] Will and [Sam] Donaldson, both of whom have images—their negatives are as high as their positives. They’re both outstanding personalities, but they have negatives, baggage with the public.
I don’t think we skew much negative. We have a good show—it’s lively, it moves right along, people call in. It also is a very good visual show. . . . Something’s happening and I love doing it, and that comes though. I love David, but there are some Sundays he looks like he couldn’t care less.
MSJ: There’s a cartoon by Don Wright in your book of two Colonial-era guys in frock coats standing on a cloud and looking down. One of them says, “That’s just the way it happened, Mr. Jefferson. From the Federalist Papers to ‘Larry King Live.’” Do you see yourself as inheriting the mantle of the Founding Fathers?
Larry King: What we don’t know is, what fascinates me is how Lincoln would have done? If Lincoln were on the show tonight, how would he have handled the call from the Southern state that seceded—“Let’s go to calls. Nashville? . . .”
MSJ: And what would he have said?
Larry King: He could have been too witty for his own good. He had a high sing-song voice. . . . Imagine the media at Gettysburg: “OK, we’re all there, we’re going live. There’s a crowd—dolly in.” He speaks for a minute and eight seconds—and that’s it.
Imagine what happens: “Call Schneider! We need analysis!”
Then we have some analysis. The first guy would say, “What is this ‘Four score . . .’? What does that mean? ‘Four score’? Why didn’t he say 87? He should just talk to the regular guy, because that’s the trouble with Abe—he talks above the heads of people. . . .”
And definitely there would have been a critic who would have said, “Boy, was he right when he said, ‘People will little note nor long remember what was said here. . . .’ Abe, you hit it on the head.”
They would have had a field day.
MSJ: And what about the Founding Fathers?
Larry King: Jefferson, who was shy, kind of introverted: “Who is this woman, Tom? Black woman,” they’d want to know. “Who is this woman?”
Imagine Ben Franklin, with “Hard Copy” following him to Paris? All over. Film of Ben Franklin in Paris? “Exclusive, tonight at 5:00, Mrs. Franklin speaks out on ‘Inside Edition’. . . .” I mean, they were just as raucous—it’s just that they didn’t have television.
Today, if we had a July 4th Declaration of Independence, it still would have been signed, let’s say, in Philadelphia. But all the signers would have been on all of the shows the next three nights, putting a spin on it: “Hancock, how come your name’s so big? Are you plugging the insurance company? What do you mean by ‘When, in the course of human events,’ . . .”?
And try to picture the wacko right-wing talk show host on the Declaration of Independence—he’d have gone berserk: “Who are these people? Revolutionaries, mercenaries, violating the king? ‘When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary . . .’—it’s a promotion of violence. They’re saying the same thing that Farrakhan is saying. Dress up as Indians and throw tea—they’re Harbor cowards! . . .”
MSJ: One last question: Look ahead for us. If the 1992 campaign represents the first coming of age of the electronic democracy and the ascendancy of the “new media,” then where do you see it going next? Is this really going to be an electronic democracy? Will it be a push-button democracy?
Larry King: My bet is that we’re going more toward that. With satellites, you don’t have to be in this room—you can talk to any guest anywhere. The truest thing Perot said was early on, when he asked, “What do we have ambassadors for?” We’ve got fax machines, phones. What does an ambassador do? Relays a message. I can get the message much faster now, and there will be more speed, quicker information.
Now, I can’t predict what will follow the fax—something even faster . . . .
MSJ: Interactive communications, Max Headroom—two-way video?
Larry King: That’s right around the corner. I hope I’m around to see it. I think it’s going to be exciting, but part of it is not forecastable. I couldn’t have forecast what we’re doing now 10 years ago.
MSJ: Will the American public be as well served?
Larry King: Absolutely. There may be a lot of speed, there may be too much information too quickly. But we’re always better served—the more you know, the better. Always. I think we’ll be very well served.
MSJ: Thank you.
Larry King: Hey, great working with you.
___
Edward C. Pease. “The Father of ‘Talk Show Democracy’—On the Line with Larry King.” In “The Presidency in the New Media Age.” Media Studies Journal. Vol. 8, No. 2. (Spring 1994). pp. 123-37.
The Father of ‘Talk Show Democracy’
On the Line with Larry King
By Edward C. Pease
Note: Edward C. Pease was editor of Media Studies Journal when he swapped roles with Larry King, then the undisputed king of the on-air interview, to get King’s thoughts on what in 1994 was the “new” mass media’s role in politics and governance. Despite some dated references, King’s predictions about live TV debates between political candidates, two-way real-time video (Skype) and the impact of media in self-governance stand up as fresh and prescient. TP
In the aftermath of what surely was the most extraordinary presidential campaign ever for the American news media [1992], the Larry King story—like the man himself—has taken on almost mythic proportions: Horatio Alger Makes Good. Real good.
Today, the mantle of media greatness rests easy on the self-described “Jewish kid from Brooklyn” in the wake of events that defined the “top banana of talk show hosts” as the undisputed kingmaker of the 1990s. Consider: During the presidential race, Ross Perot announced his candidacy (twice) on “Larry King Live”; after belittling the idea, an uncomfortable (and, finally, desperate) George Bush came on the show late in a losing campaign; and Bill Clinton, mindful of King’s role in his victory, promised to be back every six months if he won.
Though self-effacing (“I’m just the interlocutor”), Larry King doesn’t reject the label of Father of America’s new “electronic democracy,” a revolution that came of age, he acknowledges, with Perot’s coy, on-air concession on Feb. 20, 1992, that he’d run for president if drafted. With that show, Larry King became an instant oracle, ranking second (after venerable sense-maker David Brinkley), Media Studies Center research found, among most frequently cited political pundits, while catching both grief from the traditional news media and loyalty of audiences and candidates.
“I don’t get carried away with it,” King told Journal Editor Edward Pease in an interview in King’s CNN office in March. “I mean, it’s wonderful to be a part of it—I’d be kidding you if I said I don’t love the attention and the pay and the wonderful things it brings you. And it’s wonderful to be in the middle of the hunt. . . . But you got to watch that it doesn’t go to your head.”
In 1994, with the role of interactive shows like King’s well established, Larry King reflects that what now is revered as “talk show democracy” is just an idea whose time took a while to come—34 years, to be precise, which was how long ago King developed the format he still uses. His 1960 radio show, broadcast live from Pumpernik’s Restaurant in Miami Beach, consisted of conversation with both stars and “regular people.” That basic format became the “Larry King Live” show that 400 million people listen to or watch daily in 1994.
“I’m not doing anything different than I did 30-something years ago,” King says. “Nothing. Before the Gore-Perot debate—someone said, ‘Boy, you must be edgy.’ Why? I did two guys running for Miami Beach mayor. I have had two guys punch each other. It’s nothing new—there are just different characters. I’ve always been inquiring. I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done except that now the avenues are so much wider, direct communication is so much more powerful than it was when I was in Miami Beach.”
In a 1989 interview with Media Studies Journal, King said of talk radio: “Probably we’re a better barometer [of public opinion] in that The New York Times will print only the letters that it chooses to print.” Shows like his, King said, were “a national, electronic town meeting, a chance for the public to get together and speak out.”
Talk shows in general and Larry King’s in particular have not been without their critics in the 1990s; it isn’t difficult to make connections between public resentment of the traditional news media and the growing popularity of “alternatives.” In his 1993 book On the Line, responding to the sometimes whining criticism from the press that shows like his make it easy for public figures to circumvent the press and avoid the tough questions, King concedes that, “‘Talk show democracy’ is certainly not without risks or flaws. Our callers ask better, more serious questions than some in the press have given them credit for. But some candidates and their handlers still think of talk shows as a way to avoid tough press grillings. Talk shows should supplement the campaign press, not replace it. There’s room enough for everyone.”
It is King’s view that direct-access exchange between citizens and public figures—even presidents—is good for society and press alike. That vision of the American people speaking to one another over the air has become the electronic and political reality of the 1990s. And political leaders are joining in, as the Father of the Talk Show Democracy discussed in this interview evaluating the presidency in the new media age and his own part in it.
Media Studies Journal: You have had a major influence in developing the promise of the “electronic town meeting.” Would you talk about how you see this new form having affected the ways that Bill Clinton governs?
Larry King: Bill Clinton’s great strength is his ability to communicate via television, one on one. Reagan had that strength, but his was perceived completely differently: Reagan was your really nice uncle who was a good guy and made you feel good. Clinton is your really bright cousin who listens to you, cares about the family, relates very well, calls, keeps in touch, is accessible. He’s a nice guy. Got faults . . . we all have faults—for example, even the Whitewater thing. But he’s extraordinarily likable. Even what we see as a little bit of a cad in him is kind of fun.
So, he will use to his advantage programs like “Larry King Live” and others. The more he communicates in an informal setting, the better.
I have no doubt that if this were the 1930s, Roosevelt would have been on our show a lot—fireside chats with Larry King. He would have taken it further and talked to the public. Clinton’s willing to talk to the public. He is the most accessible president ever.
MSJ: Do you think the president gets away with more on shows like yours because he’s so good on the air and can appear and sell his position pretty much without being challenged?
Larry King: You have to be good at that. But that same plus that allows him to go on and focus on himself also allows Whitewater to be the focus of the show this week. You got to pay the price of it.
MSJ: How is this immediate access of the public with news and newsmakers changing how the traditional news media deal with the president?
Larry King: There’s no “traditional” anymore. In fact, in a couple of years, we’re going to be called traditional, and something new will have come along.
Communications is so informal today and so one-to-one: When I was a kid, the last thing I’d have dreamed of would have been talking to a president. I mean, forget it. But that’s a distinct possibility today, that a Joe Citizen in Des Moines can talk to Bill Clinton. In fact, if his kid wanted to really work at it, he could make it happen, because Bill Clinton will be on phone-in shows and will continue to communicate that way.
We’ll continue to have these kinds of forums. Now, Whitewater aside, it wouldn’t shock me to see Hillary debate Robert Dole on the eve of the health care vote on “ Larry King Live.” Gore and Perot proved that the new rules are that there are no rules anymore.
MSJ: Where does that leave the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, NBC?
Larry King: Someone said—and I don’t know if this is true—that today we have more input of information in a week than someone in 1930 had in a lifetime. The more the merrier. We’ve never been better informed. The more channels open to us—the more C-SPANs, the more CNNs—the better. There will still be a Washington Post. There will be op-ed pages. There will be critics. But today, the newspaper has a different role.
MSJ: What’s that?
Larry King: The difference today is that Clinton could make three key TV appearances. Let’s say he appears on “ Larry King Live,” “Nightline” and the morning shows. Then there’s William Safire, two days later, on the op-ed page of The New York Times, telling you that he looked erratic. It’s meaningless to you, if he didn’t look erratic to you.
When I was a kid, all I had to go on was print: Time magazine told me what to think of Harry Truman—print was like the Bible to me. But now, all this competition forces the printed press to be better and smarter—the Los Angeles Times is 100 percent better than it was; the New York Times, infinitely more readable, a better paper, affected by television—the New York Times is doing graphics! The Washington Post is a better paper. So is the Chicago Tribune.
MSJ: So the “new media” are pushing newspapers to do a better and different job?
Larry King: Sure. I’m a crazy sports fan, but I don’t read game stories anymore. I saw the game. I saw the highlights on ESPN. So, the Washington Post tomorrow, in their story of the Bullets game, has got to give me something different. I saw the Clinton speech. How many times will you read the New York Times front-page piece on it?
MSJ: One feature of the “new media” is that these things will be available in full text, on the Internet, for instance.
Larry King: That’s what I’m saying—it keeps growing and growing and growing. We’re going to vote by phone. They say the newspaper will be delivered from the television in your house and, I’m told, you’ll get only the parts you want, what you want to see.
MSJ: So we’ll be able to pick and choose which “Larry King” interviews to see, or which question Larry King asks.
Larry King: Or it will be in a box and you can hit a button and say, “The last time Clinton was on, what did he say?” And you’ll punch that up. You’ll direct your own sports because you’ll have at home what the control room has.
MSJ: Are there other ways that you already see the “new media” changing the way public figures—especially the president—are perceived?
Larry King: There’s something about this medium that can change you. Perot has not been the same since that night [Feb. 20, 1992, when he said he would run for president on King’s show].
And Gore—I had a guy say to me today, “Wouldn’t it be a great break for the Democratic Party if Clinton could resign? Because Gore’s unbeatable.”
Who would beat Gore? What Republican? Nobody. I don’t think there’s a Republican who can touch him. He’s a loyal guy, he’s bright, he’s smart, he’s easily the best vice president we’ve ever had. And a lot had to do with that night.
MSJ: You mean when he debated Perot about NAFTA on your show?
Larry King: He took on a giant. The odds were against him. They were 30 votes behind [in the Senate on NAFTA]. And he won. Things can change overnight.
You know, I’m 60. I wish I were 30 because, God, I’m right at the cutting edge of this. It’s still strange to me, just to be a part of it, to have access to it and to be able to bring it forward. Especially since I’m not doing anything different than I did 30 years ago. I’m doing the same things I did in Miami Beach, except now the avenues are so much more open.
MSJ: To get back to the White House and to this President—he communicates well, he won the election with his electronic town meeting approach.
Larry King: He’s skilled at people-to-people.
MSJ: Now that he’s in office, now that he’s governing the nation, how is that different from how he used the media during the campaign?
Larry King: Well, he views it as always running. He loves it too: He likes campaigning. For Clinton, bad days are good days—that’s what makes him a tough opponent. Anything can bring a president down, but he’s not tormented by Whitewater, for example. He’s not sitting up going, “Oh, Jesus.” He’s going to get up tomorrow morning and take them on. And his instincts are uncanny.
Gore told me he had the idea to debate Perot [on NAFTA] and called Clinton and said, “I’ve got an idea. You know, we’re 30 votes down, Perot is obviously running with the ball. What if I challenge him? What if I went on ‘Larry King’ with him?” And Clinton said, “Go!”
They didn’t send it to staff. They get bogged when they get into staff. He’d run a better show if he ran it himself. He’s got very good instincts. He’s extraordinarily likable. He’s the opposite side of the [Rush] Limbaughs, the attackers every day, the [Sen. Al] D’Amatos. They’re appealing to a minority that just can’t stand the fact that they’re up against a guy who takes all the pounding.
Whitewater could change all that, but what’s never going to change is the way Gore will be if Gore were president, if Dole were president. I don’t think you could run for office today and not go on the “Larry King Lives” and the “Nightlines.” You couldn’t avoid that anymore.
MSJ: Perot talked about voting from your home.
Larry King: Probably soon you will vote from your home. There will be national referendums, there will be polling techniques, they will have computers where you’re able to get public opinion immediately.
And you cannot diminish the overnight factor. Suppose there’s a governor—who’s the governor of North Dakota? I don’t even know if he’s a Republican, but let’s assume that he’s a Republican. Nobody knows him. I can give you a scenario in which he’s going to be the presidential candidate of the Republican Party in ’96.
Here’s what happens: There’s a prison riot in Fargo and the prisoners take over the prison. They want to meet with the governor. CNN’s cameras go there, followed by CBS and NBC.
The governor lands in a helicopter and goes in alone. He’s a handsome, good-looking guy, in his 40s—Gov. Dumont—and he walks into their prison. Four hours later he comes out. Interrupt all programming—he comes out with the prisoners. They surrender, and no one’s hurt. The governor steps forward. He says, “They will be punished, but they’ve had some logical demands. And I’ve looked at crime inside there now, and I’ve got some things to say . . . .” And he’s very forceful.
That’s a Thursday. On Friday, he’s on “Larry King Live” and “Nightline.” Sunday, he’s on “ Meet the Press.” The following Friday, he’s leading in the polls. He’s on the front cover of Time, the unknown favorite. Why? Because of television. Thirty years ago, if the New York Times had told me, “You know about this governor who landed in North Dakota . . . .” Now I’m going to see him land. And I’m going to see him go into the prison. And there might even be a camera in the prison—we’ll watch him talk to the prisoners. Let’s put it on. He’s president.
MSJ: It couldn’t have happened with print?
Larry King: It couldn’t have happened with print. It couldn’t have happened with radio. It needs the dynamism of this—TV—in every home.
There’s no illiteracy with television—everybody’s hooked in. It still throws the people involved: We sit down with Clinton, and I get a call and say, “Auckland, New Zealand. Go ahead.” And Clinton goes, “Wow!”
I run into more people who watch it—in Frankfurt, they watch it in the airport. Here’s a true story I tell. It’s funny, but it’s true: I’m in Israel at the Wailing Wall, never been to Israel before. My mother never got to go. I’m Jewish, it was very emotional—me there with my brother. And there’s the Wailing Wall, and they’re praying and there’s a rabbi davening, down on his knees, davening. I’m standing there and he looks up at me and says, “What’s with Perot?”
Just one little moment showed me the whole world’s watching. “What’s with Perot?”
MSJ: In a lot of ways, you invented this. You did it 30 years ago in Miami . . . .
Larry King: Others invented the use of telephones on television. But we made it a part of the program. Donahue took calls for 20 years, but some days he wouldn’t take calls. For us, calls are always a part of this mix.
MSJ: And, almost by accident, you proved how powerful it was with the Perot interview. Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, and you’ve got imitators all over the place, but do you ever look at them and say to yourself, “What hath I wrought?” How does that make you feel?
Larry King: That’s fine. I like the business. I like to see more people in it. I see youngsters coming along, doing it. I’ll be leaving radio in October, I think, pretty sure. And I’d love to see some really young energetic guy come along and be “the next Larry King.” That’s always nice to hear.
I like the impact we made in talk radio—we began the first national talk radio show, and now everybody’s got a talk radio show. I’m very proud of it.
MSJ: Interviewing a politician is different from an interview with an entertainer. When you’re dealing with a political figure . . . .
Larry King: Although there’s a sameness to it. For example, Michael Keaton comes on my show to talk about his movie. It’s the same as Bill Clinton talking about his health plan: “Vote for me, this health plan is good for you.” Or, “This movie you will like.”
You vote for Keaton by putting down seven bucks. You vote for Clinton by calling your congressman. They’re both selling. I’m asking questions. There’s not that much of a difference.
MSJ: Do you have any reservations about being the bully pulpit, being the soapbox for any of the people—entertainers or politicians—who come on your show?
Larry King: No. We ask good questions, we’re not there to kill them, we’re not there to softball them. I ask the best questions I can. I always saw myself as the style section.
MSJ: You’ve said, “I don’t consider myself a journalist, but journalism results from what I do.”
Larry King: Right. I never was the front page. I’m not a journalist per se. I don’t go cover the fire, but I like to ask questions of the firemen. To report on the fire does not whet my appetite. But to get that fireman to talk about how he feels . . . .
MSJ: What about the critics, though, who . . .
Larry King: Talk about softballing . . .
MSJ: Right.
Larry King: You know, I’ve never understood that. What is a softball question? I just am me and I’m doing the same thing I’ve done all these years, which is being intensely curious. . . . For example, the postmaster general is on tonight—I don’t care who he slept with last night. If there’s a scandal about him in the paper today, I’ll ask about it. But I’m going to learn a lot more by getting his perception of it than by talking about my perception of it. What whets my appetite is not, what paper did Bill Clinton sign 10 years ago to put a down payment on Whitewater. What really fascinates me is, how does he feel tonight? That fascinates me more.
We need the guys who ask, “What did you sign 10 years ago?” But from my point of view, that’s one way not to get an answer. The best question is, “What’s going on?” If Clinton sat down with me tonight, I’d ask, “What’s going on?” Then I get his perspective, not mine. His.
MSJ: How do you view the traditional media’s response to that approach, and to the “new media” generally, which includes Larry King?
Larry King: Well, I don’t know why, but some seem to be jealous—some aren’t at all. One of the problems with the old media is, for example, the press conference. If you’re used to good one-on-ones, a press conference is boring. They’re too all over the place. They [reporters] don’t follow up each other; each one has his own agenda. But here, you’re just dealing with my question, you know, there’s no group agenda. They may feel that we ran an end run around them, but we didn’t do anything they wouldn’t do.
MSJ: Eleanor Clift of Newsweek has written a piece for this Journal in which she talks about Bill Clinton going to alternative media, and the White House press corps retaliating with what she called “unrelievedly negative coverage” of the president. What about that?
Larry King: Well, Eleanor probably believes that they feel left out, so they’re going to get even by attacking. But the whole White House press corps could hate Clinton, and if he goes on somewhere tonight and he’s effective, he’s bypassed them.
I don’t have that sense of my own personal importance. “Larry King Live” is an important show, but I want to be here tomorrow night. I’m not important tonight—[my guest] is important tonight. What he says is important.
MSJ: So, if Clinton can go around the White House press corps and get his message out effectively . . .
Larry King: I don’t know if it’s going around. I mean, what made them—or anyone—the be-all and end-all? What if I started getting angry and saying, “Hey, Clinton, you called a press conference today, why didn’t you come to me?”
MSJ: Are they irrelevant?
Larry King: No, no one’s irrelevant. We’re all part of the mix. But there’s no Walter Winchell anymore, there’s no make-or-break guy. David Broder can’t make, he can’t break. Larry King can’t make, he can’t break. Sure, there are more Larry Kings now than there were, so the David Broders have to take a little bit of a step back—the pie is more cut up. There are so many more viewers, more channels. You know, when Jackie Gleason went off the air, he had a 29 [share]. Bill Cosby never reached 29. The world changed.
So nobody is irrelevant. On the other hand, nobody’s the ultimate authority, either, anymore.
MSJ: Former GOP Chairman Rich Bond once told you that people are paying attention to the media differently now. He said, “They are so alienated from the national establishments of conventional media and conventional politics that they would believe more what was said on a ‘Larry King’ show than they would believe what George Will said on ‘David Brinkley.’” And you wrote in your book that many in the press feel that way, that the press feels you are “treading on their turf.” Can you talk more about that?
Larry King: CNN has a great image with the audience. While Brinkley’s wonderful, he also has [George] Will and [Sam] Donaldson, both of whom have images—their negatives are as high as their positives. They’re both outstanding personalities, but they have negatives, baggage with the public.
I don’t think we skew much negative. We have a good show—it’s lively, it moves right along, people call in. It also is a very good visual show. . . . Something’s happening and I love doing it, and that comes though. I love David, but there are some Sundays he looks like he couldn’t care less.
MSJ: There’s a cartoon by Don Wright in your book of two Colonial-era guys in frock coats standing on a cloud and looking down. One of them says, “That’s just the way it happened, Mr. Jefferson. From the Federalist Papers to ‘Larry King Live.’” Do you see yourself as inheriting the mantle of the Founding Fathers?
Larry King: What we don’t know is, what fascinates me is how Lincoln would have done? If Lincoln were on the show tonight, how would he have handled the call from the Southern state that seceded—“Let’s go to calls. Nashville? . . .”
MSJ: And what would he have said?
Larry King: He could have been too witty for his own good. He had a high sing-song voice. . . . Imagine the media at Gettysburg: “OK, we’re all there, we’re going live. There’s a crowd—dolly in.” He speaks for a minute and eight seconds—and that’s it.
Imagine what happens: “Call Schneider! We need analysis!”
Then we have some analysis. The first guy would say, “What is this ‘Four score . . .’? What does that mean? ‘Four score’? Why didn’t he say 87? He should just talk to the regular guy, because that’s the trouble with Abe—he talks above the heads of people. . . .”
And definitely there would have been a critic who would have said, “Boy, was he right when he said, ‘People will little note nor long remember what was said here. . . .’ Abe, you hit it on the head.”
They would have had a field day.
MSJ: And what about the Founding Fathers?
Larry King: Jefferson, who was shy, kind of introverted: “Who is this woman, Tom? Black woman,” they’d want to know. “Who is this woman?”
Imagine Ben Franklin, with “Hard Copy” following him to Paris? All over. Film of Ben Franklin in Paris? “Exclusive, tonight at 5:00, Mrs. Franklin speaks out on ‘Inside Edition’. . . .” I mean, they were just as raucous—it’s just that they didn’t have television.
Today, if we had a July 4th Declaration of Independence, it still would have been signed, let’s say, in Philadelphia. But all the signers would have been on all of the shows the next three nights, putting a spin on it: “Hancock, how come your name’s so big? Are you plugging the insurance company? What do you mean by ‘When, in the course of human events,’ . . .”?
And try to picture the wacko right-wing talk show host on the Declaration of Independence—he’d have gone berserk: “Who are these people? Revolutionaries, mercenaries, violating the king? ‘When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary . . .’—it’s a promotion of violence. They’re saying the same thing that Farrakhan is saying. Dress up as Indians and throw tea—they’re Harbor cowards! . . .”
MSJ: One last question: Look ahead for us. If the 1992 campaign represents the first coming of age of the electronic democracy and the ascendancy of the “new media,” then where do you see it going next? Is this really going to be an electronic democracy? Will it be a push-button democracy?
Larry King: My bet is that we’re going more toward that. With satellites, you don’t have to be in this room—you can talk to any guest anywhere. The truest thing Perot said was early on, when he asked, “What do we have ambassadors for?” We’ve got fax machines, phones. What does an ambassador do? Relays a message. I can get the message much faster now, and there will be more speed, quicker information.
Now, I can’t predict what will follow the fax—something even faster . . . .
MSJ: Interactive communications, Max Headroom—two-way video?
Larry King: That’s right around the corner. I hope I’m around to see it. I think it’s going to be exciting, but part of it is not forecastable. I couldn’t have forecast what we’re doing now 10 years ago.
MSJ: Will the American public be as well served?
Larry King: Absolutely. There may be a lot of speed, there may be too much information too quickly. But we’re always better served—the more you know, the better. Always. I think we’ll be very well served.
MSJ: Thank you.
Larry King: Hey, great working with you.
___
Edward C. Pease. “The Father of ‘Talk Show Democracy’—On the Line with Larry King.” In “The Presidency in the New Media Age.” Media Studies Journal. Vol. 8, No. 2. (Spring 1994). pp. 123-37.
Radio—The Forgotten Medium
.
Introduction
RADIO—The Forgotten Medium
At a time when the eyes of many in the world who care about media are fixed on the information superhighway—an enterprise that potentially connects all available information, entertainment and messaging to a global audience of billions—radio may seem like a technology whose time has come and gone. At best, many may view radio affectionately, like a lingering great aunt, now pushed to the periphery. Surely, such observers argue, radio was outdistanced decades ago by television, later by cable and now by new interactive media, data streams and so much more.
Like the air, radio is just there, part of the media and social landscape but rarely acknowledged or much remarked. At least, that is one image of radio, once a dominant force in the world’s media life but now “the forgotten medium,” no longer as glamorous or important as it shinier successors.
In response to such talk comes author and humorist Garrison Keillor, perhaps radio’s staunchest champion: “Radio isn’t forgotten by its legions of listeners, only by people who don’t listen and who cares about them?” he retorts. “I am always being asked by newspaper editors if I think that radio has a future or can make a comeback—some idiot questions like that—and it’s tiresome to try to respond, as if one were asked to defend the existence of trees.” In his 30s, Keillor rediscovered radio, a favorite companion of his youth, and created the popular program “Prairie Home Companion,” distributed weekly by American Public Radio, that serves as a kind of metaphor for radio’s resilience and vitality.
Radio, of course, is not forgotten at all by the billions around the globe who depend on it daily. In some places, such as China and Indonesia, it is the most pervasive of all media. Elsewhere, as in the United States, it may be a secondary medium but remains truly ubiquitous. As the first broadcast medium, radio created formats and structures that television later adopted. But it did much more by demonstrating its versatility, moving from one format to another and reversing the role of entertainment and information while still holding onto advertising dollars and revving up anew its capacity as opinion maker.
To those who those radio was on a downhill slope just a few years ago, the runaway success of talk show hosts like Larry King, Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and others is proof positive that the decline was short-lived. Drawing massive audiences and luring advertisers, these talkmeisters have considerable impact on public opinion. Indeed, during the 1992 presidential campaign, when people spoke of the new “electronic democracy” they were referring largely to radio talk shows, as well as to TV talk and variety shows and MTV. Just because critics and media scholars don’t attend much to radio (and they don’t) does not mean that the medium is unimportant. When the president of the United States, whether Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, does a weekly radio broadcast, you can be sure it isn’t just to mark time. There’s good evidence, in fact, that people who may not generally pay much attention to announcements on television or in the press do catch them on the radio while driving to and from work, while working or relaxing.
While this volume mostly emphasizes the state of radio in the United States, it also includes four essays touching on the medium’s massive global impact as well. Surely no one—entrepreneurs, politicians or least of all the public—is counting radio out. Radio is, as they say, here to stay, more vital than ever even while conceding center stage to its flashier cousin, television, and their even hipper new interactive relatives sprouting up along the information highway. Despite these new arrivals, radio remains the most pervasive medium worldwide. Television is hot on its heels even in developing countries, but that does not mean that radio won’t continue to prosper much as it continues to do in the United States and in other information societies where its role is constantly refined and fragmented, but remains vitally important. The old radio networks may be largely gone, but the cumulative effect of radio as carrier of music, news and disaster information is immense.
Neither is radio to be counted out on the information highway. Delano Lewis, president of National Public Radio who came to his post in 1993 from the field of telecommunications, vows that radio will have an important place in the new, linked electronic world. And it already does, in fact, using satellites to extend its signal reach far beyond local stations, with storage capacity that permits rebroadcast later. When all the tools and vehicles available for the information superhighway are seriously considered, radio will still have its special place, recognized as a forceful, cost-effective member of the media family.
This volume originally was issues as the Summer 1993 issue of the Media Studies Journal, published by The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University in New York City. It has since been modified, reedited and augmented by the editors for a larger audience. It is our hope that this book will be of value to students of media, communication, politics and society, as well as to anyone who cares about effective communication in this increasingly global society. To many, radio may be too familiar to be much noticed—“electronic wallpaper”—but it certainly is too widespread to be a forgotten medium.
Everette E. Dennis, Executive Director
Edward C. Pease, Associated Director/Publications
The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center
Columbia University
New York City
February 1994
Everette E. Dennis and Edward C. Pease, Eds. “Radio—The Forgotten Medium,” Media Studies Journal. Vol. 7, No. 3. (Summer 1993) 224 pp.
Introduction
RADIO—The Forgotten Medium
At a time when the eyes of many in the world who care about media are fixed on the information superhighway—an enterprise that potentially connects all available information, entertainment and messaging to a global audience of billions—radio may seem like a technology whose time has come and gone. At best, many may view radio affectionately, like a lingering great aunt, now pushed to the periphery. Surely, such observers argue, radio was outdistanced decades ago by television, later by cable and now by new interactive media, data streams and so much more.
Like the air, radio is just there, part of the media and social landscape but rarely acknowledged or much remarked. At least, that is one image of radio, once a dominant force in the world’s media life but now “the forgotten medium,” no longer as glamorous or important as it shinier successors.
In response to such talk comes author and humorist Garrison Keillor, perhaps radio’s staunchest champion: “Radio isn’t forgotten by its legions of listeners, only by people who don’t listen and who cares about them?” he retorts. “I am always being asked by newspaper editors if I think that radio has a future or can make a comeback—some idiot questions like that—and it’s tiresome to try to respond, as if one were asked to defend the existence of trees.” In his 30s, Keillor rediscovered radio, a favorite companion of his youth, and created the popular program “Prairie Home Companion,” distributed weekly by American Public Radio, that serves as a kind of metaphor for radio’s resilience and vitality.
Radio, of course, is not forgotten at all by the billions around the globe who depend on it daily. In some places, such as China and Indonesia, it is the most pervasive of all media. Elsewhere, as in the United States, it may be a secondary medium but remains truly ubiquitous. As the first broadcast medium, radio created formats and structures that television later adopted. But it did much more by demonstrating its versatility, moving from one format to another and reversing the role of entertainment and information while still holding onto advertising dollars and revving up anew its capacity as opinion maker.
To those who those radio was on a downhill slope just a few years ago, the runaway success of talk show hosts like Larry King, Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and others is proof positive that the decline was short-lived. Drawing massive audiences and luring advertisers, these talkmeisters have considerable impact on public opinion. Indeed, during the 1992 presidential campaign, when people spoke of the new “electronic democracy” they were referring largely to radio talk shows, as well as to TV talk and variety shows and MTV. Just because critics and media scholars don’t attend much to radio (and they don’t) does not mean that the medium is unimportant. When the president of the United States, whether Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, does a weekly radio broadcast, you can be sure it isn’t just to mark time. There’s good evidence, in fact, that people who may not generally pay much attention to announcements on television or in the press do catch them on the radio while driving to and from work, while working or relaxing.
While this volume mostly emphasizes the state of radio in the United States, it also includes four essays touching on the medium’s massive global impact as well. Surely no one—entrepreneurs, politicians or least of all the public—is counting radio out. Radio is, as they say, here to stay, more vital than ever even while conceding center stage to its flashier cousin, television, and their even hipper new interactive relatives sprouting up along the information highway. Despite these new arrivals, radio remains the most pervasive medium worldwide. Television is hot on its heels even in developing countries, but that does not mean that radio won’t continue to prosper much as it continues to do in the United States and in other information societies where its role is constantly refined and fragmented, but remains vitally important. The old radio networks may be largely gone, but the cumulative effect of radio as carrier of music, news and disaster information is immense.
Neither is radio to be counted out on the information highway. Delano Lewis, president of National Public Radio who came to his post in 1993 from the field of telecommunications, vows that radio will have an important place in the new, linked electronic world. And it already does, in fact, using satellites to extend its signal reach far beyond local stations, with storage capacity that permits rebroadcast later. When all the tools and vehicles available for the information superhighway are seriously considered, radio will still have its special place, recognized as a forceful, cost-effective member of the media family.
This volume originally was issues as the Summer 1993 issue of the Media Studies Journal, published by The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University in New York City. It has since been modified, reedited and augmented by the editors for a larger audience. It is our hope that this book will be of value to students of media, communication, politics and society, as well as to anyone who cares about effective communication in this increasingly global society. To many, radio may be too familiar to be much noticed—“electronic wallpaper”—but it certainly is too widespread to be a forgotten medium.
Everette E. Dennis, Executive Director
Edward C. Pease, Associated Director/Publications
The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center
Columbia University
New York City
February 1994
Everette E. Dennis and Edward C. Pease, Eds. “Radio—The Forgotten Medium,” Media Studies Journal. Vol. 7, No. 3. (Summer 1993) 224 pp.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Hutchins Commission: An Historical Perspective
.
PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS
OF FREE EXPRESSION IN SOCIETY
By Edward C. Pease
©1991
[Excerpted from Pease, E.C., STILL THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE: Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers (Athens, Ohio: E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, 1991)]
In a society based on individual rights and participation, democracy may be defined as a process of dialogue among all constituent groups. The philosophy on which this nation was founded holds as central to its basic democratic structure the importance of the individual vis a vis society. This includes a presumption of the individual’s power of rational thought and concepts of individual natural rights – including religion, speech and press.[1] These concepts were the prevailing notions of Locke, Milton, Mill, Paine and other 17th- and 18th-century thinkers whose writings combined eventually into marketplace-of-ideas theory, from which the First Amendment developed.
Central to the theory is the entirely free and unfettered exchange of ideas, including a free press operating within a social system in which all opinions had equal chance to be heard, the assumption being that truth would emerge from a robust and wide-open debate on issues of public importance. As Milton put it in his Areopagitica, “Let Her and Falsehood grapple; who ever heard of Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”[2] From Milton’s perspective, and that of other libertarians, it was preferable to permit false opinion in the marketplace of ideas than to limit open exchange of ideas, any one of which might contain or lead to truth; free discussion was a self-righting process from which truth eventually would emerge. As social philosopher Carl Becker explained it:
The democratic doctrine of freedom of speech and of the press ... rests upon certain assumptions. One of these is that men desire to know the truth and will be disposed to be guided by it. Another is that the sole method of arriving at the truth in the long run is by the free competition of opinion in the open market. Another is that, since men will invariably differ in their opinions, each man must be permitted to urge, freely and even strenuously, his own opinion, provided he accords others the same right. And the final assumption is that from this mutual toleration and comparison of diverse opinions the one that seems the most rational will emerge and be generally accepted.[3]
Drawing on the work of his father, James Mill, and that of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill’s brand of 17th-century libertarianism was pragmatic and utilitarian: To achieve the greatest good for the greatest number in society, he said, society must insure that all its members have the right to think and act for themselves. Limiting expression, Mill suggested, would limit society members’ ability to think for themselves. Mill made a four-part argument: First, suppressing opinions – however disagreeable they might be to others – might result in suppressing the truth, he said. Second, even an erroneous opinion might contain a kernel of truth, leading to the larger truth. Third, even if the generally held opinion is truth, the public may cling to it irrationally, solely because of rote and tradition, unless forced to defend it. Finally, Mill said, unless the commonly held opinion is challenged occasionally and those holding it are forced to reaffirm it, even truth loses its strength and positive effects on individuals and society.[4]
As Mill wrote in his essay, On Liberty:
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ... If the opinion is right, [people] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.[5]
By the beginning of the 20th century, however, pure libertarianism was on the wane as newspapers and other media grew in size and influence, and the concept of the wide-open debate among individuals was supplanted by the reality of mass communication driven by technological advances. Public resentment of the size, scope, influence and excesses of the press gave rise to efforts to legislate limits on them; the media’s occasionally irresponsible exercise of their First Amendment freedom thus threatened all rights of individual free expression. Media scholar Theodore Peterson argues in his seminal Four Theories of the Press that, just as libertarian theory was founded on the principle of a “negative freedom” – that is, freedom from external restraint – new thinking in the 20th century saw a need for a press both free from restraints but also responsible to larger society.[6] What became known after publication of the Hutchins Commission report as social responsibility theory rests equally on a negative freedom from restraints, as well as on a positive freedom of the press to be proactive – freedom for social good, freedom to help society attain its goals.[7] J. Edward Gerald agreed: “Mass communications media are social institutions, the product of social demand,” which include predictable expectations of performance.[8]
The new social responsibility perspective of the press added to libertarianism the concept of the public’s right to know, at the same time placing moral responsibilities on publishers, who themselves had begun to link responsibility to overall public good with their constitutionally mandated freedom. Because liberty carries with it obligations, the greater freedom accorded the press in a democratic system carries with it responsibilities to fulfill certain functions in society.[9]
Leading newspaper publishers already had come to similar conclusions on their own regarding the role of the press in the new, industrial age. Joseph Pulitzer, legendary publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, told his staff in 1907 that his paper should be
an institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice and corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.[10]
In the inaugural issue of his Detroit Evening News in 1873, James Scripps enunciated a similar vision of the role of the crusading press that was reminiscent of Milton:
Nineteenth Century Americans need not have their opinions molded for them by the newspaper press. Give the public the facts and arguments on both sides, and they will quickly determine the right or wrong in each case as it occurs. The vox populi, in the long run, will pretty certainly be found to be the vox Dei.[11]
His younger brother, E.W. Scripps, in his first issue of the Cleveland Penny Press in 1878, addressed these same issues of independence from special interest pressures and voiced libertarian confidence in the rational abilities of the reading public. He wrote: “The newspapers should simply present all the facts the editor is capable of obtaining, concerning men and measures before the bar of the public, and then, after having discharged its duty as a witness, be satisfied to leave the jury in the case – the public –to find the verdict.”[12]
Adolph S. Ochs, upon assuming control of The New York Times in 1860, had a similar vision for his paper: “. . . to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved; to make the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all public questions of importance and, to that end, to invite intelligent discussion for all shades of opinion.”[13]
But despite the sensibilities of publishers such as Pulitzer, Scripps and Ochs, as the press grew in size and influence, it came under increasing criticism. By 1900, the criticisms had fallen into seven basic themes:
1) The press and its press barons had wielded power to their own ends, at the expense of opposing views and discussion.
2) The press had become subservient to big business and advertisers.
3) The press resisted social change.
4) The press stressed the superficial and sensational over the significant.
5) Press content endangered public morals.
6) The press invaded individuals’ privacy.
7) And the press was controlled by a single socioeconomic class, further endangering any chance for robust and wide-open debate in the free and open marketplaces of ideas.[14]
Following World War II, the American public was frightened by the images of thought manipulation through mass communication, brought on by the Nazi propaganda machine. Those fears, coupled with the growth of the mass communications industry and the social and technological changes that followed the industrial revolution, led Henry R. Luce, founder and publisher of Time, to commission a group of scholars in 1947 to examine the prospects for a free press in America.
The Hutchins Commission
Echoing Mill, the chairman of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago, described concerns about the role of the mass media in the 20th century this way: “The tremendous influence of the modern press makes it imperative that the great agencies of mass communication show hospitality to ideas which their owners do not share. Otherwise, these ideas will not have a fair chance.”[15]
The commission said freedom of the press in 1946 was in danger for three reasons. First, the press’s importance to society had increased with its capacity to communicate to mass audiences; at the same time, however, the proportion of people able to communicate their opinions and ideas through the press had decreased. Second, those with access to the press “have not provided a service adequate to the needs of society,” the commission said. Third, press performance had so outraged some segments of society in the 1940s that threats of regulation had surfaced.[16] The commission said:
When an instrument of prime importance to all the people is available to a small minority of the people only, and when it is employed by that small minority in such a way as not to supply the people with the service they require, the freedom of the minority in employment of that instrument is in danger.[17]
More precisely, Gerald wrote, as the press evolved into big business, its priorities also shifted, from dissemination of diverse ideas to bottom-line economic issues. The Hutchins Commission concluded that such emphasis on profits threatened the media’s likelihood of providing “the variety of information and debate that the people need for self-government,” he said. Further, he said,
[i]n such media, entertainment takes precedence over matters of importance to social understanding and self-government. The urgencies of conciliation between nations and between racial and religious groups at home are minimized or overlooked by media with such a distributive goal. Salestalk through advertising and propaganda in the news constitutes a hazard to clear description and understanding of human problems.[18]
Press barons for years had recognized that shift themselves. E.W. Scripps, for instance, who never was shy about making a buck, wrote a year before his death in 1926:
There was a time in this country when newspapers were run for the purpose of moulding public opinion and their owners were deemed lucky if they gained an incidental profit. Now newspapers are run for profit and only incidentally are moulders of public opinion, leaders of the people in politics, and teachers.[19]
The Hutchins Commission considered free expression the central freedom of American democracy, but feared that a press seen by public and government as both unfettered and irresponsible risked losing its First Amendment franchise. To preserve its freedom, the report concluded, the press must serve the society that has accorded it that freedom. “The freedom of the press can remain a right of those who publish only if it incorporates into itself the right of the citizen and the public interest,” the commission wrote.[20] After four years of hearings, the Hutchins Commission released a five-point guideline for press performance that represented a new view of the relationship between the mass media and society. The American press should provide
1) a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning;
2) a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism;
3) a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society;
4) presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society; and
5) full access to the day’s intelligence.[21]
Consistent with the thinking of some newspaper leaders, as indicated by the statements of Ochs, Scripps and Pulitzer, the recommendations outlining changes in the way journalists should look at their jobs and at the media’s role in society. The five points also provide the first of two frameworks here for evaluating press practices and performance.
The Hutchins Commission Charge to the Press
The Hutchins Commission’s guidelines were, on the one hand, direct, straight-forward and commonsensical. At the same time, they enunciated a press function from which the media had sometimes strayed: “The first requirement is that the media should be truthful. They should not lie,” the commission report said.[22] The commission also cautioned the press to separate fact from opinion, while acknowledging that that requirement cannot be absolute: “There is no fact without context and no factual report which is uncolored by the opinions of the reporter.”[23]
The second recommendation, that the press provide “a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism,” underscored the commission’s view of the media’s responsibility as “common carriers of public discussion.”[24] These public discussions should include even – perhaps especially – ideas with which the media owners might not agree. “Their control over the various ways of reaching the ear of America is such that, of they do not publish ideas which differ from their own, those ideas will never reach the ear of America,” the report said.[25]
The third recommendation, particularly relevant to the issue of minorities and the media, underlined the media’s responsibility to present “a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.”[26] “People make decisions in large part in terms of favorable or unfavorable images,” the report said. “They relate fact and opinion to stereotypes. [The media] are principal agents in creating and perpetuating these conventional conceptions. When the images they portray fail to present the social group truly, they tend to pervert judgment.”[27] Such representations of all segments of the American society was seen as a means toward greater understanding and harmony: “The Commission holds to the faith that if people are exposed to the inner truth of the life of a particular group, they will gradually build up respect for and understanding of it.”[28]
The fourth press function, as the Hutchins Commission saw it, was one of education, “the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society.”[29] The press had both an opportunity and a responsibility to help maintain community standards and preserve the society’s values. Finally, the commission said, the press must provide the public with “full access to the day’s intelligence,” something with which no journalist would disagree. “We do not assume that all citizens at all times will actually use all the material they receive. ... But [that] does not alter the need for wide distribution of news and opinion,” the report said. The press must provide the public with enough complete and truthful information that citizens can, “by the exercise of reason and of conscience,” make the decisions necessary to maintain an orderly society, the commission concluded.[30]
After 1947, the press reassessed its role and responsibilities, increasingly operating from the Hutchins Commission’s vision of a two-way relationship between the press and society, encompassing both the rights of free expression ascribed to Milton and marketplace-of-ideas theory, as well as a new expectation of the media’s responsibility to the social system that had accorded such rights. In one way, however, little had changed, the commission report said: “We need a market place for the exchange of comment and criticism regarding public affairs. We need to reproduce on a gigantic scale the open argument which characterized the village gathering two centuries ago.”[31]
In the Hutchins Commission’s view, press freedom was balanced by the press’s responsibility as a public servant. “We suggest that the press look upon itself as performing a public service of a professional kind. ... that the press must take on the community’s objectives as its own objectives.” [emphasis original][32]
It was with this image of the media-as-public servant that America entered the 1960s and their growing clamor for racial equity. In very many ways, the events of that decade represented the first test of the Hutchins Commission vision of press performance. It was a test the media failed.
1. Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson & Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1956).
2. John Milton, Aeropagitica, 1644.
3. Carl L. Becker, Progress and Power. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 33, as cited in Siebert, op. cit., p. 44.
4. Siebert, op. cit., p. 46.
5. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, edited by Alburey Castell (New York: F.S. Crofts and Co., 1947), p. 16.
6. Theodore Peterson, Four Theories of the Press, op. cit., p. 93-4.
7. Ibid.
8. J. Edward Gerald, The Social Responsibility of the Press. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 7.
9. Peterson, op. cit., p. 74.
10. Joseph Pulitzer, message to his staff, April 10, 1907, cited in Edward L. Bernays, Public Relations Problems of the American Press. (New York: National Newspaper Promotion Association, 1952).
11. James Scripps, Detroit Evening News, Aug. 23, 1873. Cited in draft of Vance Trimble, The Astonishing Mr. Scripps. (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press), in press.
12. E.W. Scripps, The Cleveland Penny Press, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 2, 1878, p. 1.
13. Adolph S. Ochs, The New York Times, August 18, 1896, cited in Bernays, op. cit.
14. See Peterson, op. cit., p. 78.
15. Robert M. Hutchins, Foreword, in The Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. viii.
16. Ibid., p. 1.
17. Ibid., pp.1-2.
18. Gerald, op. cit., p. 104.
19. E.W. Scripps, “The Wisdom of an Old Penman,” June 1, 1925, p. 6. (The Scripps Archive, Alden Library, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio)
20. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., p. 18.
21. Ibid., pp. 20-29.
22. Ibid., p. 21.
23. Ibid., p. 22.
24. Ibid., p. 23.
25. Ibid., p. 24.
26. Ibid., p. 26.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., pp. 26-27.
29. Ibid., p. 27.
30. Ibid., p. 29. Peterson suggests that this recommendation assisted in the evolution of the principle of freedom of information and the public’s right to know; if the press has a mandate to provide the fullest possible access to the day’s intelligence, it must also possess a right of access to such information. It is the logical underpinning of press demands for free flow of information from the public sector. See Peterson, op. cit., p. 91.
31. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., pp. 67-68.
32. Ibid., pp. 92, 126.
PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS
OF FREE EXPRESSION IN SOCIETY
By Edward C. Pease
©1991
[Excerpted from Pease, E.C., STILL THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE: Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers (Athens, Ohio: E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, 1991)]
In a society based on individual rights and participation, democracy may be defined as a process of dialogue among all constituent groups. The philosophy on which this nation was founded holds as central to its basic democratic structure the importance of the individual vis a vis society. This includes a presumption of the individual’s power of rational thought and concepts of individual natural rights – including religion, speech and press.[1] These concepts were the prevailing notions of Locke, Milton, Mill, Paine and other 17th- and 18th-century thinkers whose writings combined eventually into marketplace-of-ideas theory, from which the First Amendment developed.
Central to the theory is the entirely free and unfettered exchange of ideas, including a free press operating within a social system in which all opinions had equal chance to be heard, the assumption being that truth would emerge from a robust and wide-open debate on issues of public importance. As Milton put it in his Areopagitica, “Let Her and Falsehood grapple; who ever heard of Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”[2] From Milton’s perspective, and that of other libertarians, it was preferable to permit false opinion in the marketplace of ideas than to limit open exchange of ideas, any one of which might contain or lead to truth; free discussion was a self-righting process from which truth eventually would emerge. As social philosopher Carl Becker explained it:
The democratic doctrine of freedom of speech and of the press ... rests upon certain assumptions. One of these is that men desire to know the truth and will be disposed to be guided by it. Another is that the sole method of arriving at the truth in the long run is by the free competition of opinion in the open market. Another is that, since men will invariably differ in their opinions, each man must be permitted to urge, freely and even strenuously, his own opinion, provided he accords others the same right. And the final assumption is that from this mutual toleration and comparison of diverse opinions the one that seems the most rational will emerge and be generally accepted.[3]
Drawing on the work of his father, James Mill, and that of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill’s brand of 17th-century libertarianism was pragmatic and utilitarian: To achieve the greatest good for the greatest number in society, he said, society must insure that all its members have the right to think and act for themselves. Limiting expression, Mill suggested, would limit society members’ ability to think for themselves. Mill made a four-part argument: First, suppressing opinions – however disagreeable they might be to others – might result in suppressing the truth, he said. Second, even an erroneous opinion might contain a kernel of truth, leading to the larger truth. Third, even if the generally held opinion is truth, the public may cling to it irrationally, solely because of rote and tradition, unless forced to defend it. Finally, Mill said, unless the commonly held opinion is challenged occasionally and those holding it are forced to reaffirm it, even truth loses its strength and positive effects on individuals and society.[4]
As Mill wrote in his essay, On Liberty:
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ... If the opinion is right, [people] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.[5]
By the beginning of the 20th century, however, pure libertarianism was on the wane as newspapers and other media grew in size and influence, and the concept of the wide-open debate among individuals was supplanted by the reality of mass communication driven by technological advances. Public resentment of the size, scope, influence and excesses of the press gave rise to efforts to legislate limits on them; the media’s occasionally irresponsible exercise of their First Amendment freedom thus threatened all rights of individual free expression. Media scholar Theodore Peterson argues in his seminal Four Theories of the Press that, just as libertarian theory was founded on the principle of a “negative freedom” – that is, freedom from external restraint – new thinking in the 20th century saw a need for a press both free from restraints but also responsible to larger society.[6] What became known after publication of the Hutchins Commission report as social responsibility theory rests equally on a negative freedom from restraints, as well as on a positive freedom of the press to be proactive – freedom for social good, freedom to help society attain its goals.[7] J. Edward Gerald agreed: “Mass communications media are social institutions, the product of social demand,” which include predictable expectations of performance.[8]
The new social responsibility perspective of the press added to libertarianism the concept of the public’s right to know, at the same time placing moral responsibilities on publishers, who themselves had begun to link responsibility to overall public good with their constitutionally mandated freedom. Because liberty carries with it obligations, the greater freedom accorded the press in a democratic system carries with it responsibilities to fulfill certain functions in society.[9]
Leading newspaper publishers already had come to similar conclusions on their own regarding the role of the press in the new, industrial age. Joseph Pulitzer, legendary publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, told his staff in 1907 that his paper should be
an institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice and corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.[10]
In the inaugural issue of his Detroit Evening News in 1873, James Scripps enunciated a similar vision of the role of the crusading press that was reminiscent of Milton:
Nineteenth Century Americans need not have their opinions molded for them by the newspaper press. Give the public the facts and arguments on both sides, and they will quickly determine the right or wrong in each case as it occurs. The vox populi, in the long run, will pretty certainly be found to be the vox Dei.[11]
His younger brother, E.W. Scripps, in his first issue of the Cleveland Penny Press in 1878, addressed these same issues of independence from special interest pressures and voiced libertarian confidence in the rational abilities of the reading public. He wrote: “The newspapers should simply present all the facts the editor is capable of obtaining, concerning men and measures before the bar of the public, and then, after having discharged its duty as a witness, be satisfied to leave the jury in the case – the public –to find the verdict.”[12]
Adolph S. Ochs, upon assuming control of The New York Times in 1860, had a similar vision for his paper: “. . . to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved; to make the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all public questions of importance and, to that end, to invite intelligent discussion for all shades of opinion.”[13]
But despite the sensibilities of publishers such as Pulitzer, Scripps and Ochs, as the press grew in size and influence, it came under increasing criticism. By 1900, the criticisms had fallen into seven basic themes:
1) The press and its press barons had wielded power to their own ends, at the expense of opposing views and discussion.
2) The press had become subservient to big business and advertisers.
3) The press resisted social change.
4) The press stressed the superficial and sensational over the significant.
5) Press content endangered public morals.
6) The press invaded individuals’ privacy.
7) And the press was controlled by a single socioeconomic class, further endangering any chance for robust and wide-open debate in the free and open marketplaces of ideas.[14]
Following World War II, the American public was frightened by the images of thought manipulation through mass communication, brought on by the Nazi propaganda machine. Those fears, coupled with the growth of the mass communications industry and the social and technological changes that followed the industrial revolution, led Henry R. Luce, founder and publisher of Time, to commission a group of scholars in 1947 to examine the prospects for a free press in America.
The Hutchins Commission
Echoing Mill, the chairman of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago, described concerns about the role of the mass media in the 20th century this way: “The tremendous influence of the modern press makes it imperative that the great agencies of mass communication show hospitality to ideas which their owners do not share. Otherwise, these ideas will not have a fair chance.”[15]
The commission said freedom of the press in 1946 was in danger for three reasons. First, the press’s importance to society had increased with its capacity to communicate to mass audiences; at the same time, however, the proportion of people able to communicate their opinions and ideas through the press had decreased. Second, those with access to the press “have not provided a service adequate to the needs of society,” the commission said. Third, press performance had so outraged some segments of society in the 1940s that threats of regulation had surfaced.[16] The commission said:
When an instrument of prime importance to all the people is available to a small minority of the people only, and when it is employed by that small minority in such a way as not to supply the people with the service they require, the freedom of the minority in employment of that instrument is in danger.[17]
More precisely, Gerald wrote, as the press evolved into big business, its priorities also shifted, from dissemination of diverse ideas to bottom-line economic issues. The Hutchins Commission concluded that such emphasis on profits threatened the media’s likelihood of providing “the variety of information and debate that the people need for self-government,” he said. Further, he said,
[i]n such media, entertainment takes precedence over matters of importance to social understanding and self-government. The urgencies of conciliation between nations and between racial and religious groups at home are minimized or overlooked by media with such a distributive goal. Salestalk through advertising and propaganda in the news constitutes a hazard to clear description and understanding of human problems.[18]
Press barons for years had recognized that shift themselves. E.W. Scripps, for instance, who never was shy about making a buck, wrote a year before his death in 1926:
There was a time in this country when newspapers were run for the purpose of moulding public opinion and their owners were deemed lucky if they gained an incidental profit. Now newspapers are run for profit and only incidentally are moulders of public opinion, leaders of the people in politics, and teachers.[19]
The Hutchins Commission considered free expression the central freedom of American democracy, but feared that a press seen by public and government as both unfettered and irresponsible risked losing its First Amendment franchise. To preserve its freedom, the report concluded, the press must serve the society that has accorded it that freedom. “The freedom of the press can remain a right of those who publish only if it incorporates into itself the right of the citizen and the public interest,” the commission wrote.[20] After four years of hearings, the Hutchins Commission released a five-point guideline for press performance that represented a new view of the relationship between the mass media and society. The American press should provide
1) a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning;
2) a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism;
3) a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society;
4) presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society; and
5) full access to the day’s intelligence.[21]
Consistent with the thinking of some newspaper leaders, as indicated by the statements of Ochs, Scripps and Pulitzer, the recommendations outlining changes in the way journalists should look at their jobs and at the media’s role in society. The five points also provide the first of two frameworks here for evaluating press practices and performance.
The Hutchins Commission Charge to the Press
The Hutchins Commission’s guidelines were, on the one hand, direct, straight-forward and commonsensical. At the same time, they enunciated a press function from which the media had sometimes strayed: “The first requirement is that the media should be truthful. They should not lie,” the commission report said.[22] The commission also cautioned the press to separate fact from opinion, while acknowledging that that requirement cannot be absolute: “There is no fact without context and no factual report which is uncolored by the opinions of the reporter.”[23]
The second recommendation, that the press provide “a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism,” underscored the commission’s view of the media’s responsibility as “common carriers of public discussion.”[24] These public discussions should include even – perhaps especially – ideas with which the media owners might not agree. “Their control over the various ways of reaching the ear of America is such that, of they do not publish ideas which differ from their own, those ideas will never reach the ear of America,” the report said.[25]
The third recommendation, particularly relevant to the issue of minorities and the media, underlined the media’s responsibility to present “a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.”[26] “People make decisions in large part in terms of favorable or unfavorable images,” the report said. “They relate fact and opinion to stereotypes. [The media] are principal agents in creating and perpetuating these conventional conceptions. When the images they portray fail to present the social group truly, they tend to pervert judgment.”[27] Such representations of all segments of the American society was seen as a means toward greater understanding and harmony: “The Commission holds to the faith that if people are exposed to the inner truth of the life of a particular group, they will gradually build up respect for and understanding of it.”[28]
The fourth press function, as the Hutchins Commission saw it, was one of education, “the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society.”[29] The press had both an opportunity and a responsibility to help maintain community standards and preserve the society’s values. Finally, the commission said, the press must provide the public with “full access to the day’s intelligence,” something with which no journalist would disagree. “We do not assume that all citizens at all times will actually use all the material they receive. ... But [that] does not alter the need for wide distribution of news and opinion,” the report said. The press must provide the public with enough complete and truthful information that citizens can, “by the exercise of reason and of conscience,” make the decisions necessary to maintain an orderly society, the commission concluded.[30]
After 1947, the press reassessed its role and responsibilities, increasingly operating from the Hutchins Commission’s vision of a two-way relationship between the press and society, encompassing both the rights of free expression ascribed to Milton and marketplace-of-ideas theory, as well as a new expectation of the media’s responsibility to the social system that had accorded such rights. In one way, however, little had changed, the commission report said: “We need a market place for the exchange of comment and criticism regarding public affairs. We need to reproduce on a gigantic scale the open argument which characterized the village gathering two centuries ago.”[31]
In the Hutchins Commission’s view, press freedom was balanced by the press’s responsibility as a public servant. “We suggest that the press look upon itself as performing a public service of a professional kind. ... that the press must take on the community’s objectives as its own objectives.” [emphasis original][32]
It was with this image of the media-as-public servant that America entered the 1960s and their growing clamor for racial equity. In very many ways, the events of that decade represented the first test of the Hutchins Commission vision of press performance. It was a test the media failed.
Note: The rest of this essay applies these historical perspectives on free expression and the Hutchins Commission’s “social responsibility theory” to press performance in the context of race following America’s race upheavals of the mid-1960s. The full essay can be found here.
• • • • •
NOTES1. Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson & Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1956).
2. John Milton, Aeropagitica, 1644.
3. Carl L. Becker, Progress and Power. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 33, as cited in Siebert, op. cit., p. 44.
4. Siebert, op. cit., p. 46.
5. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, edited by Alburey Castell (New York: F.S. Crofts and Co., 1947), p. 16.
6. Theodore Peterson, Four Theories of the Press, op. cit., p. 93-4.
7. Ibid.
8. J. Edward Gerald, The Social Responsibility of the Press. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 7.
9. Peterson, op. cit., p. 74.
10. Joseph Pulitzer, message to his staff, April 10, 1907, cited in Edward L. Bernays, Public Relations Problems of the American Press. (New York: National Newspaper Promotion Association, 1952).
11. James Scripps, Detroit Evening News, Aug. 23, 1873. Cited in draft of Vance Trimble, The Astonishing Mr. Scripps. (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press), in press.
12. E.W. Scripps, The Cleveland Penny Press, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 2, 1878, p. 1.
13. Adolph S. Ochs, The New York Times, August 18, 1896, cited in Bernays, op. cit.
14. See Peterson, op. cit., p. 78.
15. Robert M. Hutchins, Foreword, in The Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. viii.
16. Ibid., p. 1.
17. Ibid., pp.1-2.
18. Gerald, op. cit., p. 104.
19. E.W. Scripps, “The Wisdom of an Old Penman,” June 1, 1925, p. 6. (The Scripps Archive, Alden Library, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio)
20. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., p. 18.
21. Ibid., pp. 20-29.
22. Ibid., p. 21.
23. Ibid., p. 22.
24. Ibid., p. 23.
25. Ibid., p. 24.
26. Ibid., p. 26.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., pp. 26-27.
29. Ibid., p. 27.
30. Ibid., p. 29. Peterson suggests that this recommendation assisted in the evolution of the principle of freedom of information and the public’s right to know; if the press has a mandate to provide the fullest possible access to the day’s intelligence, it must also possess a right of access to such information. It is the logical underpinning of press demands for free flow of information from the public sector. See Peterson, op. cit., p. 91.
31. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., pp. 67-68.
32. Ibid., pp. 92, 126.
The Movie Project
.
Hollywood, Society & the Press
Project Goal: To analyze how journalism and its role in American society are depicted in Hollywood film. Over time, journalists have been seen as scoundrels, drunkards, meglomaniacs, crusaders, liars and war heroes—among other things. With this project we study the journalist’s social role while also examining their impact, principles and influence. The movies on the list below are both historical and fictional, yet they all contain lessons—good and bad—about journalism and society.
Discussion: As we have discussed (remember Mass Comm Theories?), creators of media messages select and omit certain facts, even when when reporting real events; this is not always intentional, although it can be (was Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941) really such a twisted meglomaniac?). But as you recall about the principles of selective perception, we all see and understand the world differently, which means that well-intentioned and professional people also frame the world in ways that correspond to what they think is important. In that way, movies—like all media messages—can serve as social agenda-setters, helping moviegoers “see” journalists and journalism in certain ways, and to put press issues on society’s agenda (media can’t tell us what to think, but are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about).
Movies also serve as vehicles—again, intentional or not—to express certain perspectives and to make ideological statements. Citizen Kane surely did that about ambition and the corrupting influence of power, but other examples abound:
• Outfoxed (2004), a “documentary” about Fox News that will raise your blood pressure (no matter how you feel about Fox) and curl your hair—“fair and balanced” my @#$%^&^%$#!!
• Network (1976)—With the amazing Peter Finch, an indictment of TV and modern couch-potatoes.
• Superman (various)—Is Clark really that much of a do-gooding dork?
• Good Night, and Good Luck (2005—Makes me proud to be a journalist.
• It Happened One Night (1934)—As the Week8 readings suggested, this great romance showed moviegoers how a gentleman and lady should act....part of the conservative reaction against Hollywood “immorality” in the 1930s.
etc.
The Assignment:
1. Pick a film from the list below. Clear it with Dr. Ted by Monday, Nov. 8. Watch it (with your friends and family?), and analyze it on a number of levels:
• If it’s a fact-based film, check its historical accuracy: compare the film version to historical accounts and news stories in The New York Times & other news sources.
• How it reflects the role of the press/journalists in society.
• How it reflects the impact of the journalist on society and other social institutions.
• Use the mass comm theories to aid in your analysis of what kinds of things the film does.
2. Analyze the movie and identify its major themes/ frames, comparing them to historical facts (if the movie is about a real person/event) or, if it’s not, to your understanding of the role of a free and responsible press. How do the movie “facts” privilege or distort the historical record? How does the film conform to your understanding of socially responsible and ethical journalism? (see the Hutchins Commission materials and various codes of ethics and principles of honest journalism). NOTE: Even if a film is not strictly historical—His Girl Friday or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, for instance—it does reflect a particular time and set of contemporary events. Find out what was going on at the time, in what events or trends or social attitudes was the film created and situated? (Like the It Happened One Night, for example.) How was the event and/or person or the times framed in historical accounts or The New York Times? What issues related to media ethics can you relate to the Times’ construction of reality?
3. Do the film narratives work to privilege (support) or to challenge the dominant ideologies underlying American society of the time?
4. What issues related to media ethics can you relate to the film’s construction of reality?
5. How does your film frame/portray journalists and journalism? How does it make you feel about the press and the press role in society? (Can you relate the journalist’s behavior/performance to the Hutchins recommendations, for example?) What is the journalist’s ethical behavior (relate to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics and related materials; see Folkerts et al. Ch. 13.)
The Essay: Write a 5-pp. analytical paper about your movie, and addressing the issues above. (See Essay Guidelines.) Include complete bibliographic sources used to confirm the historical record. (Note: Wikipedia is NOT an acceptable nor a reliable source.)
Deadline: Nov. 29, 2010
Some Tips:
Your goal is to analyze the film in terms of how the historical events, issues and people are represented, not simply to do a plot summary. Using online sources is fine, providing the sources are reliable. (Like Wikipedia, blogs are not always reliable sources of factual information—check your sources!) Preferred sources: newspapers, news magazines, academic articles or books, film reviews from reliable news sources (e.g., New York Times). FYI: The New York Times Historical database is available online through the library and includes all articles published by the Times. Also, every Time magazine article and cover since its first publication in 1927 are available. Click here for research tips.
Other things you might want to think about: 1. Search for historical information about the contemporary events (or the era) and people (if possible) depicted in the movies. Identify the differences between the historical and film versions.
2. What are the journalistic ethical issues in the film? How would the journalists in the movie be “graded” on the SPJ Code of Ethics? How on the Hutchins Commission goals for a free & responsible press?
3. Could the director have portrayed the contemporary (or historical) events and people in a more responsible way? How and why?
4. What themes, characters, elements of the film provided new insight, challenged your way of looking at the issues raised by the film?
5. Use specific examples from the film to illustrate your major arguments and conclusions.
6. Can you relate the principles of media literacy and media effects theories to the films? How? Be specific.
A Caveat: Many Hollywood films may use language, violence, decpittions, etc., that you may find offensive; about 70 percent of Hollywood films are R-rated (From the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA): “A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words [e.g. the “F” word], though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, if even one of those words is used in a sexual context.” Click here for additional information on the MPAA rating system.)
Films: Below is a list of films that fit the criteria for this assignment:
1) They all deal with journalism; may or may not be based on an actual event or person;
2) They all deal with an important contemporary social issue or
3) . . . focus on issues related to journalism/journalism ethics. (Plot summaries adapted from The Internet Movie Database, Rotten Tomatoes, MetaCritic and other sources.)
4) Because this is a journalism class, I urge you to keep this list, watch ALL these films sometime, and let me know when you find other ones you like. These lists abound: Here’s another one at a journalism training site.
Pick one of these and tell Dr. Ted which one you want ASAP.
• Absence of Malice (1981) (PG). Fiction account of ambitious reporter Sally Field and her ethical lapses in pursuing the story of a shady Paul Newman. A standard for ethics class.
• All the King’s Men (2006). Based on the Robert Penn Warren novel. The life of populist Southerner Willie Stark, a political creature loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana. PG-13
• All the President’s Men (1976). Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Nixon’s resignation. PG
• Born on the Fourth of July (1989). The biography of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), who was paralyzed in the Vietnam war, and becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist. For this option, examine coverage of the Vietnam war in The New York Times and compare to the narrative story in Born on the Fourth of July and the actual events of the conflict. R for war violence, language.
• Broadcast News (1987) (R) James L. Brooks’ quirky romantic comedy about life in a big-town TV newsroom; William Hurt, Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks.
• Capote (2006) Based on writer Truman Capote during research for his (excellent) book In Cold Blood, an account of the murder of a Kansas family. Capote develops a close relationship with Perry Smith, one of the killers, and struggles with the conflict of balancing getting his story and journalistic ethics. R for some violent images, brief strong language. Others: Infamous (2006)
• Citizen Kane (1941) (PG). About a power-hungry newspaper publisher with delusions of grandeur. Considered by many the best movie ever.
• Cry Freedom (1987). South African journalist Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) is forced to flee the country after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend the black activist Steve Biko (Denzel Washington). NR, British
• The Front Page (1974) (PG). Classic newspaper yarn: Hildy Johnson is the top reporter on a Chicago newspaper during the 1920s. Tired of the whole game he's determined to quit his job to get married. Walter Matthau, Jack Lemon, Susan Sarandon, Carol Burnett.
• Frost-Nixon (2008) A dramatic retelling of the famous post-Watergate television interview by British celeb host David Frost w/ former President Richard Nixon; his mea culpa. Frank Langella and Michael Sheen. G
• Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) Edward R. Murrow and CBS decide to take a stand against Sen. Joe McCarthy’s unethical tactics during the 1950s Red Scare. The Edward R. Murrow story, starring David Strathairn and George Clooney. PG
• His Girl Friday (1940) (G) A newspaper editor (Cary Grant) uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) from remarrying.
• Inherit the Wind (1960) An account of a real-life 1925 case in which two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution. G
• The Insider (1999) Research chemist decides to blow the whistle on Big Tobacco and appear in a “60 Minutes” segment. Russell Crowe, Dustin Hoffman. R for language
• The Killing Fields (1984) Based on the experiences of New York Times reporter, Sydney Schanberg, and his coverage the 1970s civil war in Cambodia. R for graphic war violence & language
• Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004) (PG). Documentary on reported conservative bias of Fox News, which promotes itself as “fair and balanced.” Interviews with former FNC employees and the inter-office memos they provided.
• Network (1994) (R for language, sex). A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit. Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch.
• The Paper (1994) (R). Henry Hackett is the editor of a New York City tabloid. He is a workaholic who loves his job, but the long hours and low pay are leading to discontent. Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei.
• Shattered Glass (2003) The true story of a young journalist who fell from grace when it was found he had fabricated over half of his articles. PG-13 for language.
• Teacher’s Pet (1958) (G) James Gannon (Clark Gable), the hardboiled city editor of a newspaper, believes that the only way to learn the business is by way of the School of Hard Knocks, and has a very low regard for college-taught journalism, so he's not pleased when his managing editor orders him to help Erica Stone (Doris Day), a college professor.
• Veronica Guerin (2003) Based on the story of the Irish journalist who is assassinated by the drug dealers she wrote about in her news stories. R for violence & language
• Wag the Dog (1994) (R for language). Funny and cutting. Before elections, a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer join efforts to fabricate a war in order to cover-up a presidential sex scandal. Dustin Hoffman, Robert DiNiro, Anne Heche, Willy Nelson, Woody Harrelson.
Some films are available in USU Merrill-Cazier Library, Media Collections.
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Hollywood, Society & the Press
Project Goal: To analyze how journalism and its role in American society are depicted in Hollywood film. Over time, journalists have been seen as scoundrels, drunkards, meglomaniacs, crusaders, liars and war heroes—among other things. With this project we study the journalist’s social role while also examining their impact, principles and influence. The movies on the list below are both historical and fictional, yet they all contain lessons—good and bad—about journalism and society.
Discussion: As we have discussed (remember Mass Comm Theories?), creators of media messages select and omit certain facts, even when when reporting real events; this is not always intentional, although it can be (was Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941) really such a twisted meglomaniac?). But as you recall about the principles of selective perception, we all see and understand the world differently, which means that well-intentioned and professional people also frame the world in ways that correspond to what they think is important. In that way, movies—like all media messages—can serve as social agenda-setters, helping moviegoers “see” journalists and journalism in certain ways, and to put press issues on society’s agenda (media can’t tell us what to think, but are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about).
Movies also serve as vehicles—again, intentional or not—to express certain perspectives and to make ideological statements. Citizen Kane surely did that about ambition and the corrupting influence of power, but other examples abound:• Outfoxed (2004), a “documentary” about Fox News that will raise your blood pressure (no matter how you feel about Fox) and curl your hair—“fair and balanced” my @#$%^&^%$#!!
• Network (1976)—With the amazing Peter Finch, an indictment of TV and modern couch-potatoes.
• Superman (various)—Is Clark really that much of a do-gooding dork?
• Good Night, and Good Luck (2005—Makes me proud to be a journalist.
• It Happened One Night (1934)—As the Week8 readings suggested, this great romance showed moviegoers how a gentleman and lady should act....part of the conservative reaction against Hollywood “immorality” in the 1930s.
etc.
The Assignment:
1. Pick a film from the list below. Clear it with Dr. Ted by Monday, Nov. 8. Watch it (with your friends and family?), and analyze it on a number of levels:
• If it’s a fact-based film, check its historical accuracy: compare the film version to historical accounts and news stories in The New York Times & other news sources.
• How it reflects the role of the press/journalists in society.
• How it reflects the impact of the journalist on society and other social institutions.
• Use the mass comm theories to aid in your analysis of what kinds of things the film does.
2. Analyze the movie and identify its major themes/ frames, comparing them to historical facts (if the movie is about a real person/event) or, if it’s not, to your understanding of the role of a free and responsible press. How do the movie “facts” privilege or distort the historical record? How does the film conform to your understanding of socially responsible and ethical journalism? (see the Hutchins Commission materials and various codes of ethics and principles of honest journalism). NOTE: Even if a film is not strictly historical—His Girl Friday or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, for instance—it does reflect a particular time and set of contemporary events. Find out what was going on at the time, in what events or trends or social attitudes was the film created and situated? (Like the It Happened One Night, for example.) How was the event and/or person or the times framed in historical accounts or The New York Times? What issues related to media ethics can you relate to the Times’ construction of reality?
3. Do the film narratives work to privilege (support) or to challenge the dominant ideologies underlying American society of the time?
4. What issues related to media ethics can you relate to the film’s construction of reality?
5. How does your film frame/portray journalists and journalism? How does it make you feel about the press and the press role in society? (Can you relate the journalist’s behavior/performance to the Hutchins recommendations, for example?) What is the journalist’s ethical behavior (relate to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics and related materials; see Folkerts et al. Ch. 13.)
The Essay: Write a 5-pp. analytical paper about your movie, and addressing the issues above. (See Essay Guidelines.) Include complete bibliographic sources used to confirm the historical record. (Note: Wikipedia is NOT an acceptable nor a reliable source.)
Deadline: Nov. 29, 2010
Some Tips:
Your goal is to analyze the film in terms of how the historical events, issues and people are represented, not simply to do a plot summary. Using online sources is fine, providing the sources are reliable. (Like Wikipedia, blogs are not always reliable sources of factual information—check your sources!) Preferred sources: newspapers, news magazines, academic articles or books, film reviews from reliable news sources (e.g., New York Times). FYI: The New York Times Historical database is available online through the library and includes all articles published by the Times. Also, every Time magazine article and cover since its first publication in 1927 are available. Click here for research tips.
Other things you might want to think about: 1. Search for historical information about the contemporary events (or the era) and people (if possible) depicted in the movies. Identify the differences between the historical and film versions.
2. What are the journalistic ethical issues in the film? How would the journalists in the movie be “graded” on the SPJ Code of Ethics? How on the Hutchins Commission goals for a free & responsible press?
3. Could the director have portrayed the contemporary (or historical) events and people in a more responsible way? How and why?
4. What themes, characters, elements of the film provided new insight, challenged your way of looking at the issues raised by the film?
5. Use specific examples from the film to illustrate your major arguments and conclusions.
6. Can you relate the principles of media literacy and media effects theories to the films? How? Be specific.
A Caveat: Many Hollywood films may use language, violence, decpittions, etc., that you may find offensive; about 70 percent of Hollywood films are R-rated (From the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA): “A motion picture’s single use of one of the harsher sexually-derived words [e.g. the “F” word], though only as an expletive, initially requires at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive requires an R rating, if even one of those words is used in a sexual context.” Click here for additional information on the MPAA rating system.)
Films: Below is a list of films that fit the criteria for this assignment:
1) They all deal with journalism; may or may not be based on an actual event or person;
2) They all deal with an important contemporary social issue or
3) . . . focus on issues related to journalism/journalism ethics. (Plot summaries adapted from The Internet Movie Database, Rotten Tomatoes, MetaCritic and other sources.)
4) Because this is a journalism class, I urge you to keep this list, watch ALL these films sometime, and let me know when you find other ones you like. These lists abound: Here’s another one at a journalism training site.
Pick one of these and tell Dr. Ted which one you want ASAP.
• Absence of Malice (1981) (PG). Fiction account of ambitious reporter Sally Field and her ethical lapses in pursuing the story of a shady Paul Newman. A standard for ethics class.• All the King’s Men (2006). Based on the Robert Penn Warren novel. The life of populist Southerner Willie Stark, a political creature loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana. PG-13
• All the President’s Men (1976). Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Nixon’s resignation. PG
• Born on the Fourth of July (1989). The biography of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), who was paralyzed in the Vietnam war, and becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist. For this option, examine coverage of the Vietnam war in The New York Times and compare to the narrative story in Born on the Fourth of July and the actual events of the conflict. R for war violence, language.
• Broadcast News (1987) (R) James L. Brooks’ quirky romantic comedy about life in a big-town TV newsroom; William Hurt, Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks.
• Capote (2006) Based on writer Truman Capote during research for his (excellent) book In Cold Blood, an account of the murder of a Kansas family. Capote develops a close relationship with Perry Smith, one of the killers, and struggles with the conflict of balancing getting his story and journalistic ethics. R for some violent images, brief strong language. Others: Infamous (2006)• Citizen Kane (1941) (PG). About a power-hungry newspaper publisher with delusions of grandeur. Considered by many the best movie ever.
• Cry Freedom (1987). South African journalist Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) is forced to flee the country after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend the black activist Steve Biko (Denzel Washington). NR, British
• The Front Page (1974) (PG). Classic newspaper yarn: Hildy Johnson is the top reporter on a Chicago newspaper during the 1920s. Tired of the whole game he's determined to quit his job to get married. Walter Matthau, Jack Lemon, Susan Sarandon, Carol Burnett.
• Frost-Nixon (2008) A dramatic retelling of the famous post-Watergate television interview by British celeb host David Frost w/ former President Richard Nixon; his mea culpa. Frank Langella and Michael Sheen. G• Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) Edward R. Murrow and CBS decide to take a stand against Sen. Joe McCarthy’s unethical tactics during the 1950s Red Scare. The Edward R. Murrow story, starring David Strathairn and George Clooney. PG
• His Girl Friday (1940) (G) A newspaper editor (Cary Grant) uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) from remarrying.
• Inherit the Wind (1960) An account of a real-life 1925 case in which two great lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution. G
• The Insider (1999) Research chemist decides to blow the whistle on Big Tobacco and appear in a “60 Minutes” segment. Russell Crowe, Dustin Hoffman. R for language
• The Killing Fields (1984) Based on the experiences of New York Times reporter, Sydney Schanberg, and his coverage the 1970s civil war in Cambodia. R for graphic war violence & language
• Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004) (PG). Documentary on reported conservative bias of Fox News, which promotes itself as “fair and balanced.” Interviews with former FNC employees and the inter-office memos they provided.
• Network (1994) (R for language, sex). A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit. Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch.
• The Paper (1994) (R). Henry Hackett is the editor of a New York City tabloid. He is a workaholic who loves his job, but the long hours and low pay are leading to discontent. Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei.
• Shattered Glass (2003) The true story of a young journalist who fell from grace when it was found he had fabricated over half of his articles. PG-13 for language.• Teacher’s Pet (1958) (G) James Gannon (Clark Gable), the hardboiled city editor of a newspaper, believes that the only way to learn the business is by way of the School of Hard Knocks, and has a very low regard for college-taught journalism, so he's not pleased when his managing editor orders him to help Erica Stone (Doris Day), a college professor.
• Veronica Guerin (2003) Based on the story of the Irish journalist who is assassinated by the drug dealers she wrote about in her news stories. R for violence & language
• Wag the Dog (1994) (R for language). Funny and cutting. Before elections, a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer join efforts to fabricate a war in order to cover-up a presidential sex scandal. Dustin Hoffman, Robert DiNiro, Anne Heche, Willy Nelson, Woody Harrelson.
Some films are available in USU Merrill-Cazier Library, Media Collections.
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