Nicholas Johnson, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set (New
York: Bantam Books, 1970)

Copyright Notice: Copyright   1970 by Bantam Books, Inc.;
Copyright   1996 by Nicholas Johnson.  All rights reserved.  This
book may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any medium
known now or in the future.  Provided, however, that permission
is hereby granted to distribute this book under the following
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of the author:  Nicholas Johnson, 1035393@mcimail.com, postal: 
Box 1876, Iowa City IA 52244-1876, U.S.A.

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1 The Crush of Television 

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     THERE ARE 60 MILLION homes in the United States and over 95
percent of them are equipped with a television set. (More than 25
percent have two or more acts.) In the average home the
television is turned on some five hours forty-five minutes a day.
The average male viewer, between his second and sixty-fifth year,
will watch television for over 3000 entire days--roughly nine
full years of his life. During the average weekday winter evening
nearly half of the American people are to be found silently
seated with fixed gaze upon a phosphorescent screen.
     Americans receive decidedly more of their education from
television than from elementary and high schools. By the time the
average child enters kindergarten he has already spent more hours
learning about his world from television than the hours he would
spend in a college classroom earning a B.A. degree.
     The academicians, research scientists and critics have been
telling us for years of television's impact upon the attitudes
and behavior of those who watch it. They cite very persuasive
statistics to indicate that television's influence has affected,
in one way or another, virtually every phenomenon in our
present-day society.

# p. 12 #

Government by Crisis

     During 1966 and 1967 there was a dramatic upsurge in the
amount of rioting and demonstrations in our cities. As Daniel P.
Moynihan reminded us all in the NBC program Summer 1967: What We
Learned, "We have no business acting surprised at all this. The
signs that it was coming were unmistakable." The signs had been
reported by those who had been observing, studying and writing
about the plight of black Americans. But these warnings were not
heard, the crises came, captured our attention, and put us in a
mood to listen. The National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission, was
established, conducted a thoroughgoing investigation, and wrote a
thoughtful and persuasive report. In this report the
Commissioners found it necessary to devote an entire chapter to
the mass media. They found themselves confronted at every turn
with evidence of the implications of the mass media in a nation
wracked with civil disorders. There was not only the matter of
the relationship between the reporting of incidents and
subsequent action. They also discovered a shocking lack of
communication and understanding between blacks and whites in this
country. Dr. Martin Luther King had told us very much the same
thing: "Lacking sufficient access to television, publications and
broad forums, Negroes have had to write their most persuasive
essays with the blunt pen of marching ranks."
     The Kerner Commission report had no more than found its way
to the coffee tables of white suburbia before this nation was
torn apart once 

# p. 13 #

again -- this time with the agonizing, heart-wrenching sorrow
accompanying the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and
Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Once again a crisis, once again
national attention, once again a Commission, the National
Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, whose
studies inevitably had to confront the evidence of the
implications of the mass media. As Dr. Albert Bandura, professor
of psychology at Stanford University, has recently said:

     It has been shown that if people are exposed to television
     aggression they not only learn aggressive patterns of
     behavior, but they also retain them over a long period of
     time. There is no longer any need to equivocate about
     whether televised stimulation produces learning effects. It
     can serve aa an effective tutor.

     The latest Commission was not even permitted to conclude its
deliberations and issue a report before the third in this series
of crises hit the American people. It was, of course, the
confrontation at Chicago and the Democratic national convention.
In this instance the mass media were not only implicated in the
confrontation, they were an active party. (In the words of the
report "Rights in Conflict" by Daniel Walker: "What 'the whole
world was watching,' after all, was not a confrontation but the
picture of a confrontation, to some extent directed by a
generation that has grown up with television and learned how to
use it.")
     How many more crises must we undergo before we begin to
understand the impact of television upon all the attitudes and
events in our society?

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How many more such crises can America withstand and survive as a
nation united? Are we going to have to wait for dramatic upturns
in the number and rates of high school dropouts, broken families,
disintegrating universities, illegitimate children, mental
illness, crime, alienated blacks and young people, alcoholism,
suicide rates and drug consumption? Must we blindly go on
establishing national commissions to study each new crisis of
social behavior as if it were a unique symptom unrelated to the
cause of the last? I hope not.
     Of course, no one would suggest that television is the only
influence in our society. But it is time for all in responsible
positions to have both the perception and the courage to say what
is by now so obvious to many of the best students of American
society in the 1960's. Television is a common ingredient in a
great many of the social ills that are troubling Americans so
deeply today and we ought to know much more about it than we do.
One cannot understand violence in America without understanding
the effect of television programming upon that violence. But one
cannot understand the impact of television programming upon that
violence without coming to grips with ways in which television
influences virtually all of our attitudes and behavior.
     When we speak of television's influence we may be referring
to any one of four factors:
     (1) The effect of television watching (without regard to
program content) upon the way we spend our time.
     (2) The influence of television programming upon our
attitudes and behavior.
     (3) The ways in which television is "used" by groups seeking
"news" coverage; its creation of

# p. 15 #

and effect upon events actually or potentially portrayed on
television.
     (4) The results of abuses by television: serving economic
self-interest, self-censorship, staging of events, and so forth.
     Whenever the question arises of the effect of television
programming upon the attitudes and behavior of the audience,
industry spokesmen are likely to respond with variants of three
myths:
     (1) We just give the people what they want. "The public
interest is what interests the public." The viewer must be
selective, just as he would be in selecting magazines. He gets to
choose from the great variety of television programming we offer.
He can always turn off the set. 
     (2) Entertainment programming doesn't have any impact upon
people. It's just entertainment. We can't be educational all the
time.
     (3) We report the news. If it's news we put it on; if it's
not we don't. It's as simple as that. We can't be deciding what
to put on the news or not based upon its impact upon public
opinion or national values. We can't be held responsible if
someone sees something on television and goes out and
does the same thing.

The Myth of Serving Public Taste

     Regulation of broadcasting was begun at the federal level
under two basic premises. One was that without regulation users
could not allocate frequencies among themselves. The other
premise was that the spectrum was a limited resource, owned by
the public, and that its use was to be permitted under license to
private users. These private users, given the right to use a
public re-

# p. 16 #


source that was valuable, were expected to return public
benefits--their use of the resource was to be in the "public
interest." When faced with competing applicants for use of the
spectrum the FCC, an arm of the Congress, was to choose the one
who would best serve the public interest.
     In the early history of the Federal Communications
Commission there was a lot of discussion of how broadcasting was
not to be used just for private gain, of the public benefits
beyond private profit that were to be achieved, and of the great
things that broadcasting might accomplish. A clear assumption,
made explicitly and implicitly throughout all this discussion,
was that a broadcast license, issued on a temporary basis without
ownership rights, was not to be used to maximize the profits of
the user. Even the National Association of Broadcasters testified
before Congress that:

     It is the manifest duty of the licensing authority, in
     passing upon applications for licenses or the renewal
     thereof, to determine whether or not the applicant is
     rendering or can render an adequate public service. Such
     service necessarily includes broadcasting of a considerable
     proportion of programs devoted to education, religion,
     labor, agricultural, and similar activities concerned with
     human betterment.

(This was long before McGeorge Bundy was driven to observe, "I am
sorry that the men who run commercial broadcasting have come to
think of it as an 'industry' when it is necessarily so much
more....") A bargain was struck between the public (to be
represented by the FCC) and the private broadcasters. Private
parties would get the

# p. 17 #

monopoly right to use the spectrum, but in return would agree to
provide public benefits in the form of programming services that
would do more than just generate the most revenue.
     We have come a long way since those days. It is useful to
remember the hopes and ideals expressed at the beginnings of this
industry. But we should be clear that the performance of the
broadcasting industry is quite different from what the drafters
of the Communications Act might have expected.
     By and large broadcasting today is run by corporations which
have a virtual lease in perpetuity on the right to broadcast.
These corporations are like all other businesses, they are
interested in maximizing their profits. The market value of their
business, including the right to broadcast, is directly related
to the profits the business returns. And this value can be
realized in a virtually free market for the purchase and sale of
established stations. This is not to be viewed as a hostile
judgment of these men and corporations. America has been served
well by the profit motive in a competitive system. It does
suggest, however, that the system today is different from that
envisioned by those who molded the present regulatory framework.
     But we must examine the economic incentives as well.
Broadcasters act to gain as large an audience as possible and the
audience is attracted by the broadcasters' programming.
Programming is chosen for the number of people it can deliver.
Its selection need not reflect the intensity of the audience's
approval, or what the audience would be willing to pay for the
programming. In fact, the incentive to get the largest audience
regardless of good taste has on occasion driven the networks to

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arrogant indifference to "what the public wants." The Dodd
Committee report refers to an incident in which an independent
testing organization conducted an advance audience reaction test
of an episode from a network series show. Of the men, women and
children tested, 97 percent believed there was too much emphasis
on sex, and 75 percent felt the show was unsuitable for children.
The network ignored the findings, and televised the episode.
     The concentrated ownership of the national television
market, and its effect on programming is clear. The dominant
impact of the three networks on programming is apparent for
first-run programming and syndication alike, since most of the
syndicated shows are network reruns. Roughly 85 percent of the
prime time audience watches the networks. Each network is trying
for its slice of that 85 percent, and for most purposes that
audience is viewed as homogenous--one person counts the same as
another in the ratings. Thus no programming will be shown by the
networks unless aimed at the whole national audience, and each
network strives to gain no less than one-third of that audience.
     Network television programming follows the classic pattern
of oligopoly behavior--imitation, restricted choice, elaborate
corporate strategies, and reliance on the "tried and true." As
Stan Opotowsky has observed in his book TV: The Big Picture, "TV
is all the same.... Even ... in New York, too often the viewer's
only real choice is 'off' and 'on." This judgment was sustained
by Charles Sopkin's book about a heroic week of watching TV in
New York--Seven Glorious Days, Seven Fun-Filled Nights.

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     To say that current programming is what the audience "wants"
in any meaningful sense is either pure doubletalk or unbelievable
naivete. There are many analytical problems with the shibboleth
that television "gives the people what they want." One of the
most obvious is that the market is so structured that only a few
can work at "giving the people what they want" -- and oligopoly
is a notoriously poor substitute for competition when it comes to
providing anything but what the vast majority will "accept"
without widespread revolution.
     This is not to suggest that stations and networks engage
exclusively in profit-maximizing behavior -- only that this is
the predominant component of their business motivation. And, I
repeat, I am not now passing moral judgment on this behavior. I
am simply pointing out that this is the system we have created,
and that it is significantly different from the one that was
envisioned in the 1920's.
     Stations and networks sometimes do engage in programming
that is not the most profitable available to them. Thus, Justice
Black was permitted to speak to some ten million Americans in
December 1968 on CBS. The concern of CBS was not only whether its
relatively low programming costs were covered by the commercial
revenue from that program (there were eight products or services
advertised), but the "opportunity cost" in the form of additional
return CBS might have obtained from regular programming aimed at
a larger audience. (Networks are also concerned about losing
audience on the shows to follow, since there is some viewer
carryover from program to program -- another force that has
precluded advertisers from sponsoring public service shows of
their own

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choosing, even when they are willing to pay handsomely for the
opportunity.) Of course, there are many responsible individuals,
associated with stations and networks alike, who realize the
great power of this medium for good and who try to use it. The
point is simply that each of them is limited by the functioning
of the system--a system that doesn't allow significant deviation
from the goal of profit maximizing. Some have left commercial
broadcasting because of that constraint.
     It should be clear why attempts to affect the quality of
programming have often focused on changing the rules of the
system. Shouting exhortations at an edifice is a poor substitute
for some structural changes. Proposals have been designed to open
up the program procurement process, to restructure the affiliate-
network relationship, to increase the number of TV stations, and
to make rules concerning the types of programming to be
presented. Educational broadcasting--as well as the potential of
subscription television and cable television -- are fundamental
responses to the functioning of the present commercial system.

The Myth of Lack of Impact

     When Dean George Gerbner of the Annenberg School testified
before the Commission on Violence he said:

     In only two decades of massive national existence television
     has transformed the political life of the nation, has
     changed the daily habits of our people, has moulded the
     style of the generation, made overnight global phenomena out
     of local happenings,

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     redirected the flow of information and values from
     traditional channels into centralized networks reaching into
     every home. In other words it has profoundly affected what
     we call the process of socialization, the process by which
     members of our species become human.

He continued:

     The analysis of mass media is the study of the curriculum of
     this new schooling. As with any curriculum study, it will
     not necessarily tell you what people do with what they
     learn, but it will tell you what assumptions, what issues,
     what items of information, what aspects of life, what
     values, goals, and means occupy their time and animate their
     imagination. 

I share Dean Gerbner's sense of television's impact upon our
society. Many spokesmen for the broadcasting establishment,
however, do not. And so I would like to take account of their
inevitable rebuttal with a little more discussion of the matter.
     The argument that television entertainment programming has
no impact upon the audience is one of the most difficult for the
broadcasting industry to advance. In the first place, it is
internally self-contradictory. Television is sustained by
advertising. It is able to attract over $2.5 billion annually
from advertisers on the assertion that it is the most effective
advertising medium. And it has, in large measure, delivered on
this assertion. There are merchandisers, like the president of
Alberto Culver, who are willing to say that "the investment will
virtually always return a disproportionately large profit."
Alberto Culver relied almost exclusively on television
advertising, and pushed

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its sales from $1.5 million in 1956 to $80 million in 1964. The
manufacturer of the bottled liquid cleaner Lestoil undertook a $9
million television advertising program and watched his sales go
from 150,000 bottles annually to 100 million in three years--in
competition with Procter and Gamble, Lever Brothers, Colgate, and
others. The Dreyfus Fund went from assets of $95 million in 1959
to $1.1 billion in 1965 and concluded, "TV works for us."
American industry generally has supported such a philosophy with
investments in television advertising increasing from $300
million in 1952 to $900 million in 1956 to $1.8 billion in 1964
to on the order of $2.5 billion in 1968. Professor John Kenneth
Galbraith, in the course of surveying The New Industrial State,
observes that "The industrial system is profoundly dependent upon
commercial television and could not exist in its present form
without it.... [Radio and television are] the prime instruments
for the management of consumer demand."
     The sociologist Peter P. Lejins describes four studies of
the effect upon adult buying of advertising directed at children.
Most showed that on the order of 90 percent of the adults
surveyed were asked by children to buy products, and that the
child influenced the buying decision in 60 to 75 percent of those
instances. Dr. Lejins observes, "If the advertising content has
prompted the children to this much action, could it be that the
crime and violence content, directly interspersed with this
advertising material, did not influence their motivation at all?"
There is, of course, much stronger evidence than this of the
influence of violence in television programming upon the
aggressive behavior of children which I will discuss later. The

# p. 23 #

point is, though, that television's salesmen cannot have it both
ways. They cannot point with pride to the power of their medium
to affect the attitudes and behavior associated with product
selection and consumption, and then take the position that
everything else on television has no impact whatsoever upon
attitudes and behavior.
     Our evidence of commercial television's influence is not by
any means limited to the advertising. Whatever one may understand
Marshall McLuhan to be saying by the expression "the medium is
the message," it is clear that television has affected our lives
in ways unrelated to its program content. Brooklyn College
sociologist Dr. Clara T. Appell reports that of the families she
has studied 60 percent have changed their sleep patterns because
of television, 55 percent have changed their eating schedules,
and 78 percent report they use television as an "electronic
babysitter." Water system engineers must build city water supply
systems to accommodate the drop in water pressure occasioned by
the toilet-flushing during television commercials. Medical
doctors are encountering what they call "TV spine" and "TV eyes."
Psychiatrist Dr. Eugene D. Glynn expresses concern about
television's "schizoid-fostering aspects," and the fact that "it
smothers contact, really inhibiting interpersonal exchange."
General semanticist and San Francisco State president Dr. S. I.
Hayakawa has observed that television snatches children from
their parents for 22,000 hours before they are eighteen, giving
them little "experience in influencing behavior and being
influenced in return." He asks, "Is there any connection between
this fact and the sudden appearance . . . of an enormous number
of young people . . . who find it difficult

# p. 24 #

or impossible to relate to anybody--and therefore drop out?"
     A casual mention on television can affect viewers' attitudes
and behavior. After Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In used the
expression, "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls," the
dictionary had to go into extra printings to satisfy a 20 percent
rise in sales. When television's Daniel Boone, Fess Parker,
started wearing coonskin caps, so did millions of American boys.
The sales of Batman capes and accessories are another, albeit
short-lived, example.
     Television establishes national speech patterns and
eliminates dialects, not only in this country but around the
world--"Tokyo Japanese" is now becoming the standard throughout
Japan. New words and expressions are firmly implanted in our
national vocabulary from television programs such as Rowan and
Martin's "Sock it to me," or Don Adams's "Sorry about that,
Chief." Television can even be used to encourage reading. The
morning after the late Alexander King appeared on the late-night
Jack Paar show his new book, Mine Enemy Grows Older, was sold out
all over the country. When the overtly "educational" Continental
Classroom atomic age physics course began on network television
13,000 textbooks were sold the first week.
     Politicians evidently think television is influential. Most
spend over half of their campaign budgets on radio and television
time--$59 million in 1968--and some advertising agencies advise
that virtually all expenditures should go into television. When
Sig Mickelson was president of CBS News he commented on
"television's ability to create national figures almost overnight
. . ."--a phenom-

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enon which by now we have all witnessed. Politicians and
political scientists are not the only ones who are concerned
about television's impact on the political process. Wide public
interest kept Joe McGinniss' analysis, The Selling of the
President, 1968, high on the best seller lists for many weeks.
The soap operas have been found to be especially influential.
Harry F. Waters wrote in Newsweek that they have a loyal
following of about 18 million viewers, and bring in much of the
networks' $325 million daytime revenue.

     Judging from the mail, the intensity of the audience's
     involvement with the soap folk easily equals anything
     recorded in radio days.... It may even provide an
     educational experience. Agnes Nixon, a refreshingly
     thoughtful writer who has been manufacturing soaps for
     fourteen years, likes to point out that episodes concerning
     alcoholism, adoption and breast cancer have drawn many
     grateful letters from those with similar problems.

     Seizing upon this fact, educators in Denver and Los Angeles
have used the soap opera format to beam hard, factual information
about jobs, education, health care, and so forth, into the ghetto
areas of their cities. The Denver educators' soap opera received
one of the highest daytime ratings in the market. There is, of
course, no reason to believe the prime time evening series shows
have any less impact.
     Indeed, as Bradley S. Greenberg of Michigan State reported
to the Violence Commission: "Forty percent of the poor black
children and 30 percent of the poor white children (compared with
15 percent of the middle-class white youngsters) were ardent
believers of the true-to-life nature of the

# p. 26 #

television content." And he went on to further underline the
"educational" impact of all television.

     Eleven of the reasons for watching television dealt with the
     ways in which TV was used to learn things--about one's self
     and about the outside world. This was easy learning. This is
     the school- of-life notion--watching TV to learn a lot
     without working hard, to get to know all about people in all
     walks of life, because the programs give lessons for life,
     because TV shows what life is really like, to learn from the
     mistakes of others, etc. The lower-class children are more
     dependent on television than any other mass medium to teach
     these things. They have fewer alternative sources of
     information about middle-class society, for example, and
     therefore no competing or contradictory information. My only
     caveat here is that we do not know what information is
     obtained through informal sources. Research is practically
     nonexistent on the question of interpersonal communication
     systems of the poor. Thus, the young people learn about the
     society that they do not regularly observe or come in direct
     contact with through television programs -- and they believe
     that this is what life is all about.

A glimpse of what children's television could be has been
provided by Mrs. Joan Ganz Cooney's "Sesame Street." Knowing what
they are doing, as by now all television executives must, they
must expect society to hold them to extremely high standards of
responsibility. 
     Do we impose these standards on them? Consider, before you
answer, what we learn about life from television. Watch for
yourself, and draw your own conclusions. Here are some of my own.

# p. 27 #

We learn that the greatest measure of happiness and personal
satisfaction is consumption -- conspicuous when possible.
"Success" is attained in human relations by the purchase of a
product -- a mouthwash or deodorant. How do you resolve
conflicts? By force and by violence. Who are television's
leaders, its heroes, its stars? They are the physically
attractive, the glib, and the wealthy, and almost no one else.
What do you do when life fails to throw roses in your hedonistic
path? You get "fast, fast, fast" relief from a pill--a headache
remedy, a stomach settler, a tranquilizer, a pep pill, or "the
pill." You smoke a cigarette, have a drink, or get high on pot or
more potent drugs. You get a divorce or run away from home. And
if, "by the time you get to Phoenix," you're still troubled, you
just "chew your little troubles away."
     I think it is fair to ask what these network executives are
doing. What is this America they are building? What defense is
there for the imposition of such standards upon 200 million
Americans? What right has television to tear down every night
what the American people are spending $50 to $60 billion a year
to build up every day through their school system? Giving the
people what they want? Nonsense.
     Let me refer once again to Mr. Greenberg's studies of the
opinions toward television of the general public, and community
leaders, in two communities -- even prior to the assassinations
of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy.

     The substance of the complaints was what the public and
     leaders spontaneously described as the overabundance of sex
     and violence. The leaders commented about,   

# p. 28 #

          "Raw violence, the glorification of promiscuity."
          "Program after program either depicts or implies that
     immorality, disobedience to established law and order,
     divorce, etc., are the accepted social standards of the
     day."
          The public has similar comments:
          ". . . too much on drugs and violence."
          "All the sex pictures on TV . . ."
          "Too much violence for children to watch."
          Fully one-fourth to one-third of all the objections 
     dealt with either sex or violence, from the public and its
     leaders. The viewer perceived a sensual content in
     advertising, in children's programs, and in adult programs,
     apparently in too large a dosage to be conscionable.

I think we must listen to former Senator William Benton, who
wrote:

     I can only ask, if this alleged "wasteland" is indeed what
     the American people want, is it all they want of television?
     . . . Is it all they are entitled to? . . . Are not . . .
     these dwellers of the wasteland . . . the same Americans who
     have taxed themselves to create a vast educational system 
     . . . are they not the same who have established an
     admirable system of justice, created a network of churches 
     . . . when they turn their TV knobs, do they not by the
     millions have interests broader than the entertainment which
     is so complacently theirs? . . . I think the American people
     should expect that the greatest single instrument of human
     communications ever developed must make its due contribution
     to human security and human advancement.... A high common
     denominator distinguishes our people -- as well as a low
one--     and both denominators apply to the same men, women and
     youngsters. Television has crystallized into the low
     road....

# p. 29 #

Indeed it has. Charles Sopkin concluded his Seven Glorious Days,
Seven Fun-Filled Nights with the observation: "[Television] is
dreadful, make no mistake about that. If I did not convey that
feeling throughout this book, then I have failed rather badly. I
naively expected that the ratio would run three to one in favor
of trash. It turned out to be closer to a hundred to one."
     Given the great unfulfilled needs that television could
serve in this country and is not serving, given the great evil
that the evidence tends to suggest it is presently doing, one can
share the judgment of the late Senator Robert Kennedy that
television's performance is, in a word, "unacceptable." The
popular outrage and cries for reform are warranted. They must be
heeded. If they are not, I fear the onset of popular remedies
that will be unfortunate from everyone's point of view.
Responsible broadcasters know what must be done. I pray they will
get on with the task.

The Myth of News

     Production of news and public affairs programming is, by
common agreement, American television's finest contribution. The
men who run it are generally professional, able, honorable and
hardworking. To the extent the American people know what's going
on in the world much of the credit must go to the networks' news
teams. It is a tough and often thankless job. These men have
fought a good many battles for all of us -- with network
management, advertisers, government officials, and news sources
generally. We are thankful. And, by and large, I think we ought
to stay out of their business--with the exception, perhaps, of
provid-

# p. 30 #

ing them protection from physical assault and subpoenas for their
confidential notes and unused film. I would not for a moment
suggest that a government commission ought to be providing
standards for what is reported as "news." Partisan efforts by
government to manipulate and intimidate television to
propagandize on behalf of a particular candidate, political
party, or ideology are simply intolerable in a free society. At
the same time, I think that no one need feel under compulsion to
avoid any comment whatsoever on the subject.
     Whenever one begins discussing the violence quotient in
televised news the broadcasting estate establishment (far more
often than the thoughtful newsmen themselves) is apt to come out
with something about the First Amendment and journalistic
integrity. The implication is that there is some socially
desirable, professionally agreed upon definition of "news" --
known only to those who manage television stations and networks--
which is automatically applied, and that any efforts to be
reflective about it might contribute to the collapse of the
republic.
     My view is simply that this is nonsense, and that the
slightest investigation of the product of journalism will
demonstrate it to be such. Robert Kintner, a broadcaster of many
years, once wrote, "Every reporter knows that when you write the
first word you make an editorial judgment." "Education" did not
become news until the New York Times set up a special Sunday
section on it. Whether and how "television" is reported as news
in Newsweek depends in part upon what they call the sections of
the magazine--and those headings change. The same is true of
"science" or "medi-

# p. 31 #

cine." We do not get much meaningful reporting about the federal
budget, the choices it represents and the processes by which they
were made. We could get more, simply if an editor or a newsman
took an interest in the matter.
     I would agree with the statement of Reuven Frank, president
of NBC News, in TV Guide that we benefit from living in a nation
with "free journalism," which he defines as "the system under
which the reporter demands access to facts and events for no
other reason than that he is who he is, and his argument is
always accepted." I want the check of the news media upon
government officials including myself. But I do not believe --
and he does not suggest--that free journalism need function as
irresponsible journalism, completely free of check, comment or
criticism from professional critics, a concerned public and
responsible officials. Journalists can alter what subjects they
report and how they report them--and they do. They can do this in
response to a sense of professional responsibility. They often
have. I ask no more; we should expect no less.

The Impact of Television Programming on Violence

     Television programming -- commercials, entertainment, and
public affairs--is one of the most important influences on all
attitudes and behavior throughout our society. To the extent that
television "reflects" society, it is partly a reflection of an
image that has earlier appeared upon its screen. This is a
perspective that I believe necessary to an understanding of the
relationship between television and violence.

# p. 32 #

     The Interim Report of the Dodd Committee in 1965 concluded:

     It is clear that television, whose impact on the public mind
     is equal to or greater than that of any other medium, is a
     factor in molding the character, attitudes, and behavior
     patterns of America's young people. Further, it is the
     subcommittee's view that the excessive amount of televised
     crime, violence, and brutality can and does contribute to
     the development of attitudes and actions in many young
     people which pave the way for delinquent behavior.

This was back in the days when we investigated "juvenile
delinquency." And the subcommittee bearing that name became aware
of the need to study the amount of violence in television
programming as early as 1954. Subsequently it concluded, "If the
1954 findings suggested the need for . . . a closer look at
television programming as it relates to delinquency, the 1961
monitoring reports were shocking by comparison." By 1964 it
concluded, "the extent to which violence and related activities
are depicted on television today has not changed substantially
from what it was in 1961...."

     Nor have things changed much since. The Christian Science
Monitor reported in October 1968:

     Staff members of this newspaper watched 74 1/2 hours of
     evening programs during the first week of the new season,
     and during that time recorded 254 incidents of violence
     including threats, and 71 murders, killings, and suicides.
          The results were almost unchanged from a survey
     conducted by this newspaper last July which

# p. 33 #

     counted 210 incidents and 81 killings in 78 1/2 hours
     of television.

One network, ABC, provided in one evening 46 incidents and ll
killings. This included an episode from The Avengers, which the
Monitor described:

     A trio of Monitor staffers tried to keep track of the
     vengeful proceedings and finally agreed there were 22
     violent incidents, including five methodical murders and one
     additional killing.

The plot involved an Army officer's revenge against six of his
fellows. Before he met his own end, the Monitor reported:

     He methodically kills most of them by snakebite, gunshot,
     and other means.
          During the morbid workings of the plot, various people
     are battered with a large ashtray, nearly guillotined,
     chloroformed, abducted, nearly buried alive, fed knockout
     drinks, and smashed against a tree.
          Finally, the bad fellow is killed by a steel card which
     hits his chest.

Another network, NBC, devoted 56 percent of its schedule to such
programs, and provided throughout the week an incident of
violence every 14.2 minutes, and a killing every 45 minutes. This
continued level of violent incidents occurred, it should be
noted, after the two assassinations of 1968 and while network
officials were proudly proclaiming their new efforts to remove
scenes of violence from the 1968-1969 series shows. (A Monitor
follow-up two months later reported no decline in violence, and
provided additional analysis of individual programs.)

# p. 34 #

     Throughout the years network officials have been quick to
promise reform, but slow to deliver. After the 1954 hearings they
acknowledged the programming ought to be improved, and promised
it would be. Ten years later the Dodd Committee found it was
worse. A study was promised in 1954 by the NAB. It was referred
to again in 1961 by CBS. It was finally produced--nine years
late--in 1963, but contained little or nothing about the impact
of violent programming on children. In spite of renewed promises,
nothing more has been heard from the industry. Violence
continues.
     In spite of the industry's protestations that they do not
use violence for its own sake, the Dodd investigation turned up
some rather revealing memoranda to the contrary. An independent
producer was asked to "inject an 'adequate' diet of violence into
scripts" (overriding a sponsor's objections to excessive
violence). Another network official wrote, "I like the idea of
sadism." Still another was advised by memorandum: "In accordance
with your request, spectacular accidents and violence scenes of
the 1930-1936 years have been requested from all known sources of
stock footages. You will be advised as material arrives." "Give
me sex and action," demanded one executive. Several shows were
criticized as being "a far cry" from top management's order to
deliver, "broads, bosoms, and fun." A producer testified, "I was
told to put sex and violence in my show." No wonder the committee
concluded that the networks "clearly pursued a deliberate policy
of emphasizing sex, violence and brutality on [their] dramatic
shows."
     In December 1969, the National Commission on the Causes and
Prevention of Violence concluded its Final Report with this
observation:

# p. 35 #

     The producers of television programs have access to the
     imagination and knowledge of the best talents of our time to
     display the full range of human behavior and to present
     prominently and regularly what is possible and laudable in
     the human spirit. They have time to think and experiment,
     and they have the entire history of man from which to draw.
     Television entertainment based on violence may be effective
     merchandising, but it is an appalling way to serve a
     civilization--an appalling way to fulfill the requirements
     of the law that broadcasting serve the "public interest,
     convenience and necessity."

     One must conclude, at a minimum, that the potential of
television to do harm is great, and that it may be doing
considerable harm. One can share Dr. Wilbur Schramm's judgment
that

     We are taking a needless chance with our children's welfare
     by permitting them to see such a parade of violence across
     our picture tubes. It is a chance we need not take. It is a
     danger to which we need not expose our children any more
     than we need expose them to tetanus, or bacteria from
     unpasteurized milk.

And, if such a causal relationship has been established, and is
well known to the broadcaster, then I am sorry to say that the
judgment must come closer to Dr. Peter P. Lejins's argument that
"[there is little] difference between the drug peddler who is
seducing a juvenile into this horrible vice and the producer of
the movie or a TV story which is as damaging to the spirit of the
youngster."

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