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Our distinguished guest and speaker today on being named earlier this year. As one of the ten outstanding young men under forty in the federal government accepted the award and described himself as thirty nine and holding well particularly good friend of the I R T S Jack Benny under such circumstances I'm sure will be willing to move up the forty nine Imagine if you will thirty nine years of one's life covering as many businesses and experiences as these and consider that these are only the highlights of about twenty years a business activity service in the United States Army reporter and feature writer of The Chicago Sun Times a news beat out of Chicago for N.B.C. News that stretch all the way from Canada to Mexico a television floor reporter at the national political conventions at the same time covering the presidential campaign of Adli East events and God rest his soul and assignment to the N.B.C. News Vienna bureau in route covering stories and Rollman two innocent Paris two and a half months covering the Lebanese civil war then assigned to the London bureau of the N.B.C. News arranging as far as the Khyber Pass to Africa Ghana stay and then to the Mediterranean and midnight team sixty he was named chief of the N.B.C. News Moscow all bureau where he covered the trial of Francis Gary Powers and other important stories he then returned to the United States to work on N.B.C. news coverage of the one nine hundred sixty national elections. He traveled with the candidates and interviewed them under great debates and incidentally as you know as members of the R.T.S. in one nine hundred sixty one we gave the great debate the gold medal award and then back again to Moscow returning to the United States shortly thereafter to become the host of the N.B.C. T.V.'s Today Show then back to Europe again a year or so later to study the Common Market reporter given a widely acclaimed special a country called Europe he was later named head of the N.B.C. News bureau covering the Common Market in Brussels and then subsequently was appointed head of the Burlington Durham then back again to the United States on a special assignment as floor reporter at the national political conventions and it seems to me that I remember something historical about the Republican convention I believe it was that year and then on election night nine hundred sixty four he reported the projection to the now says of the election returns as N.B.C. News electronic vote Ellis reporter following the one nine hundred sixty four election he was assigned to the N B C News Washington bureau and as chief White White House correspondent in July one thousand nine hundred fifty five President Lyndon Johnson set a precedent in appointing a new director of The Voice of America the first working journalist ever to hold that position in June of this year though he returned to his first love the N.B.C. News taking on as this first assignment the Middle East crisis and as the N.B.C. News national affairs correspondent all of us have been seeing him regularly on the Huntley Brickley Evening News Now I know this is not a case of a man being unable to hold a job I guess you'll just have to charge it up to that wanderlust. First saw the five with the likes of a little Thomas and the partially all those men that I've ever told in my life this my friends is none other than the youthful John Chancellor recipient of the National Sigma Delbert and the Robert E. sure will towards our headliner the day Mr Chancellor. I thought that was going to go on for a lot longer. I congratulate you for having come here today braving crosstown traffic and bad weather and I also congratulate me. The parking lot when I got to National Airport in Washington today was full we all know that feeling therefore I missed the shuttle the ten thirty was a half an hour late leaving the runway we were then stacked up over New York at La Guardia there was no taxi. On the Triborough Bridge there was a four car wreck. And when we got on the East Side Highway it was flooded and I keep hearing on the radio all of these advertisements saying Take your wife with you when you travel. That relates a little bit to what I wanted to talk about today and it was complicated getting here this is a very complicated country and it's arguable that it's getting complicated at a rate faster than our ability to inform people about it. I think we've all had that slightly depressed and bilious feeling which comes when we finish the New York Times or turn off the Huntley Brinkley report and we ask ourselves where in the world is it all leading and the answer is not easy and in some cases I suppose the answer is more properly that of the philosopher the historian or the fortune teller No I don't know where it all is leading us but sometimes I think I don't really want to know and yet as a journalist I know where parts of it are leading us for good or for ill and it is the responsibility of those of us in the craft of journalism to work on those parts of current history which are properly our concern we know for example that there are greater areas of the interaction within our own society than ever have existed before. We are aware that a speech on the Senate floor about and I believe stick missiles missiles here or missiles five thousand miles away in the Soviet Union can affect the economies of California Minnesota Massachusetts and Florida we know that the executive branch quite properly makes decisions sometimes because of political reasons and we know that these decisions affect the paychecks of millions of Americans we are aware for example of the complexities of the proposed tax increase which is now in such trouble and we know that trouble is cause not only by fiscal considerations but rather by a complex mixture of factors which have to do with the war in Vietnam with our attitudes toward how much our government spends and the personality and tactics of our president this we know we are also beginning to perceive that there are connections between the murder of the wayward girl and hippie land and the quality standards and values of the middle class life we have so long celebrated in this country. And we should explore what there was that we have not done what there was that we have not accomplished which is helping to propel some of our best young people toward the Haight Ashbury or the East Village or the and I war demonstration we should ask ourselves for example what interlocking set of contemporary attitudes produced the curious reaction in this country to the death of that passionate revolutionary of our in some places he was more and and few people in this country scorn him and death even though he was totally opposed to the system we represent and this it seems to me indicates a change in our society we are overall witnesses to the extraordinary acceleration of our society caused by a combination of more technology and more people and more communication remember the so called Beat Generation which flashed through our consciousness in a matter of years and has now been replaced by the hippies and who knows how long that will last and who among us can say what will replace that and when now all of these things in the world such as ours are the proper concern of the journalist it is his responsibility to record conflict and to chronicle change it is his privilege to do this because he operates the machinery which transmits the news and people turn to him for it we cannot expect much less ask ordinary people to seek understandable information about their society from the technicians of sociology or medicine or economics but people have a right and they have an obligation to seek that information from journalists and it is the responsibility of the journalists to keep up in an age when as I say the world may be increasing in complexity at a rate faster than the ability of journalism to explain it. Now having said that I believe nonetheless that American journalism is in a stage of considerable change adaptation and innovation I don't know if there is enough experimentation going on but I can see some healthy signs as I read the newspapers and magazines watch the television programs it was an axiom of my younger days as a reporter that the most complex journalist again from instrument ever devised was a smart man with a pencil and a notepad and I still think that is true if a bit old fashioned and romantic I still think that the essence of journalism in any medium is the reporter and I think the reporters of today are a bit better than they used to be but change in journalism comes slowly most of our non-electronic instruments of journalism are a lot older than we realize the Associated Press got its first beginnings as an association in New York almost one hundred fifty years ago the United Press is about sixty years old the New York Times went on the newsstands one hundred sixteen years ago. The A.P. began a century and a half ago by grouping together some reporters presumably smart men with pencils in the past and sharing the news they gathered among various members of an association essential A That is what the A.P. does today as its reporters and stringers cover the news and its editors and transmitters share the news among its members the New York Times will be set in print tonight much as it was set in print over a century ago technological changes should not obscure our knowledge that the Times is still in the business of printing the day's news on paper folding up that paper and selling it to readers just as it did in eight hundred fifty one. Actually the Times took forty five years before it decided that it was running all the news that's fit to print and put that slogan on its masthead and that was seventy years ago by that time one of the great factor is what shaped American journalism was fully operative the rise of the huge press association serving hundreds of newspapers of all political persuasions serving rural and urban big and small papers with a tightly edited output which stuck strictly to the facts the present those the ation stuck to the facts because it had to serve these newspapers equally the news in those days was reserved for the news columns the opinions of the publishers showed up in the editorials and that is why the Who What When Where approach to news reporting gained such power in American journalism and that is why the standards of accuracy in American journalism remain as high as they do today American reporters and editors were taught to approach raw news with sanctity and respect Now this didn't happen in many other parts of the world and in the main it is not true in many other parts of the world today but it happened here because the Press Association simply had to transmit only observable facts if they were to serve successfully such a wide spectrum of members and clients and while it lasted it was a very good journalism indeed and we can more in the easygoing world which made it possible just as we mourn the passing of the steam train and the buffalo nickel the world of this century however is not an easy going world and the increase in the tempo and complexity of our affairs has produced another kind of journalism. New instruments have emerged among them the institution of the syndicated columnist and the appearance of Time magazine in one thousand nine hundred three both of these events were responsive to the additional needs of the reader who wanted more interpretation of the news more bringing together of significant facts and who was willing to read some syndicated informed opinion it seems to me that some of the columnists have grown rich Time magazine has been enormously successful because they deal in areas which lie beyond the observable facts of the who what when where a school of reporting they have prospered because they take a longer view of the complexities of our lives now I do not say here that the A.P. and the New York Times have not as well responded to change they have I would cite the appearance of interpretive copy on the Press Association wires and I would especially cite some of the independent investigative studies of the Associated Press as examples of carrying the reporting function into other areas as far as the New York Times is concerned I think we can see considerable changes over the past few years as there has been in many other American this pictures now if any of you have wondered if I'm going to talk about television in this talk we have reached that point. One of the reasons for a change in the newspapers and possibly the magazines in this country is as we all know the emergence of broadcast news organizations I think it can be said fairly that a great amount of factual information is carried on radio and television and again as we all know Americans have a passion for facts and sometimes confuse them with news Moreover in terms of the observable facts which still make up the basic flow of journalism television is uniquely equipped to bring us the wall falling at the fire or the testimony of an elected official. And because of this we see a new sort of balance which has developed broadcast journalism brings the country the quick facts and more and more the successful newspapers and magazines are turning to interpretation analysis and illustration of the day's news much of which is already known in basic forms of their readers and I think this is a fine balance I think we are all well served by it although there's plenty of room for improvement on both sides but I'm a television journalist primarily And I wonder with our half hour nightly programs and our rather large audiences if we are doing enough to justify all that attention from all those people some of my colleagues at N.B.C. are asking these questions and well as well and some of us are wondering if we are in fact keeping up with the complexities of the world in which we now find ourselves it's not an easy question to answer because I for one believe very strongly that the television has been doing a good job I believe that television news and documentaries have performed a profoundly important task of bringing the real world to millions of Americans and that those in our audiences have profited thereby Nevertheless I feel with equal strength that we in television news cannot avoid our responsibilities to that area of information which lies beyond the boundaries of who said what today and who went where today those narrow and passive boundaries of reporting canvas some measure help a demagogue or protect a scoundrel those narrow boundaries keep us from supplying the key to a complex event and we have discovered that often that key facts can be expressed in a few words or a few seconds. We are discovering to put it another way that an ounce of analysis can provide a pound of understanding without really interrupting the flow of the day's news if it is properly used this ounce of analysis that does not interrupt the flow of news because it is in itself part of the nose and not an appendage of interpretation attached to the note some of you may have noticed some alterations in the Huntley Brinkley report along these lines those of us assigned to the program are seeking to deal constructively as journalists with that complex and endless flow of fact and events which we call news but I think there is a good case to be made against the practice of dividing that flow of news into rigid compartments it is all a part of our lives it all in one way or another affects us and our families and I suppose you could say that what we are trying to do is to make a little more sense out of it I would say here that we are not dealing you know pinions but in fact and in reporting the new techniques we are in the process of developing are designed to give the audience what we know they are not designed as a platform for what we only believe and anyone with any experience in journalism knows that reporters generally know more about a story than they can get on the air or in the paper or on the Huntley Brinkley report and we are making a systematic effort to bring out those extra fact if they are meaningful and if they advance the story beyond the Who What When Where stage now we've not been doing it for long but we are learning rapidly. Sometimes on the air we report to one another with the audience as a never forgotten element in the dial we do it when it is justified by the importance of the basic story being covered and if you will reflect it is not unlike the reporting to one another we have done for many years political conventions on election nights and on space stories now it has elements of spontaneity but I think disciplined spontaneity we believe that discipline Spontaneity can lead to an increased perception on the part of the audience of reality and the closer we get to reality the closer we believe we're getting to the truth and truth is critically important because that's what journalism is all about truth as well and as carefully and as sensibly as it can can be presented and sensed truth becomes more elusive as the world grows more complicated I don't think we can stand on the older forms of journalism to bring it out I think it is our obligation to keep the machinery of our reporting up to date just as much as it is the responsibility of anybody else in journalism today I think we've come a long way in television news I think we have accomplished much but standing on our good record is not enough I believe that standing still means falling behind which is why we are engaged in a rather large experiment on the Huntley Brinkley report which I hope some of you will take a look at now and then thank you very much Lou. Thank you very much John Chancellor I might say that I think everybody in the room will agree that that was a very forthright in a very thoughtful message meeting adjourned.