Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1963)

Right to editorialize must be used— Stanton CHARACTER PRICELESS BROADCASTER ASSET, HE SAYS Broadcasters must use their right to editorialize — or lose it. But they must not abuse it — or they will invite government regulation. Dr. Frank Stanton, president of CBS Inc., offered this two-edged warning last Tuesday in the opening-day luncheon address at the CBS Radio affiliates convention in New York (see page 34). Force in Community ■ Editorializing, he said, is desirable both in the public interest and in the interest of broadcasters. "We ought to be more than a service in our communities," he said. "We ought to be a force. . . . The most priceless asset any broadcasting station can have is character, and we cannot have character by being faceless men, unresolved to arrive at an opinion and unwilling to express it." But the "worst enemy broadcast editorializing has now is abuse," he continued. "Nothing is so suicidal and shortsighted as the conviction of a very few broadcasters that, because they hold a license to use the airwaves, their views alone should be entitled to a hearing on their frequencies." The broadcaster who presents only his own views, Dr. Stanton said, defeats "the whole purpose of editorializing," which he described as "nothing more and nothing less than stimulating the formation of opinion by ourselves having an opinion, and by ourselves expressing it." Interplay of Opinion ■ "How can we possibly be stimulating the free interplay of opinion unless — far from just permitting the airing of opposite views to our own on our microphones — we seek them out?" he continued. "It is, in my book, a complete negation of the whole idea, the whole reason and point, of editorializing, if the way we do it impedes or diminishes or warps this free interplay of opinion that gives our democracy its essence and its drive." This, he noted, does not mean that broadcast editorials themselves should be half-hearted, ambiguous, weaselworded or otherwise lacking in force or conviction. Dr. Stanton speculated that, in retrospect, broadcasters may have been "guilty of timidity and indecision, of indifference and opportunism," by fail ing to go into editorializing when the FCC first gave them the right by repealing the so-called Mayflower Decision in 1949. He said he would not exclude the CBS-owned stations from that charge. But since 1958, he said, the company's seven radio stations have broadcast more than 1,500 editorials and the five TV stations about 350. In one city (St. Louis) the CBS radio and TV stations (kmox-am-tv) took opposing positions on a city charter question, Dr. Stanton noted. One-Fourth Editorialize ■ He cited a National Association of Broadcasters study indicating that 1,476 radio and TV stations, or somewhat more than one out of every four, are editorializing. He said that "this must be an extremely impressive gain over a relatively short period," but that it still leaves "only a little over a quarter of the stations in the country filling this vital function." Radio, Dr. Stanton concluded, "can achieve new levels of influence in this country" and reach "new plateaus of usefulness." The radio broadcaster, he said, "has it within his power to be one of the most respected and the most useful members of his community" — or "to become a cipher by abandoning, or a public nuisance by misusing, one of his highest responsibilities." These alternatives, he said, are not government problems but individual problems, to be answered "in accord with our own concepts of our duties and our opportunities." PADLOCK ON CHECKS Salant hits out at practice of paying for news stories The drift toward "checkbook" journalism— payment for exclusive rights to current, hard-news stories — was criticized last Wednesday (Oct. 2) by Richard S. Salant, president of CBS News, in a talk before the CBS Radio Affiliates Association convention in New York (see story page 34). This problem was one of several raised and discussed by Mr. Salant, including the question of the balance between domestic and foreign coverage; the relationship between CBS News and affiliates' newsrooms in domestic news coverage; the problems inherent in making news judgments in advance of news events, and the issue of fairness and balance in the coverage of major newsstories, particularly those in race relations. Mr. Salant was particularly disturbed about what he called a growing tendency on the part of informational media to pay for exclusive rights to news stories. He asserted that CBS News would It's Here! 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