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Thank you it's like Donal. Sometimes I think to a great deal of economics is fantasy all things are real try to look at this from. An economic point of view when I first was asked to participate in this panel I thought that I had a very simple subject and of course perhaps you think that until you began to look into it the impact or the effect of the communications media upon our economy and there are so many faces of our economy that could be considered when I began to look at the communications media I was immediately struck once more by the diversity. Of. The economic characteristics of the media are you look for example at our economy and you see how it operates we have many business firms in the process of making decisions guided to a great extent by those who purchase the goods and services those who purchase the goods and services are constantly making decisions and everyone supposedly is making an economic decision in such a way that he will benefit from it a person who purchases something wants that something more than the amount of money. That he is going to pay for it. The business firm in the purchase of its raw materials or its supplies or other for its labor will purchase these particular factories because it believes that it will receive much more than the prices of these factors then I tried to look at the communications industry and I found such a divergence in the book publishing industry for example perhaps we do have many of the elements of our typical business for. The book industry the publishing industry is responsible to the individuals who purchase the product it makes a profit if its books are sold it loses money if its books are not sold but then I looked at television and radio and I see that those who are the ultimate consumers do not purchase the product or replay and perhaps the question is what is being sold is the industry selling entertainment to consumers. Is the industry selling consumers to advertisers I am not quite certain. But let's look now at some of the things. Perhaps theories some of the ways in which I believe the communications media can help the functioning of the economy. We all want a great deal of efficiency in the operation of the economy now of course different people may have different ideas as to what constitutes efficiency we talk for example about the best possible use of our resources we talk about the full utilization of our resources we talk about maximizing profits we talk about getting the full utilities from the goods and services we buy and as I have said before our economy is characterized by the decisions that are made by those who produce and those who consume now in order for our economy to function effectively those who produce and those who consume must have adequate information. Upon which to base these very important decisions and from an economic standpoint I would say that one function of the communications media is to provide the information for these many decisions that are being made. I think that the provision of this type of information would mean first of all. A rather careful objective I don't let it cool reporting of those events those opinions those activities that will influence economic decisions. We find very little. In the press we find very little for example about many decisions that may be made by government agencies about decisions that are made by business from those that are better helpful. The consumer stands in a very. Odd position there are many thousands of goods on the market and many services are offered and in the entire economy according to economic theory the consumer is the one who gives direction to the economy by the purchase of goods and services and business firms in turn respond to his purchases this means of course that if the consumer is to make these decisions wisely he must have adequate information about the things he is going to buy otherwise his purchases or his decisions are made on I think and miss basis and as a result. The economy cannot function effectively. If it functions in the smatter if decisions that are made must be made irrationally so to speak because the information is not available and I think perhaps this is a nother important function of the media. To provide information that will allow this consumers to make many of these decisions but then when you look at the economic structure of some of the media with the responsibility to those who pay the bill the advertisers rather than the consumers you wonder whether or not this is a realistic expectation. Whether it is the it is worth mentioning in this particular context. There are many other ways of course in which the Communications Media Mail affect the economy. It has been said for example that information about standards of living that are. Refused by the media that individuals attain many of their ideas many of their opinions from the media and in turn these ideas these opinions. These attitudes about what constitutes an adequate standard of living are translated by consumers and perhaps by producers into the production and into the consumption of the goods that are produced. So in this summary I would say that this it would seem to me is one of the most important economic functions. Making Of The Honorable information that will allow all of us to make meaningful and was decisions that will affect the operation of the company. Thanks. Thank you duff to you the person who knows all about the consumer and as a matter of fact has had a great deal of influence on the consumer is our next speaker Paul Foley and in our format today Mr Foley is the only one who will be speaking for the advertiser that is whatever the medium but every medium is used to the advertising message whether the message is put into a newspaper a magazine on radio or television Mr Foley who is an important post in the advertising field as a member of the board of the Advertising Council representing the four A is the American Association of advertising agency says he is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of McCann Erikson the world's second. The largest advertising agency he has been chairman since ninety sixty four and prior to that he had been a senior vice president and then vice chairman and always closely involved in the agency's creative activities it is of special interest to us today that following his graduation Monica allowed a from the University of Notre Dame he began his writing as a police reporter for The Chicago American later working as a reporter for The Detroit Free Press and other newspapers during World War two He served as chief of the news bureau for the U.S. Office of War Information in Istanbul returning to the United States as a correspondent with The Associated Press so he really can see both sides of this picture both only as a member of the public relations and battery Committee of the National Urban League and the Fordham University Council he's on the board of advisors of the National Catholic office for radio television and as a trustee of Notre Dame Mr Foley. Thanks. My. Wife for not being as tidy as panels are I'm not sure that there's always possible to isolate the practitioners from the theoreticians as we're doing this morning at least I know that half the time I can't tell whether I'm a theoretician or a practitioner and I'm not so sure that that's not a good thing. I speak to you this morning as an advertising agency man. Ever ties and agencies are very large users of commercial media all countries national regional broadcaster print mass where many. By users I mean that we buy space or time commercial media for a totally visible in the vowed purpose to persuade people to buy the products or services of our clients. To give you some idea of how much of this goes on let me tell you that this year some two hundred advertising agencies in the United States will invest about ten billion dollars in persuasion This represents about half of all the advertising done in the United States the other half being principally retail advertising. I want to make it very clear you however that we are not in the business of buying space or time we are not in the business of creating advertising we are in the business of persuading people to buy things. We use an art form called advertising we circulate this advertising in commercial media but we live or die by whether we persuade people. Far from being Hidden Persuaders we try very hard to be as visible as possible sometimes I'm afraid painfully visible. Persuasion is a very interesting and difficult art. Persuasion like kissing occurs person to person one of the time and it works a great deal better if there is honest understanding the degree of emotional warmth on each side. The effective audience of most commercial persuasion is an audience of one. It is therefore the first and fundamental duty of the successful persuader who normally can know about that living breathing intensely human person he is trying to persuade. He must have in his mind at all times a very clear picture of the specific person he feels is persuadable to buy and to use the product or service he is concerned with. We must in this abundant world be as sure as we can that if we do succeed in persuading person after person after person to buy and to use products they will feel honestly well served for their actions. Only with this knowledge deep inside it is again the creator of advertising truly produce a piece of human communication. One which contains within it the ingredients of interest and influence which will seek out its individual personal target any audience no matter how big and zero in on him because he is the natural other half of the communication circuit. Perhaps I could make this whole process a little less extract and more meaningful if I gave you a kind of capsule specific example let us take a product that you all know of perhaps a single product most advertised around the world a product called Coca-Cola which is close to my heart. In the United States we who advertise Coca-Cola start out with this premise the primary purpose of go to call advertising is to persuade the heavy user of soft drinks to drink Coca-Cola more often. Now that that the sceptically simple way to spend several millions of dollars. The heavy user however is a very specific and definable person. He or she is qualified by how many soft drinks they actually consume how many they tell you they consume how many they actually consume this is a very specific person sure how many are there where are they how old are they what makes them be heavy users these are all things that can be found out. Now this data is very carefully track over many years with this and with other knowledge creative people can begin to understand the specific kind of persuadable person with whom you must communicate messages are created the air pre-tested with great care I want to cite that they are pre-tested with great care. Now and only now it comes media. Is our purpose to circulate the persuasion we've created to achieve maximum opportunity with heavy users of all kinds of where they are and the context that gives our persuasion maximum opportunity a function of the context is important to us now given this very sketchy background it should be easy to see that we do not as maybe doctors supposed push a button or two in New York and by media who will say a lot. As a matter of fact there are nine hundred bottlers in this country who make and sell Coca-Cola which brings me to another fact I think is much misunderstood. It is a fact of life today that all business is done locally the act of buying and consuming is always done locally. Not nationally so the fact is that more than half well over half of all the dollars we invest in the purchase of media is also done locally. We for example in our own agency have professional media buyers in sixteen different cities United States. Yes we do buy network time we do buy national magazines but we buy at least as much spot television at least as much local newspaper and spice base at least as much local radio as we buy a national basis so we are not stepping up to a mass audience buying the mass media to solve we are trying to isolate individual people millions of them to be sure but individuals then we are buying the most effective vehicle we can find to carry our persuasion through each one at the optimum time for conversion to sales. Now what has all this to do with the effect of mass media on our society. Let me try this tack with you. We in our clients have built very large business enterprises predicated on our continued ability to persuade people persuade them to act predictably toward our products. We can do this only if three things happen and happen over and over again first our persuasion is right and it is seen and heard by a specific target audience to individual people are indeed persuaded by a Q. and three they feel honestly satisfied with the transaction and I willing to repeat it. And this brings me to the thought I would like to leave with you today with respect to media and with respect to the use we make it need advertising and by extension the media in which it is carried can continue to be successful only in so far as it honestly serves the consumer. Is my belief that much of what we today call consumerism is off on the wrong foot. It is an extension of history which is no longer fully valid. First of all the concept of people as consumers and therefore critical parts of an economic system is a very new idea in its present meaning it was born either early in the century or just before the century of the century of industrial mass production on a worldwide basis. I believe it's important to make some rather sharp distinctions between consumerism in its present and future sense and consumer protection as it emerged and developed in the early decades of the century. The earlier form was based important to fairly consistent factors in society First the problem of how to distribute consumer goods with some equity in the face of chronic shortages storage of some kinds of goods and shortages of money with which to buy the. Second relatively large segments of the population were rather poorly educated unsophisticated buyers become a urbanized for the first time and badly in the guidance and protection. In short the consumer movement for most of the first half of the century consisted of doing things for the consumer it was almost entirely protective and in some sense restricted it was very much dominated by the philosophy of Thou shalt not in word and deed. During the past two decades and importantly since about one nine hundred sixty a new order of consumerism has been emerging in the developed countries of the world. I believe it's safe to say that it will spread farther and faster than any of the older economic religions we have known. I believe this is true because the developing nations with the United States in the vanguard are moving with some speed into an era of true abundance. That is an economic system that can produce more than the population actually needs even assuming an equitable distribution. Thus the basic shifters away from the economy of production to an economy of consumption this is a truly revolutionary change. Out of this very real change which we could discuss in detail for days on end and shore. Is emerging the new consumer movement with an urgency would which makes it appear quite militant. This time however it is by consumers for consumers the days world is characterized by a much more perceptive better educated more secure more prosperous consumer generally not scraping along week to week from month to month simply to provide the necessities. Basically she is exercising buying options. If we are to persuade this new consumer both we in the persuasion business and the media which carry the persuasion messages must in my opinion the side right now. That our first order of business is to know to love and to serve the consumer. Let me be very clear about one point. Media is NOT exist to persuade people advertising God media does exist however to serve people. It cannot serve them in a fast moving world that let's understand gave way the basis it cannot use last year's fourth or next year's service. It is this lag I believe which accounts in very large measure for the continued Wendling number of daily newspapers in this country for the diminishing number of general magazines in circulation or some of the disenchantment with a national network T.V. program. There is no such a thing as a general person. Do not make the mistake of leading the largest audience the largest circulation has the greatest influence. Is my belief that generally is spreading a little influence over a larger area the truly influential media are those edited to the specific interests of specific human beings living in this time. Now what value is at the meat a practitioner who advances rather philosophic position about media. What are its practical consequences. I suggest just you know I can evaluate what me is doing today or to appraise in any logical way the wide ranging criticism needed and many of the panaceas offered it's necessary to have some clear idea what me you're supposed to do. Media by and large I believe exist to inform educate to entertain. The larger the oil and to seek the thinner its content becomes. Within these broad purposes once you've examined most of the current specifics and relate them to the idea that media should be governed by normal market considerations that is its product or service should be honestly related to the perceived needs wants and desires of its public and whether you are media agree with this or not there is a marketing orientation it does exist that's why there's no more college and we're certainly put no more Herald Tribune. Now ask yourself these questions How long will the consumer put up with commercial clutter in the T.V. movies. The agencies I suggest you will steer away from them as soon as persuasion stops. How long will the consumer put up with violence a steady diet for children more important how soon will networks begin to pretest all serial program ideas against a good cross-section the viewing audience and critics before committing to the airwaves. How long can daily newspapers and cities under two hundred thousand this country continue to serve up rehashed wire service copy with a minimum of conscientious reader oriented local coverage. I suggest you the most marketing or in meeting today's local radio stations that exist and program their time to the real wants and desires of specific audiences. And other groups are free to know in advance what the fair is and listen or stay away. And you have top forty stations hard rock stations own news stations serious music. As a total medium I thought of radio it's ever done better as doing right today. But it took the virtual death of network radio to bring this about. Its T.V. heading in this direction. Let me suggest a T.V. is at least heading in the direction of many more independent stations and much more locally available time even for network affiliates. These are some of the views of a practitioner with all imitations built into that word. The effect of mass communication will always be elusive as are the effects of prayer or singing or daily bathing. We think in terms of individual human beings not mass thank you very much thank. Thank you Paul Farley I feel the need of a psychiatrist Fortunately we have one in the house Graham claims you and you is chief of psychiatry Harvard University Health Services a post he has held since one nine hundred sixty four for money having been an instructor in psychiatry the Harvard Medical School and he has held other points related to the university in addition to his professional affiliations he is a director of the Family Counseling Service of Cambridge and also the big brother Association of Greater books than Dr plane is a prolific writer just a few titles of books and articles will indicate the range the Parent's Guide to adolescence the children of divorce sex on the campus why intelligent young people take drugs loneliness at Harvard a psychologist views femininity at Radcliffe and a very popular book published by Harper and Row which is now in paperback youth and the hazards of affluence rambling. Thanks. Well it's very flattered by this McDonald's invitation to come and talk to this distinguished already Ensign and I have great respect for your courage and asking a psychiatrist to talk at all actually as you are well aware psychiatrist spend most of the time listening whenever you give an opportunity to talk it's very difficult to stop them on them but they had a meeting once where Scotch was on a power where it was a lot of very strict ten minutes to torque and they went on and on and after about twenty minutes the chairman got more nervous and more nervous and put his watch up on the podium and sent a note send even turned off the microphone but I think. Up the man and so finally in desperation the chairman hurled the gavel to man's head who just happened to be ducking at that moment and it had a lady in the front row and she fell off or chair she said hit me again I can still hear him. And I notices no gap here all the other number of stops watch this and say yep it. I was intrigued that they idea of trying to put my thoughts together on the subject of what is a psychological impact of the media on society and on individuals now the first thing that kind of my mind as I'm sure it would to many is violence and and we have heard a good deal about the possibilities that violence does violence on television does breed violence in the community and so on and so I very carefully researched whatever but sure I could find on the subject with the help of the television information office here in New York credit to them but I came up five frustrated I found out just about an equal number of studies which had been done which showed that violent said dead in the day and stale and encourage violence in the viewer or the reader. As it were studies which show that viewing or looking at a reading about violence seem to be a very healthy kind of way to take care of one's natural aggressive instincts and vicarious enjoyment of Firelands tended to make one calmer and less violent oneself. Well I don't know that this controversy will ever be sought result of to because it seems to me that there is no really good way that you can measure these two things that is violence as looked upon in violence as has acted out say some either just too many variables in everybody's life to know what contributed to violence and it seems to me that most of these variables are quite impossible to measure so I don't think that perhaps we'll ever have a soft that one. My own personal opinion for whatever it's worth is that that violence has it's red a bad thing as it's looked out if if it is clearly fictional. Has very little influence on the behavior of the viewer and really not very much try manic effect on his psyche. But violence that's real that's true to life that's actually happening how does I think have quite quite a track manic effect on children I think and seeing Oswald shot by saying not yet Congress sergeant shot through the head the seconds and things are very upsetting to children my own children the only time they haven't lost sleep after looking at a television program was the time that they saw a news program on which. There was an interview with a young man who had killed both his mother and father. This this cost him considerable distress and obviously isn't a psychiatrist would know it clearly stood up but conflicts in that love hate department in them which which made it difficult for them to have to sleep for a couple of nights. So that seems to me that seems to me that perhaps this is what we were eventually find that after all we've had Grimm's fairy tales and other kinds of violent stories where the detective stories are dime novels or what have you ever since the beginning of time and I I think they do serve a useful purpose just as we've now found that dreaming serves a useful purpose in draining or some of the tensions and the anxieties and the hostilities that we feel but I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the other effects of television on personality not necessarily television but really all of media in certain ways over television more dramatically. And they said not based on any studies and not I suppose very valid in the long run the best to simply on my clinical experience what I've heard in talking to students and patients and others over the years and I found that I could delineate to five different kinds of ways in which the media seemed to affect the human psyche and I've called them the diverse them for the paranoid the hypnotic the exciting and the magic. And I think the divisible is pretty clear I think that perhaps the greatest impact on the American family that that television itself has made is the way it split the family up has contributed to less communication between family members I think at this is much more important than the content of the programs. You see television in many homes used as a pacifier I when children are upset parents say watch go look at television instead of talking to them and finding out what's got them upset you see it also as an isolator in the Hong he says there are programs which are of interest only one family member particularly athletic programs and this isolates him or her from the rest of the family for many hours so I'm home she was television as a distraction at meal time meal time is the time when families are our closest together that's where they have more fights as well as more interesting and stimulating interesting conversations the television often says is a distraction at these times and cuts down on getting to know each other in the family. I can remember a cartoon or two of many years ago which illustrates this point which husband and wife are looking at a television set and on the screen it's said network difficulty and the wife is turning to the husband and says So what have you been doing all week. And. The POWER No I don't want as much more subtle and one after that perhaps it doesn't really exist but in my kind of circumscribed existence I hear a good deal about the kind of subtle influence that scent has as well as as as other things and what I mean cause a paranoid patient someone who has difficulty in distinguishing fantasy from reality as was mentioned already by Mr day. The television set represents not only said something that puts out pictures but also something that takes in pictures and paranoids often feel that the television set is watching them hand is is transmitting messages to some evil force outside. This of course is a very very few individuals in our society who are this disturbed that they have this kind of reaction but in a more subtle way I think people are beginning to feel very frightened about who knows what a pat down. And the status when there have five data banks out there in Dayton or somewhere that's like that are accumulating any information about all of us on tapes and storing them away or you begin to wonder exactly how much privacy we have. You also wonder when you look at some of the programs showing how individuals in grief and tragedy in moments of stress in their lives and how they feel about being shown all over the country and I don't think once but record it on videotape to be used in the documentary maybe ten fifteen years from now. How do they feel about this kind of public display of their very private moments of grief or tragedy. And I think of course to I don't know whether you get the same spooky feeling that I do now when you walk into stores and there's a television camera up there taking a picture of you in a bank or in a store I have an uncomfortable feeling they partment house I live in there's a television camera in the underground garage and I sometimes wonder who knows who who is in the car with me when I come home every night and day is that going to come on tape and what time I come home and everything and that's that I think and I think that as I say for some people it works both ways that being looked at by the camera and somehow the set itself has a spooky kind of paranoid connotation. Well the hypnotic out and flow and set of the television of course is his offset fairly obvious and part of it is still just to the glow of that tube which is a very hypnotizing element in itself where your love from physiological studies on these kinds of light sources it's hard to get away from and of course the content of the programs plays on this fact that they keep you guessing they make you always take out covering fast from one thing to another and they certainly give you the feeling if you leave your alive to miss something and they isn't then and and adhesive quality to the television set in most households and to most people I stop for some individuals this may be a much more healthy kind of hypnosis and some other things I have one patient who is not a Harvard student who was I was addicted to the parent and was finally able through a methadone program and a great many years of. Trial and tribulation to not only get off heroin but also to get off methadone only to tell me a few weeks ago that now he was hypnotized to television and addicted to it and he was unable to do any work or anything or he could do was look at the tube Well this is a healthy stuff too and said good health and my pain in this is a better kind of addiction and the others were but this isn't true of course of all people and there are many people for whom television and that's hypnotic effect really keeps them from doing many things that they should they want to be doing and they realize that they should be doing we've raised two generations of children happy were able to study with the radio and for some it they even feel that it helps them study. But there are many children who can look at the television screen and study too and it becomes an either or proposition and many to many of my student patients complain about their inability to get away from the To. The exciting element has already been mentioned here. The fact that what you say on the screen is very exciting and it's made so purposely news events are can dance to only the exciting parts I shant out the long waiting periods are eliminated. People looking at television and young people particularly those of us who've lived through the days without it it's not so true of but for young people I get the feeling that this is the way the world is supposed to be it's supposed to be exciting all the time and when I get out there and I find there isn't that much excitement I feel disappointed and I feel frustrated and I think that it is one element and the kinds of kind of risk taking we see in young people today young people today are more willing to take more dangerous risks than they used to be and this may be because partly they're looking for the excitement. That they felt coming from the television set that the world should be that way and the magic magic has been referred to a little bit too we all see. Magical things happening on television all the time particularly in the commercials clouds spark off suddenly headaches disappear in an instant and composure develops in a second. The this this kind of magic isn't always recognized as magic by young people I think this is supposed to happen. That these are the SEC quick satisfactions are supposed to come and run and when they get up they are again and they can't find these kinds of things. I think that this is one factor in the developing frustration that way sense and the young today are feeling that that they're going to drop out of this world and make their own world where maybe they can find magic instant end of the sea in these kinds of things. Or where they take drugs in order to try to make a will for themselves that's has more composure or more magic and that it's more and it's more unreal and therefore more exciting. And of course the protest money and certain why is the angry violent protest be related to the lack of magic and the lack of excitement in the frustration the anger that's felt because it just isn't that way out there the way that I think it could so easily be as a result of same things happen the way they do. In the media that they read about Welp I just talked about some of the less favorable aspects of the less favorable impact of television perhaps on the human psyche and there are many up ways in which television has a very favorable effect and I think contributes to the healthy development of personality in The Young and the maintenance of a healthy person out in a healthy adjustment and I dos many positive elements in the media that help us that the informative The educate have the inspiration they're all there. And we mustn't forget that when we when we talk about this way rather critically. But top of a the media are with us there's no danger of their leaving us they don't have to be defended They don't have to be held onto So I think it much more valuable to talk about these less favorable aspects and one of the we understand them and perhaps I somehow can counteract them and this way get all a benefit that we can out of the media and and play down to his greatest extent that we can and he possible harmful effects. Thank. You Thank you Graham Blaine Dr Blaine referring to the hypnotism of the television set and not wanting to leave it reminds me that Westinghouse is the home of David Frost Our next speaker George nor for his vice president general executive for Group W. Westinghouse Broadcasting Company he joined group W. After more than ten years with a National Broadcasting Company and two years with Governor Rockefeller as New York State Commission for Human Rights as one of the prime movers in the establishment of the broadcast skills bank a recruitment training program for minorities in the broadcasting industry Mr Norfolk is now on its national director coordinator sorry at Westinghouse he supervises and coordinates the recruitment and training of minority members for employment with Westinghouse and its subsidiaries. At N.B.C. Mr Northcote produced network television programs he has written documentary films for the F A O of the United Nations in his early days he was a columnist for The New York Amsterdam News and is the author of several plays about Negro life one of which head of the family was produced by the Theatre Guild Mr Norwood was educated at Columbia University and the new school he is a member of the board of The New York Urban League and chairman of its Manhattan Battery Committee he is a board member of the Symphony of the New World and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York also a member of the board of The New York Academy of Television Arts and Sciences I might mention that one of the reasons I have numerated the many affiliations about guest speakers is knowing that all of you aren't so heavily involved in all sorts of volunteer work I thought it might be very meaningful to you to realize that these busy people like Mr Foley and Mr Norfolk and all the others actually are giving so much of their time to these. Important problems of our day in addition to carrying on a full day's work in the office at Georgian orphanage thank you and thank you thank you good morning ladies and gentlemen. We do give a considerable amount of fun time to these sessions these conferences because we realize their importance yesterday morning for example I tended the National Conference on citizens rights in broadcasting and one of the major panels had to do with the role of television in a democratic society. They made every effort to get a very representative panel to discuss this important question and I thought they had succeeded until they heard from the Chicano community that I know Mexican Americans on the panel Well finally the panel wound up with not one Mexican American but two so there was an end cut off ideas from that community I'm not going to speak for the Mexican American or the Puerto Rican or the American Indian I speak as a black man connected with a medium whose power that in twenty years I have become I've realized as is absolutely awesome perhaps some of the things that I might say to you a Mexican American or an Indian or perhaps a Puerto Rican. Might say. The lines of communication between black and white Americans have been so restricted for so many years as to be almost nonexistent and they are never more desperately needed than now. This lack of communication has allowed myths to flourish and stereotypes to prevail ignorance of the monstrous nature to grow unchecked it has let loose a host of evils that a haunting America and bringing it to the brink of revolution it is by far the most serious gap between the races and the longer it is allowed to prevail the more rapidly will come the black white polarization we all fear with its dreaded dreaded consequences to the American Society. Now you read government reports have been rolling out on federal and state and municipal levels and each Eckel the other eight reveal the danger of violent racial confrontation if the communication go continues to widen and all of this is happening in a nation that prides itself on possessing the most pervasive and persuasive instrument of communication the date the greatest that man has ever known television. Now. I ask Can television help to enlighten our democracy currently in racial disarray can the light from this very small screen dispel the darkness that is dangerously deepening over our cities our campuses our churches. Can its presence in most homes across the nation help make real rather than rhetoric one nation indivisible really help to bring us together rather than driving us farther apart. These are perhaps among the greatest questions television and those of us connected with it will ever have to answer and the greatest challenge perhaps we will ever have to meet. The fact is. Television is better postured than any medium to help correct the distorted images to explode the minutes and illuminate the dark corners of ignorance and fear that have kept black and white apart for generations not only because of its wanted reach into the homes across the nation black and white. But more people believe what they see on television than what they read in the daily press. But well. One leading industry executive tells us that he's taught it telling it like it is when he says the public must recognize television as a function of its own tastes and interests and consider the television's flaws and fellow abilities are to a great degree a reasonable mirror image of its own and called. The Wonder Years why the defenders of the status quo even bother to contend that the American society isn't racist. When television for years sometimes seven days a week sometimes eighteen hours a day by its almost total exclusion of blacks in the quote reasonable image close quote of the public taste and interests meaning white. Constantly proclaims that it is. The few blacks being seen on screen. Is talking. And those and off screen employment positions. Is even less than talking. It may be pandering to the public taste. But is it really serving the public interest or is it doing it irreparable damage. More and more the conviction grows that the medium should be more than a mere Lookingglass that it should use its creative ingenuity and its D. Indeed its power to educate and illuminate to put trade a black man not only as he is in our society but is it should be in every day events that make up everybody's life in births and deaths and marriages and P.T.A. meeting in politics shopping in supermarkets striving dreaming achieving contributing this would be much more within the realm of for reality than the fantasy that currently fills the screen and the mirror image that feeds black alienation intensifies white prejudice and indicts the nation. In a century like ours crusades are likely to be looked upon as belonging to our ears and are the media much to promote the baroque kill for so esoteric a world as they electronic but what television really needs is a revolution a spiritual kind of revolution. One in which it's movers and shakers face up to the reality of racism. And move creatively consciously aggressively to eradicate it mainly through a more informed use of the medium. I think television but then find flocking to it the people it's so desperately needs to feed its gargantuan appetite. The founder an activist for example black and white men and women whose concern transcend the commercial and the commonplace and they reactionary and the purely political. And because such a revolution would be seek an affront to or more complex than any of the media and has yet sought how man can better understand his fellow man attaining that front here or even moving a step closer to it would offer rewards more gratified than money as a result the majority television. Must achieve if it is to ever function as a meaningful force in the world would be Matt that much closer. Now this is not to say that television represents if properly used the second coming. Maybe that's a good idea. For the first one who is around was crucified. But responsibility for action rests with television and with all media. Print and electronic with all institutions that can bring pressure to bear for change and on all individuals Television is just better postured to serve all of these things I've mentioned in these institutions and to focus their efforts more accurately. And more dramatically and that airwaves belong to both all the people. Even though only a few have been given government a license to use them. To use them ladies and gentleman not to abuse them as is too often the case. If television were to address itself affirmatively and aggressively to this communication gap in our society. And its major role as a social condition then it should follow that the truth about the black man a historical rather than a mythical understanding of his place in America should emerge in all types of its programming and news and public affairs and even in the end tame and sector and it follows that the truth should make most of us if not all black and white free. The fares that plague the white community about living next door to them. Employing them workin alongside them. Going to the same school with them what diminish. In time these fairs would be blown to the winds of fantasy where they belong with all black Joe and Uncle Remus and Amos and Andy and Rochester and you can name many many more disappearing with these fairs would be most of the suspicion on the part of blacks that whites are sworn to keep them in Petula bondage as subhuman and second class citizens. Ignorance. Of the black community by the white majority remains the main obstacle to their acceptance the primary reason for the develop unfair the creeping polarization a root cause of white racism. And every time a television set is turned on being it beat it in the backwoods of Georgia or the main street of if it can eliminate it can persuade it can educate. Or it can as it too often does reinforce the dangerous stereotypes that are cruelly quickly and to black and white alike young and oh. In the past it has been easier for television to accept the existent image of the black man in America for us though it may be and give it further circulation thus compounding the crime then it has been to show it like it is the image had been inherited from film and the old print media themselves a product of racism wittingly or on wittingly. Being new and more flexible more enterprising licensed to operate in the interest of all the public's television might have avoided falling into this trap it did not it kept out it is to a large extent still coming out if there was passion for truth or moral commitment among its personnel and this gave way to expediency those who could have. And should have been creators became conformists judgement too often was compromised to avoid controversy and since the black man had little power and less voice he was neither heard nor seen of the six thousand odd radio stations in the country nine own by blacks. Of the five hundred fifty odd television stations not own by blacks so the challenge it comes again. It comes in a different climate one of greater sensitivity. Even hunger perhaps on the part of many of the white majority visible and invisible vocal or silent to know more about this black minority and its methods why this minority wants to do its own thing in its own way black organisations have come into being across the country to challenge licenses of stations operating in the north and south and west to challenge their license when they have not fulfilled the cream and that they have made the program and to employ personnel in the best interests of the nation as a whole the challenge well continue. And the hope is that television now freed of earlier innovations will be able to respond to it. Hopefully with the input of fresh mines men and women black and white on the screen and. Minds on set or by the prejudices of pharma generations television will cease to become what is our it is often called a vast wasteland I choose to see television not as a vast wasteland and I think this is what keeps me working in IT I see it as a vast front here. It can still attract client yes young men and women with passion to advance not only the medium but history and humanity as well by grappling with the manifold problems of a multi-racial society and reflecting America's real and rich cultural and ethnic diversity like it really is. Many men in television have been working quietly in all areas trying to bring its performance abreast of its great promise among them down again but chairman of Westinghouse the man I work for. And in his company I'm not talking. And considering this black white communication gap or any other problem effect in the black community or the national community for that matter jobs are fundamental it is perhaps the first and final key to better housing better education and most of all to self-respect in the fall of one nine hundred sixty four again and quietly visited the heads of the three major networks N.B.C. C.B.S. and A.B.C. and asked them to join with him in the National Urban League and get an up setting up a broadcast skills bank it's purpose to recruit employ train if necessary and that Vance all types of minority group man power Chicano and Puerto Rican and Indian. In the broadcast industry particularly television. The broadcast goes back now operates in twenty major cities across the country not as successfully in some cities as we would like to see it more successfully in dollars There are all the programs geared to bring minority group manpower into the end a straight there are programs one cannot conducted on up at Columbia to provide the kind of training so that their progress in the industry could be speeded up. None of these programs. Enjoy the success that they showed. Well television commercial education and public must begin to see this negro creative talent for its own self interest and for its survival. And finally. Television might well take a page from its own successful West and formula. Its And this mostly simple idea and it has always worked. It is the basis for the success of Bonanza and Gunsmoke and the scores of other Westerns that have raced across the home screen for many many years. The front tires human always wins. Not by staying barricaded behind the walls of Fort timidity and keeping the wagons in a potential circle form and camp conformity he breaks out. He pushes forward. It is a simple law off life itself ladies and gentlemen and I constantly emphasize this to my colleagues in the industry break out push forward communicate change change or be left behind in the dark and perish. Thank you An ina And thank you. I'm sure we all appreciate your snore for its very thoughtful remarks it reminds me too that the most important aspect of our communications work is our communications with each other and I'm sure we will remember the things he said the National Council of Women as you know is composed of member organizations and we are very happy that. The National Council of Negro Women is one of our key member organizations and dates back I don't know the exact date to the founding of the National Council of Women in eight hundred eighty eight a lot of work to be done but we're glad that we're part of it. We begin with a say and we're going to end with a say our guest speaker now is the only one today who represents the printed word you'll notice but if it becomes necessary to defend it you will see that he's quite capable of doing so Norman easy Isaacs has for some years been executives' editor and vice president of the Louisville Courier Journal and the Louisville times he has just arrived in New York to take up his post as editor and residence of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism but he continues as a member of the board of his newspapers and also acts as a consultant to them he was born in England educated in Canada in the United States and began his career as a reporter for the Indianapolis Star later becoming managing editor at the Indianapolis times and then chief editorial writer of the Indianapolis news he has served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors he has been president of the Louisville monic Society for the Department of State Mr Isaacs was appointed to the public affairs mission to India in one hundred fifty eight and Yugoslavia and one hundred fifty nine he is a member of long standing of the Council on Foreign Relations a member of the Edward R. Murrow scholarship committee and a member of the board of the Stanford professional journalism fellowships Norman Isaacs Thank you. Thank you Don Lemon delighted to have been invited here today. Because I've had a perfectly delightful time inspiring time listening to some of your. My colleagues up here. Yes I like that like Professor hook I tend to be a little truculent sometimes. And I make it that way right up here. All this talk the theoretical top fascinates me. But I don't think you people quite understand journalism. And especially print journalism and I make it very short and sweet there are seven hundred daily newspapers in the United States about twelve hundred of them are small dailies county seat dailies and others and they run all the way from miserable in performance to quite good. There are the other five hundred newspapers are small city ranging from small city newspapers to major metropolitan newspapers and there again you have the same range of performance. Ninety five percent of the cities of this country are served by monopolies. It's unfortunate I ran a monopoly myself for a great many years. And I see no inherent virtue in it. It is an economic fact of life. In Lawyer Well I was often asked what an executive editor did and I used to say that I was the recipient of all the dear sir letters usually spell see you are. And when those people who disagreed with our editorial stance would protest vigorously I would always point out that they were welcome to start a nother newspaper. Matter of fact I would encourage it but only for someone who had quite adequate resources because in the city of the size of over Kentucky it would take just about twenty five million dollars to get a building and equipment. Before you could start printing a newspaper. And then you had better have another twenty five million dollars to see you for the first couple of years. Now you can take this measurement any way you wish and you see the economic considerations of publishing newspapers. The newspaper journalism in this country has changed a very great deal in my hundred three years as a newspaper editor. And I was rather surprised by Professor hooks broadside denunciation of so much of what we do I happen to agree with with many of his thrust but I accuse him of. Not being quite as objective as he should be. It is perfectly true that we lack professional discipline. As a quote profession unquote. We have no standards to which we can repair. And it is also true that many of the things that journalism has done and is doing is reprehensible newspaper journalism. But the object of view has to be that we have improved tremendously. With each passing year. I can remember when I was a boy reporter that when we didn't have any news to speak of we would collect all of the purse snatching this and. Little break ins. And add them all together and then carry a big banner line sweeping across the top of the page saying crime wave sweeps a city. A story that disappeared between editions when they got their first decent wire story. Now we're a long way from that were a long way from emphasizing crime once upon a time the police court the police beat was the important beat for newspapers in this country. Paul remembers that the days when police beats were the beat for the active reporters but this is gone today that for most of the newspapers around the country there are precious few stories from the police beat that get into the daily newspaper most of our newspapers are trying to be significant. The argument that we hear most these days is the one that has to do with objectivity. This is a. I agree with Professor Hook's definition of of that this is one thing I do agree with you about I think. It probably is unattainable total objectivity is but the search for ought to be what we in journalism look for and we do. This is what we do all the time and we fail we fail because we human. I too have been guilty of the broadside attack on communications on newspapers on radio and television and all magazines. I've been active as many others have been in the search for an ethics committee a grievance committee. I've just finished an article for the Columbia Journalism Review in which I outline and again strongly advocate the adoption of what might be called an American Press Council a counterpart of the British Press Council to which the individual or the organization with the substandard complaint against the performance of newspapers to present this complaint I think we are bound to come to it we ought to come to. We've been under great pressure of course. For years about what it is we do it's one of these things of of killing the bear trying to kill the bearer of bad news. I suppose. In some cities those newspapers which tried. Earnestly to do what George nor for does advocating of. Presenting the nudes and the aspirations and the needs. At the black community. Are set upon by the many in the community community. Who despise this point of view. Another reason I'm grateful to be here today is because at this time of year this is one of the few literate and intelligent. Mornings I've been able to spend because of the proliferation of political bombast. And I should state very frankly that I am not an admirer of Vice President Agnew. With. And I was delighted to read this morning in The New York comings of what Mayor Lindsey said in my view the vice president has proved repeatedly that he has fucked his intellectual bus from a test. That there's no such thing. And I'm from I'm saying this to you Professor hook there's no such thing really as a standard editor. Or Standard newspaper reporter. These are people with a creative bent. And the creative urge. Who see in journalism. A means of public service. As a newspaper editor I was also a recruiter. A recruiter of talent. And over the years I have visited many campuses. To look over the talent and for a long time we were low on the stick because you thought the youth had aspirations and this was early discernible observers discernible fifteen years ago. The desire of young people to be of service to mankind this is really a tremendous generation we are almost have two generations the two generations that I've lived through personally. Have been tremendous in their desires money has not been the real object service has been the real object and for a while this drive for the Peace Corps was very evident or the desire to be in the academic fields in journalism and I use the term journalism to include both broadcast and print was running third These days I noticed that we're almost we're first I think at this moment we're first because government service has lost its appeal to a great many of the young because what they have seen in the way of upper skate and hypocrisy. And they academia in some way has lost its charm for some of them because of what has been going on on the campuses. And they have wanted something more active now it is true that a lot of them come with a strong point of view which they want to express and it is our job as editors to instill in them the desire. To search for objectivity. The desire to tell a whole story to desire to peel off the various layers of society so that they can see it warts and all. If they can see what happens in our law courts this is a disgrace the bar associations have failed repeatedly in this country to clean up the courts the only decent courts we have in this nation really are the federal courts. The local courts are disgrace everywhere and this is the average citizens first introduction to the courts this is the job of newspapers and of television to to go into these courtrooms and expose the kind of shoddy justice. We dispense in this country it's our job to reveal what goes on in the ghetto neighborhoods where transportation is measurable. Where people have to walk as many as fifteen and sixteen blocks to get to a grocery store. Now you don't you're not familiar with this in New York those who live in New York think the rest of the United States is just like it is here in smaller degree it isn't it isn't at all in many of the smaller cities of this country the deprived people the have nots white and black who live in slums that are so bad that you can't even get into them under safe conduct. A couple of years ago I think it was three years ago when the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting. In Washington the editors were challenged to go back on their own news in back of the yard so to speak and they were offered by core safe conduct only to newspaper editors in the country to come up and they're not in our case where I sent our three year young editors out there were some areas into which not even the core at present it could take this happens in this city but you don't know about it happens everywhere. But we've got to keep trying to get into these areas we've got to explain to the comfortable we've got to in other words that all say our job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable this is the role of journalism and it should be the role of television. I realize television has its problems. I am a great believer that television fits. Under the First Amendment privilege which the press the print press claims I think it's indivisible I think I don't think we can separate I think we belong together we're all in communications together. And I think the broadcast media deserves every right that the print media claims to have and their problems are much more tremendous the newspapers the newspaper has certain areas of exclusivity which radio and television can never touch the exclusivity of local coverage in-depth all of the plight of statistics of life the births the deaths the marriages. The so-called trivia of life and yet in all of the. All of the things that make a community from children slitter to major theater from youth orchestras to the symphony organizations all of this is the material out of which local newspapers build their exclusivity and build on what it is the community needs for its proper functioning and anyone who has ever lived in a city where newspaper has been on strike realizes instantly how deprived they are without their local newspaper this is a of a field which. For all of its spectacular achievements television and radio cannot fail matter of fact in Detroit a few years ago I think Hudsons estimated their loss during the Detroit newspaper strike at well over a million dollars It can happen anywhere but television's problem is not simply a problem of lousy commercials and I despise them as much as anybody else up on this panel I think it's the audience but you can talk all you want to I picked that clip out of the Wall Street Journal but a week ago or ten days ago something that made me want to go to the bathroom The Here's Lucy Show broadcast Monday September fourteenth from eight thirty pm to nine P.M. Eastern Daylight Time that attracted fifty two percent of all those watching television according to Nielsen translated into a Nielsen audience of whatever it was it meant that thirty four point three of all U.S. households equipped with televisions watch the show. But even that was out done you see by football with. This divisive effect you mentioned the. Taking the male members of the family away from the rest and how long does it take a football game to run I've. Several hours I think. They put two on well it'd run for five hours but this is what dominates and this is the audience now again what you're saying is that if television and television ought to do more documentaries and it ought to offer the people of the United States who aren't interested in Here's Lucy and in a football games something intelligible to watch but for the commercial stations they're caught up against this this thing of how do you pay the bills. And you pay the bills by giving them junk I'm not happy for them but I'm also on happy for our own newspapers because so much of the time they too hunger after tripe. No I think what we're doing at Columbia and I'm happy to be there makes a lot of sense we have a graduate school of journalism we have of this year one hundred twenty five students up there. Of whom I think almost twenty I think twenty three of four are black students. They're all they all have great degrees various kinds of few have master's degrees in other disciplines. And we have them in broadcast media under Fred Friendly. Who is a dynamic and wonderful person. I have the newspaper side we have a magazine side and we are teaching objectivity as best we can we're trying to teach him to be accurate we're trying to give them a passion for public service. Because I happen to believe as I always have believed that journalism is the greatest of all callings because it serves the mind. And a high agree with those up here who have stressed. That the well must not be tainted. This is what we're trying to get across to those young ones don't paint the well. Serve the public as honestly as you can this very issue can. And I think it rather significant when you talk about journalism. To keep in mind that it has become in large part. A family calling. And not just simply on the publishing levels and other words the Sulzberger and the Pulitzers and the combs and the Chandlers and all the rest I can mention the bring them so it is true that the these are family operations but in the working and professional levels this is also a family calling and naming after name Scotty Reston his two sons Alfred friendly of The Washington Post his they were all. Doc to blame help shepherd all of these at one time or another through school if not through psychiatric. Help but through a kindly pat on the fanny and but all of these and I am one of those I'm technically proud of the fact that my son is a newspaper man and my daughter married one. And this is this is a tribute to the to what it is we're doing when the young can see the challenge we get out of it and this are that we have to be a public service. This is American journalism today and it's happening in television and broadcasting to. Thank you very much. We are supposed to adjourn at twelve o'clock but I feel that our speakers have been so patient in listening to some attacks from their fellow panelists I just wonder if any of you would like to have a quick rejoinder before we can could feel the necessity of saying something yes Dr Hurt is going to have to be very brief. Well I was. Sitting in great trepidation that the program would come to completion without anybody disagreeing with me and I'm grateful to deny six that he took issue with me and the only problem I have is the timing exactly what he disagreed with because he ended up by stressing what I thought was a very important fact about objective of. And the sense of the safeguarding in the past newspapers may have. In some way just thought of the nose because of the Zion for sensationalism. But you see the Zion for salvation can have the same effect. And the people who know how they're going to save the world when they're giving a report may be just as inaccurate in their presentation as a person who is interested in writing only an exciting story and I just want to conclude with an expression of my agreement with him and other members of the pano insofar as they took this point of view but I had more time I would take issue on this whole business about the ties and when I want to conclude by saying that the greatest emphasis should be upon the quest for truth and objectivity in the hope and the hope that if we know the truth and it will make us free thank you thank you and it may well I'm sure we've all had an interesting and informative morning and I wish to thank Mr Macdonald for assembling this panel of experts for our enlightenment and certainly we thank the experts for their excellent presentation we know they're busy man but they are also public servants when they bring to us the fine viewpoints which they have brought today now we will adjourn this meeting and the lashon meeting well be at twelve thirty thank. You have been listening to a discussion on media in motion the effects of the communications media on our society participating in this first half of the discussion where Mr Duncan McDonald W Q X R broadcaster Professor Sidney hook James day President of the educational Broadcasting Corporation and Dr Paul really are toy or of the national board of the Y. W C. The program was transcribed at the forty first biennial meeting of the National Council of Women of the United States join us again tomorrow at noon for the second half of this discussion on media in motion.