Announcer A:
Today and every day the American people must make decisions on which their whole survival may depend. To make sound decisions the people must be informed. For this they depend on the nation's free press. How well is the nation's press doing its essential job? The people have a right to know the truth. They have a responsibility to ask. The right to question. The Press and the People.
As Moderator, from Harvard University, the winner of the Peabody Award for television and radio journalism, and the Lauterbach Award for outstanding contributions in the field of civil liberties, Mr. Louis Lyons.
Lyons:
What effect can public opinion have on our foreign policy? And what is the state of our public opinion in this vital area? Is it informed enough, is it organized enough to be effective? We have two distinguished guests to discuss this immensely important problem.
Announcer A:
One of our guests is a newspaperman of twenty-five years' experience who began as a police reporter and now heads two of our nation's leading newspapers. He has also had a public career which includes service as Chief of Mission of the Economic Cooperation Administration in
France, the President and Editor-in-Chief of the Louisville Courier Journal and
Louisville Times, Mr. Barry Bingham.
Announcer B:
Mr. Bingham says: "American foreign policy is suffering from mental malnutrition. The fault must be shared at least three ways. There is a failure of leadership at the White House, a failure of interest among the general public, and a failure of adequate information and useful comment among large segments of the American press."
Announcer A:
Our other guest is a distinguished writer and lecturer on US foreign and military affairs. He is the author of such classics as The Road to War, The Martial Spirit, and, recently, Arms and Men, a history of American military development, Mr. Walter Millis.
Announcer B:
Mr. Millis says: "Our newspapers are performing their function by no means perfectly, but by no means disastrously. Our press could do more to interpret our national administration to the people and the needs of the people to the administration."
Lyons:
Some people tell us that foreign policy is a problem for the experts, that public opinion can never be sufficiently informed on so complicated a matter to be a safe guide. We've heard even the leaders of Congress urge Senators to avoid debate on the Berlin crisis. The Constitution places the responsibility on the President, they point out, and it is not helpful for individual Senators to call the signals from the sidelines.
This raises a large question, and one of the most difficult. We are all on the sidelines. But we will all be sent into the game if the policy leads to war. Should we, meantime, be only silent spectators while our leaders make the policies that may mean war or peace? If we are to be participants, can we be informed enough to participate intelligently?
Is it reasonable for us to expect to be informed enough on a foreign policy that must keep pace with the twists and turns of international currents? Do we have sufficient sources of information for this? Are our organs of public opinion adequate to serve us in this vital role?
Mr. Bingham, you say that the administration and the press and the public all share responsibility for our not being better informed about foreign policy. Won't you explain this?
Bingham:
Well Mr. Lyons, it's my belief that the Presidency of the United States is potentially the greatest educational office in the world. I don't think that it is being used in that way to any great degree today. I think, at the same time, that the American press is potentially the greatest force for education in the world today, and unfortunately I think our performance is not living up to that responsibility in any major way. I think it's very spotty and uneven the way it is now. This failure to do what we might do in educating the public on the great issues of our day could actually be disastrous in a time of danger such as ours.
Lyons:
Thank you, Mr. Bingham, let me ask Mr. Millis about the statement that we have just heard quoted from him. Mr. Millis, you say the press is not doing too badly, but that it should do more, both to explain the administration to the public and the people's needs to the administration. Won't you discuss this?
Millis:
That's my feeling about it. I think it's very difficult to make any single, generalized statements about the press, of course the press is such varied character and quality throughout the country and to the different media and so on, so a generalization is very difficult. I would say that on the whole, it seems to me that probably the American press is doing a better job of this mediation, so to speak, between the people and the administration than the press of any other country. At the same time for many reasons, it is — I agree with Mr. Bingham that the job is far less satisfactory than it ideally might be; for a number of reasons, perhaps unnecessary to go into at the moment.
Lyons:
Well, to begin with the President, Mr. Millis, you've just written a pamphlet on "The Constitution and the Common Defense" which the Fund for the Republic is publishing, and in it you say that an American President is condemned to be a dictator in foreign policy. Won't you go into that a little?
Millis:
Well, my idea there was there is no, there is nothing – no one and no thing – from whom the President can take orders in making the executive decisions, administrative decisions, policy decisions, which are the heart of foreign affairs. He cannot wait on a vote in Congress, and anyway the Constitution does not actually give Congress more than a very small role in the conduct of foreign policy. And he certainly cannot wait on a vote in Congress.
The Senate, of course, has the power to veto a treaty, to reject a treaty, but that is a power that is exercised after the critical decisions have already been taken. The people have only a very vague direct power. They have the power of voting against the administration, again after its decisions have been taken; but they have no way of getting into the question of policy-making, decision-making, except insofar as the vague forces and pressures of public debate and public opinion have their impact on the President. The President still has to decide. He can't go to the people and ask them to decide for him; he has to make the decision. It was in that sense I meant he was condemned to be a dictator.
Lyons:
Yes, well, and George Kennan, an expert in this field himself, goes further. And he believes foreign policy is for the experts and that public debate is often frivolous and uninformed. Mr. Millis has told us in his pamphlet that debate has almost disappeared from the Senate, and we've recently seen Senator Fulbright urging his colleagues not to rock the boat with debate in a crisis.
Well, what then does that leave us as a chance for focusing public debate in this area?
Bingham:
I think it leaves us with a very dangerous possibility of a kind of dictatorial attitude toward foreign policy, which is the most important of all policy in our world we're living in. I can't possibly agree with what Senator Fulbright has said on this. I do understand that he and many of the rest of us get irritated with irresponsible statements, particularly by people in public office; they can sometimes do a great deal of damage.
But I fear considerably more the damage that is done by a public which feels it has no stake in the formulation of foreign policy. I think that way lies real disaster, because then the, the office of the President becomes practically a dictatorship with no foundation of public policy under it.
Lyons:
Well, how can we have issues debated in the press without a lead from the government? Can the press initiate effectively such a debate?
Bingham:
At a time such as ours, now I think the press is going to have to do the initiating, because it is not coming from the other direction, from the White House. I think it would be far easier if the White House and the press could operate toward each other in a more equal way, but under present circumstances I think the press has a particular responsibility to raise the important issues, to discuss them as seriously and soberly as they know how, and to try to make their readers really think about these subjects in the way the American public is capable of thinking about big things.
Lyons:
Well Mr. Millis has suggested a difficulty about that and let me ask him to go into it. He suggested that on a really crucial issue involving a foreign power that the pro-administration press isn't going to make any fundamental criticism of the administration, and that the critical press is going to be very reluctant to criticize just because it does involve our relations with a foreign power. What about this, Mr. Millis?
Millis:
I don't see how you can escape that effect altogether. It seems to me that bi-partisanship, as it is called, is almost inevitable in a foreign field, especially when critical and dangerous decisions are about to be made. I'd like to interject one point here, Mr. Lyons and that is that um, I think that the confusion between debate and decision. I think when Fulbright's idea is that uh, and it's the idea that's more or less in the back of the minds of all of us, Mr. Bingham.
I think that this debate is like a Senate debate that comes up to a vote and decides the issue. Now, I don't think that is possible, certainly not possible in the details of foreign policy. Uh, the public can never make a decision, and for various reasons even the Senate can't. It is not equipped to make decisions. But the debate is the element that should bring out the underlying issues that are being decided.
Bingham:
That is something you might call the democratic dialogue that should be going on all the time.
Millis:
The democratic dialogue should be going on all the time and certainly can be carried on in the press much more effectively than it can now be carried on on the floor of the United States Senate.
Bingham:
And not necessarily in terms of, of criticism of administration policy, but of exposition of policy and the background of it, so that people could make their own decisions.
Millis:
Exactly, Mr. Bingham. If we got away from the idea of the people governing themselves or making their own decisions or deciding their policy, and realize that what the people do is to create the climate within which the responsible people have to make the decisions and will always have to make the vital and critical decisions – if we came more to that attitude, I think we would have a firmer idea of what public debates should be. And perhaps the press would have a clearer picture of its own role in the governing process.
Lyons:
You emphasize the climate of public opinion, Mr. Millis, rather than the detail. Now I take it that throughout our history the Presidents who have been faced with crises have really had to depend upon this climate. Woodrow Wilson held off pressures, didn't he, for a couple of years, and Franklin Roosevelt after his quarantine speech it seems had to wait a couple of years to get this climate of public opinion. Is that roughly the kind of thing you mean?
Millis:
Yes, that's roughly the kind of thing I mean. You go back to the famous so-called great debate that took place in the early years of the European War and Franklin Roosevelt. I never felt that that was a debate leading to a decision; it didn't seem to me that the arguments ever clashed. What you did get out of it perhaps was a general feeling that the public would stand for a stronger, firmer foreign policy.
Lyons:
I suppose, at least in our legend, the nearest thing we can show to a press having really created a situation involving war was the Spanish-American War where it used to be said that the Hearst press pretty well whipped that up. What would you say to that? You are an historian of that war.
Millis:
Well, I once wrote a book about it. It seems to me that the press was a sensational press, it was then just striking its stride, you might say, especially in
New York where Hearst and Pulitzer were in a circulation war against each other, that that certainly did a great deal to inflame the general public mind.
I don't think it would have been sufficient, however, to have got the country into war – I think President McKinley was very sincerely desirous of staying out of one – I don't think all of that would have been sufficient if it hadn't been for two factors. First, the influence of party politics in the situation and, secondly, destruction of the
Maine.
Bingham:
Mr. Millis, I feel sure you would agree with me that we would not want to see government by public-opinion poll. I think that would be a sort of modern horror – an administration that would really try to follow to the letter what it believed public opinion was on a certain subject. However, I don't think we ought to go so far as to think that the Presidency should exert its power without a full knowledge and understanding of what the public believes on a given subject.
There may be times when the President has to take action that is not in conformity to what the general public believes, and that is his duty. On the other hand, I think it would be very dangerous to have too wide a divorce between public opinion and the office of the Presidency.
Millis:
Yes, Mr. Bingham. Of course, I agree entirely with your view on the public-opinion poll. Those who think that policy can be directed by way of the results of a public-opinion poll have a completely mistaken concept of what policy is and what policy decisions are. On the other hand, it is certainly, if you take my view that the President - I call him - is a dictator, and that he has to be a dictator.
He still, he dictates in what he from his best knowledge and information and best thought conceives to be be the common good, the good of the whole community. He can't know what the common good is unless he knows what the community thinks about a great many things and how it reacts. And the public-opinion poll could be a very useful instrument, if it is properly used...
Bingham:
Properly used, that's it.
Millis:
...by the President in making decisions.
Bingham:
I have a feeling there has been so much demagoguery on this subject that gets in our way; so many politicians have spoken about the glories of pu—of the public in a way that doesn't really mean anything. I think we ought to go back perhaps to the sort of thing that Woodrow Wilson enunciated: "I suspect that the people of the United States understand their own interests better than any group of men in the confines of the country understand them." I still do believe that is fundamentally true, if the public can be properly informed on the facts.
Millis:
I had a discussion the other day, Mr. Bingham, it was a private discussion in which the question came up as to what the wisdom of the people consisted in. The proposition was advanced that there is a certain wisdom in the people. Although the people cannot know enough and cannot spend time enough to decide exactly what sort of a note to write to Mr. Khrushchev, nevertheless they have a wisdom. We got into an argument as to what the wisdom was, and nobody really came out with a very clear answer.
Lyons:
Mr. Bingham, you remember that the sensational press war at the time of the Spanish-American War between Hearst and Pulitzer was when Ochs first came into
New York and his biographer, Gerald Johnson, says about Ochs' feeling that he would publish a paper for people who wanted the news but liked a quiet life. And his son-in-law and successor has said the Times is published for people who need to be informed. I suppose Ochs with that view, coming into that sensational press
war, really started us on the modern chapter that we call responsible journalism and an informing press, would you say?
Bingham:
Yes, I think so, and I think it is the order of the day now. I think that situation that existed at the time of the Spanish-American War was at a time when newspaper competition was extremely hot and extremely tough. We really haven't got that kind of competition any more in very many American cities.
Lyons:
Well, I was coming to that. I am glad you came to it first. Mergers, we've heard so much about, have reduced the number of newspapers so that a growing number of cities there is only one ownership. Well, what does that do to the chance of this debate for focusing public opinion?
Bingham:
I don't see why it damages it. There are an increasing number of cities in America that have a monopoly situation, usually not because they wanted it but because the laws of economics have dictated it. It would be easy, I suppose, for monopoly newspapers to get fat and lazy and slow on their feet, but I think the fact is that a good many of our better newspapers are in monopoly cities and some of our most deplorable newspapers are in very hotly competitive cities.
Lyons:
Well that's an interesting point and I hope Mr. Millis will say something about that. Now, you, Mr. Bingham, have no competition in Louisville, but you certainly do, as has been pointed out in earlier programs here, have a vigorous editorial policy. Well, Mr. Millis, as an old newspaperman, now looking on, as I do, from the outside, what do you say about this merger thing in a chance for a debate on the great issues?
Millis:
In the first place, I think the Louisville Courier Journal is an outstanding example of a monopoly situation which has not produced the unfortunate effects that are alleged against it. But I suspect one reason why it has not produced that effect is that the owners and managers of the Courier Journal have been quite aware of the problem. And I think, I am not mistaken, Mr. Bingham, you have given a good deal of thought to avoiding these consequences, is that not true?
Bingham:
We try to give constant thought to it, because there is a danger there. There is no doubt about that.
Millis:
I think if you go out to some of the big cities in
California, and you look at some of the monopoly situations out there, the thing is just shocking. And the tendency, and I think it's bound to be, unless it is carefully combated by those who are managing the papers, the tendency of a monopoly situation is bound to be to damp everything down to a common level.
Bingham:
And yet were those cities that you are thinking of better served when they had competing newspapers than they are now? Is it monopoly that really has caused the trouble, do you think?
Millis:
That's a point, of course. Because I think that even in other cities where there is not a monopoly situation, you do see a certain deadening effect, due to the fact that the newspaper has become such a large enterprise and must appeal in general to the same set of people. Any two public institutions appealing to the same set of people are apt to appeal in the same terms.
Lyons:
That reminds me of what Eric Sevareid said on one of these programs, that as any medium gets bigger, the chance of freedom of expression gets smaller. What do you say to that?
Bingham:
I suppose bigness always may imply cowardice. It seems a strange thing, but as we get bigger in American business perhaps we get more timid. I don't believe that that is having that effect, however, in the American press. Let me say this poet: I don't know of a single American city which had an outstanding newspaper in it under competing conditions that has lost an outstanding newspaper under a monopoly condition.
Lyons:
Well, that's very interesting. What about the columnist as balancing out this public opinion. Barbara Ward suggested to us here recently that this was unique to the American society, you didn't a columnist in the same sense in
Britain and that you did get at least a chance of two sides, even with a one newspaper town. How do you see that?
Bingham:
I agree that that's true and I think that those of us who have monopoly papers should run columns that have opposing point of view. However, I think that some newspapers have surrendered the editorial voice to the columnist, which I think is a dangerous trend. It's easier to buy a column from a syndicate and let George do it, let George say it, rather than have their own editorial writers say these things.
Lyons:
Well, Mr. Millis, you said in your "The Constitution and the Common Defense" that the President tends to be too subservient to public opinion. Uh, say something about that.
Millis:
Well, the uh, the thought, of course, behind it is that the President – and I think perhaps it's a good deal more true of the existing President than of some that have preceded him – the President tends to feel that he cannot go beyond what the public will support him in doing. So he tries not to decide what is the best course so much as to decide what the people will support. I mean, I think that at times, the administration, let's say – I don't want to concentrate it on one figure – say the administration, uh, thinks it cannot do this or cannot do that because the people will not support it. And that that is sometimes perhaps a mistake, that if the administration went out and did it, it would find a great deal more popular support there than it was looking for.
Lyons:
Mr. James Warburg here, recently, said that this administration tries to indoctrinate instead of informing the public. Would you agree with that?
Millis:
I would to a very considerable extent. It seems to me that we had a brilliant example of it yesterday and this morning when The New York Times broke the story about firing the
Argus experiment in the South Atlantic.
Lyons:
After sitting on it for six months.
Millis:
After sitting on it for six months. But it broke it, and it had to break it without authority, and it was obvious from the press conference yesterday that Under Secretary Quarles was very, uh, he didn't like the fact that it had been broken.
Bingham:
It seems the ten—
Lyons:
We're told that the majority of the scientists on this project
Argus had voted that it should be released.
Lyons:
This also was an International Geophysical Year project, was it not, which was intended for release, at least eventually.
Bingham:
There seems to be a tendency to use Madison Avenue techniques to mold public opinion on the part of this administration rather than to inform public opinion in the sense that I think it should be.
Millis:
Mr. Bingham, I wanted to say that the way in which it finally was released – although The New York Times forced them to release it – in the first place they were molding public opinion, or trying to, by keeping quiet about it. And then, when it was released, the kind of answers that Quarles was willing to make and the kind that he refused to make clearly showed me that this was not a desire to inform the people but it was to mold them...
Millis:
...to get the kind of public reaction that was desired.
Bingham:
Also there has been a tendency to hold back on the facts about the atomic fall-out, which I think has been very unfortunate.
Lyons:
And I. F. Stone, an unterrified independent published this in a recent news letter of his, Mr. Bingham, said the press has misrepresented the data on detection on underground nuclear tests. What would you say about that?
Bingham:
Oh, I don't see how you could say the press has misrepresented it. I think the press has been poorly informed on the subject. It may be that some newspapers have leaped to conclusions which were not sound, but I think they would have been much less likely to take that position if they had had a solid basis of information on which to form their opinions. I think they have been a little panicky because of the feeling that they don't know what is going on in this very important area of news.
Lyons:
Well, this is a very difficult and technical problem too. Now, you say that the government has to educate the public, and I am sure you mean through the press...
Lyons:
...on foreign and military policies. These are very complex things. Is the press equipped to interpret this kind of thing? Now we have this great illustration of the Times, how many papers could have taken on that story, even if they'd known about it?
Bingham:
I think every paper is better equipped to do this job than it is perhaps allowing itself to do at present. Surely, the American press in its present condition cannot say that it's not able to do its fundamental job in a democracy. That's what I think we've come down to. I agree with Mr. Millis that our press is superior to any other press in the world, but I think that is rather cold comfort at a time when the necessities of our press in the field of public information are greater than any other press has ever been.
Lyons:
Well, for one last quick question. We talked about press and the government a good deal. As to the public, Elmo Roper told us here just last week, Mr. Millis, that many people find reading the news hard work and this itself limits the press and what it can do for them. It suggests an educational part of it. What do you say about this?
Millis:
I think that's very true, I find it hard work myself sometimes and I think that's one point we haven't put our finger on, the extent to which the press, no less than the media, is involved as an entertainment industry, rather than an industry of information, and that is always, I think, seriously going to distort the service which the press does.
Lyons:
Would you add a word to that, Mr. Bingham?
Bingham:
I think we have to give the public a balanced diet of news, comics, features, and things of that kind. No paper can be all solid news, but I think every paper ought to have some solid news in it.
Lyons:
Thank you very much, gentlemen. The role of public opinion in foreign policy is a question that vitally affects all of us and that we cannot escape. The constant problem is whether we have enough information, and good enough information, for the choices we must make. This comes down to the capacity of our leaders of public opinion, both in government and in the press. The right to question is the key phrase in our program.
But to ask the right questions, we need to be informed. For this we depend largely on our press. Its service must be two-fold. First, to provide us the information on which we can make our public decisions; second, to keep our public policy under constant appraisal, as an informed and responsible critic of it.
This means then that the press is a most strategic institution in all of our affairs. Douglass Cater, seeing it as
Washington correspondent of The
Reporter magazine, calls the press the fourth branch of government. Repeatedly the question has been raised here, as today, whether the press is organized to handle such complex issues as bomb tests, defense needs, inflation, the financing of education, the Soviet economic challenge, the problem of how our cities, states, and nation will share the burden of public service.
And Barbara Ward put her finger on the problem when she said, there seems no place in most newspapers for the sustained story of developments instead of a spotty headline jumping from crisis to crisis. The sustained story comes as close as any summary could to what we need from our press to deal with the difficult world we have to live in.
The job the press does is of course enormously uneven. These programs were meant to be critical. They have had to generalize. But week by week our news surveys have disclosed distinguished news coverage by our greatest newspapers. To name a very few: The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Louisville Courier Journal, the Milwaukee Journal, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, the Washington Post and the Washington Star.
And our television networks, too, have some of the ablest correspondents and such programs as CBS' The Great Challenge, Small World, Behind the News, and NBC's Outlook show the possibilities broadcasting has for providing us the background we need on public issues.
Well, this is the last program in our series on the Press and the People. This is Louis Lyons.