Sponsor (1964)

THE WEEK in WASHINGTON PRESSTIME REPORT FROM OUR WASHINGTON NEWS BUREAU July 10, 196U By way of prelude to the great Cow Palace tv ani broadcast extravaganza opening in San Francisco this week, the 1 last, week tri* to spell out the ways station licensees can deal with the rising floods of pol : • : • ■". ar. i ':'.;■'.' rights controversy under the Fairness Doctrine. In the same week, Gov. LeRoy Collins left the NAB presidency and received the plaudits of the majority of the Senate Commerce Committee. The occasion was a hearing on Collins' appointment to be director of the Civil Rights Community Service, a new agency in the Commerce Department. Broadcaster help will surely be involved in the attempts to forestall, by diplomacy, costly race discrimination wrang.es at state ar. i l-cal levels. The round table conferences will be super-secret. .ins emphasized that under the law, neither the courts nor Congress can demand disclosure of what is said at these conferences. Collins also had to take a two-hour, bitter tongue lashing from Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) for the December, 1963, "buckboards of bigotry" speech in Columbia. Collins took both the committee praise and the Thurmond harangue in stride and immediately winged off on the first lap of a series of talks with governors of all states. Also last week, FCC chairman E. William Henry told a New York broadcast editorializing conference how simple it is to live by principles of fairness. The broadcaster has only to accept the principle of fair play in presenting both sides of controversial issues, and details will take care of themselves. Henry — and the new Fairness Doctrine primer — assure licensees that the commission will be satisfied if broadcasters make a "reasonable effort1 air both sides, to give attacked individuals a fair chance 1 answer and to make sure the opposing viewpoint of a paid controversial program is aire ■:, even if the opposition can't afford a sponsor. The FCC chairman's proposition sounded simple enough, although it was accompanied by a diatribe against the broadcaster who forgoes journalisr . presumably for profit only. "Controversy may sell newspapers, v j Lj this business it's the funny page that counts . Mr. '.verage Viewer will not consider buying your brand or brand X when an editorial has just made him apoplectic," is the venal viewpoint. Still, observers here feel that some day Henry may learn that a concept goes across better when not accompanied by a punch in the nose for emphasis. At the commission, the Fairness Doctrine primer reflects more uncert ty over broadcaster liability to handle individual situations. And so, without adding anything new, it spells out the right approaches in 10 — no, 28— uneasy lessons. These detail FCC's past handling of controversy complaints CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE 13, 1V64 "