UNITED STATES PUBLIC OPINION TELEVISION HAS MAGNIFIED EFFECT OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33442, 25 January 1974, Page 18

UNITED STATES PUBLIC OPINION TELEVISION HAS MAGNIFIED EFFECT OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

-By R. W. APPLE. JUN.. of the Washington bureau of the "Neu- Yer': Times.") (Reprinted by arrangement) When President Richard M. Nixon, tormented daily by a scandal he could not thrust away, exploded in anger at the television networks on October 26 last year, all but lost in the debris was an observation r.c made before he lashed out. The magnified effect of public affairs on public opinion now, compared to what it was 25 years ago, the President said, is the result of the growth of television. The evidence supports him: In the 25 years since television’s infancy to its dominant place in American popular culture today, it has transformed political campaigns and magnified the “bully pulpit” tha: Theodore Roosevelt called the Presidency while multiplying the hazard', as Mr Nixon noted. And it has done so because of its power to reaci . inform, create — and sometimes manipulate - public opinion dramatically and almost instantly.

In an entirely unrelated] action, the Justice Depart-j ment made its own acknow-, lodgement of television’s in-; fluence. It began legal action, early this month against three newspaper companies' whose simultaneous ownership of television stations — in the same areas where their newspapers are distributed — had given them near-monopolies on the channels of public information. In 1972, 50 million Americans watched each evening as the three great networks presented their major news shows — Cronkite for 1C.8.5., Chancellor for 1N.8.C.. Reasoner and Smith 'for A.B.C. No newspaper or I news magazine had as many : as three million readers, and j a public-opinion survey suggested that almost” twothirds of all Americans got most of their news from television. The statistics, even if ac-1 curate, can be considered misleading about the source; of news. In the two major stories of the last decade, for instance, Vietnam and Watergate, the bulk of the investigative and interpretive reporting was done by journalists whose work appeared first in print; but television picked up, amplified “nd illustrated their thenes, and it was the great megaphone that carried the word to the nation. The anchormen, and particularly Walter Cronkite of C. 8.5., became totems for what was right and what was wrong with the country, regularly ranked along with Billy Graham and the Pope among most-admired men. Rise of commercial None of this, of course, was lost on the politicians, who sought all during the 1960’s and early 1970’s to find the “right” way to use television to win elective office. At first, notably in the 1960 Presidential campaign with its Nixon-Kennedy debates, television was seen as a kind of enlarged rostrum, from which the candidates could r.ddress the nation and expose themselves to public scrutiny on a scale far larger than ever before possible. But — perhaps in part because of the conclusion that Mr Nixon “lost” because his technique was inferior — the manipulators were not far behind. Soon the one-minute, and even the 30-second and the 15-second, spot announcement was the rule, not only in Presidential races but in Senate and House contests as well. The debates had been the big moment in television in 1960; by 1964, it was the wickedly effective and frightening simplistic ’d puzzle

l|commercial, which, in the ■jwords of Theodore H. White. ■ “began with a close-up of a ■; tow-headed moppet plucking l petals from a daisy, babbling Hher count as she went, until .•the film faded through her • i eyes to a countdown of an >! atomic testing site and the j! entire scene dissolved in a -'mushroom cloud.” 1 With the rise of the com;imercial came the packagers. • the time buyers and all the rest. Sometimes they suc- ■ ceeded, as with the anti- ; Goldwater daisy commercial, > which stuck in the mind like ; an arrow although it was • aired exactly once. Somer times they failed, as did the i geniuses who posed a perr fectly respectable Republican Senate candidate in Utah in 1 1970 on a horse and got him ■ laughed out of the race. - Theory proliferated. Most : recently, the notion has been i that commercials must look ■as much as possible like j “news” in order to break 1 down viewer cynicisms. Ideas deflated j It is true ,that in any , American political campaign ; pre-te’.evision and even prej radio, ideas have undergone I a kind of deflation: sloga- ( neering and the one-sided, ; distorting argument have ’ been the rule, rather than t reasoned dissection of an , issue as in a formal, aca- ; demic debate. But television ’ has geometrically accelerated the deflationary process, ’ frequently abandoning ideas ’ altogether in favour of sym- ’ hols and smiles. And not . just in spot commercials. < By 1968, Mr Nixon had ’ learned the political uses of television well. In state after state, he conducted what looked like impromptu news , conferences in which his , questioners were from a > broad spectrum of ordinary I citizens. He fielded the ques- > tions effectively; the ques- ■ tioners had been carefully > screened. i Campaign schedules are ■ now built around television >j outlets, not major population . centres; by last year, the ’[schedules were designed, not II to enable the candidate and ’jthe people of. say, Ohio to tj act upon one another, but to -1 achieve the most possible 11 “media-market exposures,” i to use the trade term. One -[frantic day, George McGo- - vern spent a few moments 5 in front of a Minnesota grain elevator, a few mo-, j ments on an lowa farm and i a few moments in two other - states; most of his time was / spent in his plane, but to 1 the television viewers in s four states, it looked as if I he had been concentrating - on them. ■ Most of all, however, tele--5 vision drove ever upward - the cost of campaigning, until a Florida politician could say that he couldn’t run for the Senate because she couldn’t raise s2m. At the Presidential level,

I the fund-raising numbers beIcame gross. The campaign t re-elect Richard M. Nixon raised ss2m in 1972 — [fully 50 per cent more than had been raised only four (years before when the contest was a far closer thing The greatest single stimuilus was the cost of television. for this was a campaign largely without a candidate on the stump; the greatest single result was ■corruption in the collection and the disbursement of the (Republicans' unprecedented [treasure trove. If it has i come to be accepted, howlever belatedly, that reform in campaign financing is imperative. it is at least partly because television has rendered the costs so astronomical as to offend the public (conscience. Weapon of power Once elected, the politician — President or fresh- ; man Congressman — quickily finds that television i;one of the great weapons of incumbency. The Congressman can send back to local stations films of himself, seated before a photograph ■of the Capitol, earnestly ex- | plaining his good works on 'behalf of his constituency [the President has far mon •power. i Not that he controls th< (networks outright, as doe [the French President. He cat i try to bring pressure to bea; [on commentators like Howard K. Smith, or Eric Seviareid. either directly or 'through their businessman bosses. But often it does not work, as some of the Water(gate commentary on all ■ three networks has demonjstrated. He can hide from I the cameras by holding no •news conferences, and he can conduct them under [ground rules that make intelligent exploration of the I issues difficult. But he 'cannot shield himself from [the difficult question. (As an aside, it should be noted !that despite the President's 'demonstrated aversion to the news conference, he almost • always is thought by most Ito have done well.) | “Instant analysis.’’ which many viewers switch off, is a feeble attempt to redress 'the balance. Regular newscasts may be somewhat ! more effective, although ' they certainly give no cause for the kind of outburst occasionally heard at the . White House, because they are forced to treat issues so much more briefly. Perhaps only the “actuality” — the space shots or more pertinently, the Water(gate hearings — have an impact comparable to that of ithe Presidential speech. One jneed only look at President [Nixon’s popularity rating [during the Vietnam war, (which tended to rise after each televised appeal for national solidariy. to appreciate the value of this tool |to the Executive.