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THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
HERE is the full text of the address President Dwight D. Eisenhower made before the National Assn. of Radio & Television Broadcasters, Tuesday, May 24, 1955, in Washington, D. C.
President Fellows, Ladies and Gentlemen:
IT is a great honor to appear before this distinguished body. In my mind there is some doubt as to the exact capacity in which I do appear. I see some of my friends of the press here. They know that I have been on Presidential press conferences where there has been television present. So it raises a question — Do I come as a co-worker or as a sponsor?
I understand that this is the first time in the history of your organization that a President has appeared before you. Governments notoriously move slowly, and sometimes this is a virtue. But I think that after this length of time, it is safe to make a tentative conclusion that radio and television are here to stay, and a President, therefore, can afford to take them quite seriously. Actually, not only here to stay but a mighty force in our civilization, one that is certain to grow and one because it will grow and be more powerful in its influence upon all of us.
A convention such as this has very deep social and professional problems to consider and on which they must reach proper conclusions. Nothing has been so important to us as an informed public. As long ago as Jefferson's time he said were he forced to choose between a government without schools or schools without government, he would unhesitatingly take a civilization in which he had schools without government, well knowing that an informed public would soon discover the need for government and establish a proper one among themselves. And in the reverse case, he apparently did not know what might happen, because government with an uninformed public can be, as we know, very vicious.
Now one of the things that has made us an informed public is the fact that we have had a free press, and now these great institutions, the radio and the television, have moved in to take their place alongside the older media of mass communications. And this means, if we are to draw any lessons j from the past, that they in turn must be free.
It behooves you, then, I think, to discover the formulae and to evolve them among yourselves and to announce them