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.
Kimball:
I've got some questions about science. I'm not a scientist, myself; I don't speak the technical language of science. And when the scientist talks, it seems sometimes that he's not talking my language, either. Who's going to bridge that gap, the press?
That's a serious question, because science these days dominates so much of our life, our school problems, our business decisions, our politics, the very question of our survival. The world of science has given us some fabulous things, like the wonderful Salk vaccine, television, jet flight, rockets to outer space.
But at the same time, the world of science is giving us things that are downright terrifying: guided missiles, bigger and more powerful bombs with all their deadly mystery. It makes us wonder, are we mastering science or is science mastering us? Mr. Louis Lyons, I hope you and your guests on this program today will explore some of these questions.
Lyons:
To explore these questions, we have two distinguished guests. One is the science editor of an important metropolitan daily, the other, a leading nuclear physicist. Our journalist is the science editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and himself the recipient of the Lasker Award in Medical Journalism, Mr. Earl Ubell.
Announcer B:
Mr. Ubell says, and I quote, The public does not know enough about fallout to make intelligent decisions. The press has not the manpower or space to cover the story. The public isn't educated to understand it. The scientists themselves have fallen down on the job of explaining.
Lyons:
Our other guest is one of the nations great atomic scientists, and he is now the director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator being built by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Stanley Livingston.
Announcer B:
Professor Livingston has stated, quote, that The debate over bomb tests and fallout is one of the most crucial of our generation. Yet the press has not dug out the important facts and presented them so that the American people can understand the issues.
Lyons:
Two statements by our two experts, both deeply concerned over the state of our public information about fallout and bomb tests. We'll go into this with them in just a moment.
Announcer A:
The Press and the People.
As moderator from Harvard University, the winner of a Peabody Award for television and radio journalism, and the Louderback Award for outstanding contribution in the field of civil liberties, Mr. Louis Lyons.
Lyons:
Professor Livingston, you've just been quoted as saying that the press has not informed us about the problem of fallout in such a way that it's understandable to us. Won't you explain?
Livingston:
Yes, Mr. Lyons. I think the press has missed the main point of the fallout controversy. I think they tended to emphasize the discrepancies and the disagreements that in the early days of the discussion came from several scientists. They did not appreciate that these disagreements were rapidly resolved when the facts and numbers were available. They didn't, I think, understand that what was behind this was a sincere effort on the part of the scientists, both with government and outside government, to try to do their bit toward helping to reduce the risks of nuclear war.
But they were both sincere in their points of view, but the government scientists wanted to maintain the maximum opportunity for continued development of bomb tests. The scientists outside government wanted the government scientists to present the full facts so that the public would know what was happening, and so that they could assess whether or not it was necessary to continue with this threat. In other words, it was a difference in the political and social attitudes of the two groups, and I think that is what the press should have noted and reported.
Lyons:
Well, we want to get right into that. And Mr. Ubell, you too have been quoted as saying that the public just doesn't have the information to make intelligent decisions about this fallout issue. Well now, what makes you think the public are that ignorant about it?
Ubell:
The national association of science writers, and indeed, the atomic energy commission itself, have made two surveys which show definitely that at least one-third of the nation does not know, had never heard, I have to repeat that, had never heard of radioactive fallout from an atomic bomb. And furthermore, I would say from these same surveys that about twelve percent of the population really knows technically what it's about.
And when I say technically, I say it on the merest level. Now the reasons for this are many and varied. But from these surveys alone, we can see that the public specifically does not have too much, if any, information on this field to make intelligent kinds of, excuse me, intelligent kinds of decisions.
Kimball:
Professor Livingston, perhaps you right here at the outset could clear up this matter of fall out for us. What is it, and just how dangerous is it to the American people?
Livingston:
Oh well, I can't be technical in a brief time like this, but let me try to generalize. Fallout is the radiation that comes from the fission products, from plutonium- and uranium-type bombs, primary that. In the explosion of such bombs, large intensities of fallout, enormous intensities of radiation, are released. some of these fall immediately in the form of rather heavy, dense materials in the near vicinity, and others, lighter ones, downwind.
And there are areas nearby which are highly exposed to radiation. But then there is more which gets into the stratosphere, the light elements and the things which survive for many, many years and continue to fall out over the years. Now this radiation level has been building up steadily in the stratosphere all over the earth, particularly the northern hemisphere. Until by now, there is a steady rain of radiation coming out and falling on the earth.
This is absorbed by plants, which are eaten by animals and man, and the animals are eaten. And some of the radiations of the radioactive elements are chemically of such a nature that they concentrate, for example, in the human bone or in other portions of the body. This means that there is biological, there's radiation going on which leads to biological damage of one sort or another.
Now how much that damage is, is a question then of exact measurement, calculations from the known experiments, and a great deal of speculating, scientific thinking and analyzing. However, I think you could say that there is an amount of radiation which is doing a significant amount of medical and biological damage to the human race, which is already present in the atmosphere due to the past bomb tests.
Lyons:
Mr. Ubell, do you find that scientists are in substantial agreement as to the basic effects of fallout? For instance, I have here three scientific reports on this: one by the National Academy of Scientists on the biological effects of atomic radiation, one by the United Nations Scientific Committee, and the other, the Atomic Energy Commissions own report. Do these agree on the basic problem?
Ubell:
I would say that they all agree that there is some damage from the rays which are emitted from the elements which have been produced in man-made explosions of atomic bombs. To me, and I have consistently reported this in the New York Herald Tribune, and I know others who have done the same, to me the problem is one of, well, how important is this amount of damage, and how important is it relative to the political decisions which the leaders of our community have to make?
For example, we maintain a standing army in the United States which definitely leads to the death of, I don't know the exact number, but it certainly must be in the neighborhood of one hundred men a year from accidents specifically connected with military service. And we as a nation, at least, the leaders of our nation, have made the decision that yes, it is worth one hundred men each year, the lives of one hundred men or so each year, in order to maintain this standing army.
In the same way, I think they are also making the decision, perhaps not openly, but they are making the decision that it is worth the number of lives which are involved in radioactive fallout to continue testing atomic bombs. Or at least that was the decision up till recently.
Livingston:
I think we ought to go further in this, Mr. Lyons.
Livingston:
I think the other side ought to be presented at least equally at this stage. Which is that there are more than United States citizens being subjected to this fallout radiation; there are citizens all over the world, of other countries. And when a group of people in this country makes the decision to expose others to hazards for the protection of the peace of the world through the defense of Western civilization, they are taking a type of responsibility that really does go beyond what is normally considered the rights of a single, sovereign state. And this point can, I think, be put in.
Lyons:
Well, Mr. Ubell, I take it Professor Livingston's basic complaint with the press about all this is that they haven't given us a clear enough picture just what this debates about. And I take it that your view is that the press just hasn't had the manpower or the space to go into this enough to satisfy the scientists, anyway. But you say, too, that the public hasn't been alert to this and the scientists haven't done their part in getting through to us. So would you go into that a bit?
Ubell:
Yes, I will. Dr. Livingston has just given an illustration of the kind of thing which is involved, in the opening question which was addressed to him as to what radioactivity is, he gave a very interesting and accurate explanation of what it is. I understood it; I have been working with this now for ten years.
However, I would guarantee that of our listeners today, there are a very large percentage, and I would guess, on the basis of these studies that I have right here, I would guess that it was probably two-thirds of our listeners who did not understand what you said, basically.
Kimball:
Well Mr. Ubell, I think that I understood what Professor Livingston said; I realize by his statement that fallout is dangerous. But I would like to ask him this question: our country is not the only one creating fallout, and it seems to me that to blame just our people and our press is not quite fair.
Livingston:
No, let's not blame our press. This is certainly not the major problem in the controversy that's going on, there are others that are involved. I think we have to realize what are the motivations of the people who have been conducting this debate. And we ought to think of this just a bit: why are these non-government scientists so sincere, so intensely sincere in having this question of bomb-test bans studied?
It's because they think that this is a first step toward international agreements which might lead to larger and more meaningful agreements later. It's an example, an opportunity for the countries of the world to get together, and in the same process, they will at least help to reduce somewhat these biological hazards which are now generally accepted.
Lyons:
Well Professor Livingston, I take it you're saying that the press hasn't caught the real argument, that it really isn't over the effects of fallout, but over the attitudes, as you say, on these political and large defense questions. Well now, how has the press handled that argument for these two points of view, the official and the political outside point of view?
Livingston:
Well, I think the press has tended to take government scientific handouts of news as authoritative, and have also tended to, not to be particularly aware of what are the background facts that the other scientists have reported. And the general impression has been given that this is a scare story that somebody is throwing out for reasons that are not generally understood.
I believe that an understanding of the purposes and the meanings, what was going on, in the minds of these scientists who are objecting to the governments procedures, I think, is an important, the way that the press should enter this problem.
Lyons:
Well Mr. Ubell, I take it Professor Livingston is saying that the press tends, indeed, perhaps it's a convention of the press to turn to authority for its answers, that it tends more to pay attention to what the officials in the government are saying, than to what the scientists outside the government who may be critical are saying. Well, would you say that the press, the science reporter, has an obligation to inquire of the outside scientists as much as of the inside scientists?
Ubell:
Well of course, he has the obligation to do so. The question is one of mechanics often, whether he has the capability of doing so under the exigencies of daily publication. Now in the absence of any really scientific study on what the press has actually printed in this area, all we can report here is our impressions of what they have printed. Now I'm sure Professor Livingston will agree with me on that.
However, it seems to me that of the major stories that have been reported by outside scientists, so to speak, not the inside ones, and we're talking outside and inside governments, that the outside scientists have gotten a very fair shake of the deal, at least as far as I can determine in the
New York press, with which I'm most familiar.
For example, when the National Academy of Sciences report was issued on radioactivity in general, the New York Times devoted, I think, two full pages to this. The New York Herald Tribune devoted column after column; not as much, but a significant amount. And so did the other New York newspapers. In addition, there were Sunday stories which followed it up, and so on.
Lyons:
Well Mr. Ubell, at some point I wanted to bring up some of the research we've done on this business. You say that there hasn't been any scientific survey of the press; that's indeed true. But we've been following more than forty papers for some time now to see what they've been doing. And our researcher says that if all she knew about this is what she read in the newspaper, she just wouldn't understand this fallout issue.
We have reports of some of the leading newspapers: the Post Dispatch in St. Louis, and the two great
New York morning papers, of course the
Portland Oregonian, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Atlantic Constitution, the Milwaukee Journal, the Kansas City Star; these names come up, of course, in any survey, as having done editorially a real job in discussing these tests, and hoping something could be done about them.
But the press attitude on this thing varies, certainly, enormously. Now both of you gentlemen remember when the report from the federal health agency was that
St. Louis was getting a larger dose of radiation in their milk one time, about a year ago last summer, than any of the other areas studied. Well the way the
St. Louis papers sat down soberly and discussed this in their columns, it seemed to me, was quite interesting. For instance, the Post Dispatch has a headline, How radioactive is
St. Louis milk? And they discuss it up and down in the middle of the page.
And they include such statements as all scientists who have concerned themselves with this problem agree that strontium-90 in sufficient quantity can cause bone cancer and leukemia; in very large amounts it can cause radiation sickness and death. The amounts now absorbed are much lower; just how much is sufficient to be dangerous has not been precisely determined. Well that's the tone of their discussion, which it seemed to me was pretty interesting. This, it started on a headline story, Radioactivity in milk here leads ten areas.
And then a little later, the Post Dispatch had an article, pretty well described by the headline, Strontium may be a peril here, professor says. And the
Globe Democrat's headline on this same discussion, however, was, Dr. Compton opposes end to atomic tests, and there was nothing about the milk danger in that headline.
Well let me show you another situation, of the way two newspapers in the same town can deal with the same story. And this was the same story, laid down by the Scripps-Howard science writer John Truman, about an atomic energy commission report itself.
And in one paper, this is in
Pittsburgh, the headline is, A-test told to be small, AEC says. The other headline is, Radioactive carbon to kill 172 children a year. One headline writer thinks this is small, the other thinks its one hundred and seventy two. It sort of makes you think of Benjamin Franklin's question, What use is a baby?
Ubell:
Louis, could I just interrupt you for a minute?
Ubell:
You know and I know, from being in the newspaper business quite a long time, that there is a tremendous variety and diversity in which newspapers can handle single stories. And in sociological terms, if I can use that word here today, in sociological terms, what we're really interested in is the total impact of all this information on the public. That's what we're talking about here today; we're not talking about whether one headline is better than another, or how different papers handled the story.
Lyons:
No, but let me, let me just throw this at you, Mr. Ubell. Our research among these forty papers found only one, only one; this was the Chicago Sun Times, that used a significant story, as we thought Dr. Pauling sees carbon-14 menace. It was the first time we heard about this, and he said in this report, it poses a much greater threat to future generations than the widely publicized strontium-90. Well I say, we found only one paper in these forty that used that story at all. Now doesn't that seem to you interesting?
Ubell:
Well, yes. Well, regardless of whether one paper uses it, or twenty papers or however, let me just get back to the impact on the public, which is what we're trying to get at here. The scientific surveys which have been made indicate that the amount of knowledge is quite low. It increases with the educational abilities, that is, the educational experience, of the people in the population. So that the more education they have, the more information they have and the more they are able to understand the technical aspects of fallout.
We have to, in the newspaper business and in the press generally, find techniques and ways so that your researcher, the one that reported on that, will not come back to you and say, From the press, I have learned nothing. We have not found these ways, it seems very clear to me. When I was younger and first starting out, I thought everybody believed everything they read in the newspapers. And that's obviously not only not true, but they don't even understand the things they read in the newspapers about technical things.
Lyons:
And certainly not the things that aren't in the newspapers at all.
Lyons:
Well I hope perhaps you are going to continue to carry the ball, Professor Livingston. You started a while back to say that the scientists hadn't done their share of the job of getting through to us. That is, I take it, to mean making these things clear to us. I'd like to put that up for...
Ubell:
That's absolutely true, and that's another aspect which I'd like to throw to Dr. Livingston myself.
Livingston:
I will certainly accept that that's a fact. The scientists have not done all that could be done to get the technical information through, or to get the social and political implications through. And yet, there are reasons for this. The scientists are that kind of people, they have had very little experience in how to get their opinions across to the public.
I feel that the press is the intermediary that should take the responsibility for moving these ideas and thoughts, and the facts that scientists have, on into the public domain, translating them into the language that the public can understand. I don't mean that the press must do all of it; the scientists have to meet them partway.
It's a new problem these days, so that's why we're talking about it. It's because we have for the first time a very important problem of communications and getting technical, scientific information through. But let me make a point which I think is not well enough understood. The scientist has something to offer to the public which is far, far more than gadgets and inventions.
The scientist can offer a method of thinking, a means of analyzing problems. He can give a philosophy of how to approach problems and try to solve them. We've had some good examples of this recently in which there have been scientific delegations meeting in
Geneva, studying the question of inspection of a bomb-test agreement.
Lyons:
Excuse me, Professor Livingston, I just ought to say for the credit of the press that our research shows that the press very generally has covered these
Geneva conferences on the possibility of getting a controlled system so you can suspend tests. I think any reader who does his homework at all ought to know what's going on in
Geneva.
Kimball:
Well, Mr. Ubell...
Kimball:
I'd like to ask you this. When you go to Yankee Stadium the press box is full of reporters. And you have said that the press has not developed the kind of techniques that can explain the scientists to the public. Now just what is the press doing about that?
Ubell:
Well, we've seen a growth in the last ten years of an increasing number of science reporters in daily newspapers. I have some figures on that: in 1935, there were ten science reporters working on daily newspapers; today there are somewhat in the neighborhood of sixty or seventy. To be sure, this is far too few. There are two thousand daily newspapers in the United States, and sixty reporters for those two thousand is too few to cover this enormous subject.
But more important than that, more important than that, we have not found the techniques in the communications media of presenting information to the public in such a way that not only is the thing translated in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it falls into their psychological orbit so that they can take it, and absorb it, and use it. We have not done this; everything that we study about it shows that we haven't done it. And we haven't only done it for science, lord knows, we haven't done it for politics, either.
Kimball:
Well do you agree, Mr. Ubell, with Professor Livingston's view of the way the press should report the scientist and what he's doing? Not just in terms of the specific gadget sort of development, but in his point of view, in his thinking and its impact on our government and our policy?
Ubell:
Absolutely! As a matter of fact, in the Herald Tribune we have been making an effort to do this in the last few months. I would say the last year or so, I specifically have been trying to do this. But I run into a very serious problem, and that is on the part of the scientist who absolutely refuses to talk about the mistakes he's made. Now this is, to me, kind of interesting because part of the philosophy of science is how to handle mistakes. And too often...
Livingston:
Let me make a suggestion...
Ubell:
...scientists present...
Livingston:
...for you newsmen. Let me suggest that instead of the headline writers writing the stories and the headlines for the front pages, news kind of science reporting, that the science writers, the experts do it. I think that there is a great deal of valid and proper science reporting in the official columns, the kind you write, Mr. Ubell.
Kimball:
Professor Livingston, I'd like to ask you one last question here. You've said that the scientists have the facts but they don't know how to get it to the public. And Mr. Ubell has said that the press itself has difficulty getting the public interested. I would like to know, are the scientists and the press doing with each other all they should do on behalf of the public?
Livingston:
No, no, far from it. A very small number of scientists are able to make this big step of moving out of their field of professional restriction to deal only in the precise scientific and technical facts that they work with, and to learn that they have a responsibility to work with people. I think also the press must get to learn to get into the scientific field better, to do the interpreting of technical knowledge into lay language, and that we've got to meet somewhere, halfway.
Ubell:
I would correct the one word, interpreting. I think what we have to do is to dramatize this in the old sense of the word, that is, to make it come alive.
Livingston:
That'd be fine.
Lyons:
Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. Well, what we've heard brings us awfully close to the question whether life is just getting too complicated for us. And I think we have to ask whether our press is organized to make us enough aware of the impact of science on our lives. Can such a danger as we've heard described, as the fallout from nuclear bomb tests, be brought home to us clearly enough so that we'll have a chance to cope with it?
Well that's a key question. Certainly, mystery at the center of government is a menace to an open society. And secrecy, classification, politics have clearly all been getting in the way of clear channels of information between the public and its government. And all these barriers of information have grown up around the nuclear bomb. Indeed, it's the very symbol of secrecy to us.
This truly is a problem for our press and our government to resolve, and a problem for all of us, lest it keep us from knowing the dangers that we must meet. And we have to learn to listen to our scientists, to understand what they're saying, and to use them in our interest, as they're so willing to be used in our interest.
We just can't afford to be so numbed by the horror of this bomb that we just put it out of our minds and go to the ball game, nor can we afford to have a press attitude of Papa knows best toward government officials and just take what they say about it. Indeed, we've seen the position of our own government officials shift on this matter within the last few months, from saying that it's impossible to consider suspending bomb tests because of our defense needs, until now, they've actually been negotiating with the Soviets on ways to suspend bomb tests.
Well our system of information, that is, in effect, our press, has got to be geared to the job of giving meaning to such vital issues as that of this fallout problem we've been talking about it. Here indeed, the right to know can be literally the chance to survive. Well, until next week at this time, on the Press and the People, this is Louis Lyons.