Re: Media

Re: Media

By Areo Pagitica

It seems lately that the news is in the news quite a bit.

CBS News threatened for a while to not broadcast the Ford-Carter debates in a dispute over camera restrictions and over the presidential candidates' input into selection of the interviewers.

The Ford and Carter gangs refused to allow camera shots of the audience, and CBS News President Richard Salant at one point stomped out of a meeting. It all might sound at first like a reasonable restriction designed to keep the broadcasts truly objective.

But the big issue here is not the frowns or smiles of the audience -- it's a matter of allowing news organizations to freely report on a news event. According to FCC rules, if the networks organized the debates, they would have to provide equal air time to all other presidential candidates. The rule was not in effect at the time of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates because Congress passed a resolution suspending it.

Now, however, as a way around it, the debates are sponsored by an outside group (in this case the League of Women Voters) and the nets carry them as a legitimate news event. And we have two presidential candidates telling the media what they can cover.

It amounts to what's called "prior restraint" -- censorship prior to broadcast or publication -- a real heavy in the freedom-of-the-press biz which was the issue in the 1971 Supreme Court case involving the New York Times and publication of the Pentagon Papers.

At that time, the Justice Department got an injunction against the Times to stop publication of the secret documents. It was overruled on appeal, but, as Tom Wicker of the Times wrote, "It must never be forgotten that for two long weeks the presses were in fact stopped by court order, on government application."

Obviously, the positioning of a camera is not quite the same as refusing to allow any publication of a significant story, and broadcast laws aren't, in many cases, as strong as those for print. But the whole idea establishes a repugnant precedent.

It's surprising that other tv news execs were not as vehement as Salant in voicing their disgust with the ground-rules for debate coverage. "It would create the most dangerous precedents, not only at home but abroad, where we have consistently resisted all attempts to control our coverage," said Salant in telegrams to the candidates. "Yet this is precisely what the prohibition on audience reaction comprises, an attempt to limit and control coverage."

And the rare medium well done award goes to CBS reporter Daniel Schorr, who told the House of Representatives ethics committee: "To betray a source would be to betray myself, my career, and my life. It is not as simple as saying that I refuse to do it. I cannot do it."

The four newsmen from the Fresno Bee in California, jailed for refusing to reveal their sources on a story about local corruption, were released after 15 days, with the judge in the case saying evidence showed "an articulated moral principle" among reporters against disclosing sources.

Columnist Jack Anderson, commenting in a speech before the State Bar of Michigan, said: "No newsman can agree, because any newsman who divulges his sources loses his sources. And, from that day on, he can only depend on government sources."