March 31, 1971
Page 8936
AN ANGRY MAN
HON. BEN B. BLACKBURN OF GEORGIA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wednesday, March 31, 1971
Mr. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, recently, there has been much discussion with respect to television's slanting of the news and biased reporting. WCBS of New York City, a direct affiliate of the Columbia Broadcasting Co., last week issued an editorial regarding a controversy between Senator EDMUND MUSKIE and the Republican National Committee. I believe that the editorial is self-explanatory in showing its prejudiced direction.
AN ANGRY MAN
What would we do without the Republican National Committee to set the record straight?
For years now, most people have thought Senator Muskie was a quiet, reserved fellow – rather cool, very taciturn, a typical Down Easter. But that is not, it seems, the way the Republican National Committee sees him. In a recent article from the Committee's newsletter entitled "Is Muskie Cool Enough to be President?" the Maine Democrat is pictured as a lip-curling, fist- shaking, fire-breather. Underlining words in the story that seem to underline his black nature, the Committee points out (cut to text) his "surliness," his "tantrums," his "waspish temper." It describes his "towering rage," his "short fuse ready to explode," his "malevolence" that "boils and fumes."
Well we are not sure we can agree with the newsletter's description – after all, the Senator has kept those rages, if he has them, pretty well hidden during his many years as a public official. But we can agree with a quote from the Talmud that accompanies the story: it says, "When a man gets angry, he falls into error.”
That might have applied to an unsuccessful candidate for governor several years ago, who snarled at the press, "You're not going to have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." Or it might have applied to our President when he labeled some antiwar demonstrators as "bums;” when he judged Charles Manson guilty before the jury did, or when he accused the Senate opponents of Judge Harrold Carswell of "vicious tactics," and "malicious character assassination." Yes, anger is something the Republican National Committee has seen before.
Come to think of it, maybe the Committee, knowing the power of an angry candidate, is nervous about seeing it develop in others. After all, if election year 1972 rolls around and such emotional issues as the war, the urban crisis, the state of the economy, and divisions within the country are no more resolved than they are today, then a presidential contender – such as Senator Edmund Muskie – might have legitimate excuses to get angry.
Definitely, this is a partisan political controversy and WCBS was improperly exercising its privilege as a news reporting station in issuing this editorial. If this group is as unbiased as it claims to be, they would leave it up to the Democrat Digest to respond.
In the March 29, 1971, edition of Barron's, a weekly newspaper, there is a lengthy article showing several instances in which CBS has slanted and purposely edited news in order to give a false impression. For the information of my colleagues, I am hereby inserting this article in the RECORD:
BROADCAST LICENSE: CBS HAS FORFEITED ACCESS TO THE NATION'S AIRWAVES
We cannot help but admire a man who defends his principles and sticks to his guns. Last Tuesday evening Richard S. Salant, president of the News Division of the Columbia Broadcasting System, gave a nationwide television audience a demonstration of doggedness which, in other circumstances, might well have commanded our respect. Under fierce attack from Congress and the White House for airing the controversial documentary, "The Selling of the Pentagon," Mr. Salant refused to give an inch. Perhaps with an eye on the clock – the 11-12 p.m. slot, while not exactly prime time, is still too valuable to waste – the CBS executive took no more than a moment or so to rebut "only a few" of the critics' charges; however, he assured his viewers, "We have an answer for every one. . . ." Then, boldly switching to the offensive, the head of CBS News asserted: "We are proud of 'The Selling of the Pentagon.' ... We are confident that when passions die down, it will be recognized as a vital contribution to the people's right to know." Lesser media of communications may occasionally run a correction or retraction; The Washington Post, not long ago, printed an extraordinary confession of error. CBS News, which is made of sterner stuff, stands definitely on the record.
Quite a record it is, too. As to "The Selling of the Pentagon," Mr. Salant addressed himself to merely two of the many points of criticism raised. Regarding the rest, the chief critics – including the Vice President of the United States, senior editor of Air Force magazine and a non-partisan citizens' organization known as Accuracy in Media (AIM), which plans to lodge a complaint with the National Association of Broadcasters – make a compelling, and thus far uncontroverted case.
In particular, CBS stands accused of various misstatements, including the amount spent by the Pentagon on public affairs, and the true identity of those responsible for a certain military briefing (not, as alleged, Peoria's Caterpillar Tractor Co., "which did $39 million of business with the Defense Department last year," but the local Association of Commerce). Far worse were the omissions and distortions, including two episodes in which tapes were clipped and reassembled to convey false impressions of what the speakers said. Specific lapses aside, even the untutored eye could scarcely fail to detect, in a so-called documentary, pervasive malice and editorial bias.
On the CBS television network – which includes five wholly owned stations and 198 affiliates – slanted (or, in view of his authority and tenure, perhaps the word should be Salanted) journalism has long been the name of the game. As in "The Selling of the Pentagon," moreover, the thrust has tended to be violently against what most of the country would regard as its basic interests, institutions and values. In a prize-winning "documentary," key sequences of which subsequently proved false, CBS News professed to uncover "Hunger in America"; contrariwise, in an equally distorted report from Cuba, the television camera found, in effect, that Cubans under Castro never had it so good. Not content merely to cover (albeit in its own fashion) the news, CBS time and again has sought to make news. Shortly after NBC scooped the competition by airing an LSD-stimulated interview with Dr. Timothy Leary, WBBM-TV, CBS outlet in Chicago, participated in a headline-making, and illegal pot party, which became the object of an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission. In a similar, if far more brazen, exploit – on which both Vice President Agnew and Mr. Salant touched last week – CBS sought to stage, and to film, an invasion of Haiti. One picture supposedly is worth a thousand words. High time the U.S. got the picture.
As last Tuesday's performance suggests, it isn't pretty. Among other sins of omission and commission, CBS News failed to mention that it was paid to produce one of the films at which it scoffed. In depicting a press conference, during which the briefing officer, replying to 34 questions, gave three no-comment answers, the camera focused on the latter. Statements made on tape by two Pentagon spokesmen, a Marine colonel and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, were cut up, transposed and pieced together again in a way that made both of them seem unresponsive and foolish. Rep. Edward Hebert (not Herbert, as the caption later had it), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, turned up on the screen with this gracious – and, despite Mr. Salant's subsequent remarks, wholly misleading – introduction: "Using sympathetic Congressmen, the Pentagon tries to counter what it regards as the anti-military tilt of network reporting (Ed. note: Where would it ever get such an idea?). War heroes are made available for taped home district TV reports from pro-Pentagon politicians."
All this is reprehensible enough. Far worse – in a format presumably dedicated to fact – are the extremist opinions which it was used to convey. Here is a disillusioned and slightly incoherent ex-Air Force officer: "I feel that the military information arm is so vast, has been able to become so pervasive by the variety and the amounts and the way and the sheer numbers it's able to present its viewpoint to the American people, I think this attitude it was able to develop, allowed Vietnam to happen. . . ." Here is CBS-News' own dispassionate Roger Mudd: "On this broadcast we have seen violence made glamorous, expensive weapons advertised as if they were automobiles, biased opinions presented as straight facts. Defending the country not just with arms but also with ideology, Pentagon propaganda insists on America's role as the cop on every beat in the world"
Anyone – even CBS, though it won't concede as much – can make mistakes. What the record shows, however, is a pattern of distortion and slanted reporting stretching back over the years. In 1963, so a revealing article and exchange of letters in The New York Times Magazine has disclosed, President Kennedy gave an exclusive interview to Walter Cronkite of CBS News on such literally inflammatory issues as the Buddhists in South Vietnam and the allegedly repressive government of Ngo Dinh Diem. In the editing process, the footage shrank from 30 minutes to 12, and, according to Pierre Salinger, then White House press secretary, "the result was a partial distortion of JFK's opinion of President Diem. In the actual interview President Kennedy spoke of his respect and sympathy for the problems of President Diem. When the film was shown to the public, only the unfavorable Presidential remarks remained, and JFK's praise of Diem had been deleted. The impression was left that JFK had no confidence at all in Diem, and when he and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were later shot to death in a military coup, there were persistent charges from Madame Nhu and others that the President's statements had given aid and comfort to Diem's enemies. JFK was deeply hurt by the accusations."
Prior to the Republican convention the following year, CBS News struck again. According to Senator Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.), Daniel Schorr, then serving as correspondent abroad, "took it upon himself to put out a news report to portray the idea that I was trying to forge links with far-rightist, neo-fascist groups in Germany . . . Schorr dealt heavily in false facts which neither he nor CBS newsmen in this country made any attempt to check with my office." So it has gone year by year. In 1968, after a storm of protest, a Special Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce investigated television coverage of the Democratic national convention in Chicago. In viewing the video tape of the CBS coverage, the Congressional probers noted a passage in which Walter Cronkite cried that the police "were severely manhandling a minister."
According to the Committee Report: "The accompanying action shows police merely attempting to get a man dressed in clerical garb into a patrol wagon, using what the investigators felt was reasonable force to overcome the man's resistance." The Report concluded, in part: "In an attempt to give an overall impression, it might be said that the coverage presented over the air does, in retrospect, seem to present a one-sided picture which in large measure exonerates the demonstrators and protestors and indicts the city government of Chicago and, to a lesser degree, the Democratic Party."
The long reel of distortion continues to unwind. In her nationally syndicated column, Alice Widener, frequent contributor to Barron's, has chronicled some of the gamier episodes. In the fall of 1969, Frank Kearns, CBS correspondent in Rome, broadcast a report on alleged Italian opinion in the criminal case against the man who hijacked a commercial airliner from San Francisco. Mr. Kearns chose to quote the views of a single editor, that of the Communist newspaper "Unita," who described the hijacker a "Robin Hood ... who made a fool of the repressive and hated FBI." Again, on "Face the Nation," CBS devoted a half-hour of Sunday time to Tom Hayden, revolutionist of the so-called New Left. Mrs. Widener wrote: "He was permitted by reporter Martin Agronsky of CBS, and two other reporters, to get away with intellectual murder.... Thus it came about that at the end of the program the arrogant co-founder of the anarchic Students for a Democratic Society made an unchallenged statement about 'the poverty around the world that the United States is responsible for."' Abbie Hoffman, convicted of inciting to riot in Chicago, appeared on the Merv Griffin show wearing a shirt made from the American flag (on the air, CBS thoughtfully blipped it out.) Small wonder that Desmond Smith of CBS once told TV Guide: "There's been a great deal of manipulation from the left. The left and SDS have been getting a great deal of play. Americans are starting to feel they're not getting the whole story."
Since then the credibility gap, notably with respect to so-called documentaries, has widened beyond belief. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines documentary as follows:– "adj. (1) contained or certified in writing; (2) relating to, or employing, documentation in literature or art; broadly; FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE." The noun, of course, possesses the same qualities. Neither word belongs in the CBS lexicon. In the famous charade on "Hunger in America," the narrator's off-screen voice said "Hunger is easy to recognize when it looks like this. This baby is dying of starvation. He was an American. Now he is dead" Heartrending, but untrue. The baby was born prematurely, and, according to an FCC report, died of "septicemia due to meningitis and peritonitis . . . There was no evidence to show that either the mother or father was suffering from malnutrition. . . ." Far less attention than it warrants has been paid the outrageous report on Cuba last September, which, by actual count of Accuracy in Media, contained 10 major doubtful statements, including: "For Cuba's poor, things are a good deal better than they used to be ... the Cuban poor man doesn't want to leave . . Schools are free, everyone must go. There is a quiet equality of the races now in Cuba...."
So ran the script. However, as AIM pointed out in a letter to CBS News, real life refuses to follow it. On the contrary, the organization cited specific examples of working-class Cubans who risked their lives to flee the Castro regime. One, a Negro bricklayer, was quoted in The New York Times as saying: "Not only is there not enough to eat, but they make you spend extra hours in the fields after a 44-hour work week." As to schooling, AIM pointed out that on January 5, 1969, Castro admitted that 400,000 school-age children were not in school. Brotherhood of man? AIM quoted Erneldo Oliva, an Afro-Cuban and one of the first Castro appointees, to the effect that even under Batista, "whom we rejoiced to see go," Negroes were judges, Senators and high officials. Today only one black man holds an important post. An American Negro, who defected to Castro for five years, returned in 1968 saying that he would rather live in an American jail than remain. Citing the list of inaccuracies, AIM solicited comment from Richard S. Salant, head of CBS News, which was duly forthcoming (and, with the rest of the correspondence, put into the Record). Nine times out of 10, the criticism went unanswered.
Last Tuesday Mr. Salant took a stab at answering criticism of CBS' role in "financing a secret and illegal invasion of Haiti." Here, word, for word, is his rebuttal. "We did not finance the planned invasion. We did nothing illegal. No significant amount of money even inadvertently found its way to persons involved in the invasion plan. The Department of Justice found no unlawful activities on the part of CBS News. And John Davitt, Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, said, quote: 'CBS advised us of the facts, advised the Bureau of Customs that they were there, and that they were filming these episodes.' At one point the Treasury Department asked us not to withdraw from the project. But the short answer to the Vice President is that he is attacking a journalistic investigation that never became a broadcast about an invasion that never took place."
For a short answer, not bad. But let's take a longer look at "Project Nassau," as CBS called it and it is known in the Report of the Special Subcommittee on Investigations of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Let's note at once that the executive producer, Perry Wolff, served in the same capacity on "The Selling of the Pentagon." Let's also dispose of Mr. Salant. If CBS News did not "finance the proposed invasion," it did, according to the House Report, provide funds for the leasing of a 67-foot schooner which was to be utilized by the invasion force, reimburse expenses for the transportation of weapons to be used by the conspirators, make payments to the leader of the conspiracy "with full knowledge of his identity and his criminal intentions." "Significant," of course, is what lawyers call a word of art; while exact figures were never forthcoming from CBS, the House Report states that "Project Nassau" cost more than $200,000. CBS cooperation with the government was grudging, and, the Report indicates, evoked at official instance (a CBS cameraman blew the whistle to the authorities).
But let the Subcommittee speak for itself. "The implications of what has been learned are disquieting. To the average viewer, un-sophisticated in the intricacies of television production, a network news documentary typically represents a scrupulously objective reporting of actual events shown as they actually transpired. If 'Project Nassau' is any indication, this is not always true. During the preparation of this news documentary, CBS employes and consultants intermingled and interacted with personages actively engaged in breaking the law. Large sums of money were made available to these individuals with no safeguards as to the manner in which these funds would be put to use. Events were set up and staged solely for the purposes of being filmed by the CBS camera. An individual who was retained as a consultant, and later an employe, of CBS, was allowed to or instructed to appear in the actual filming and to provide narration for it. . . .
"The CBS News organization, or at least the individuals charged with the immediate supervision of the project, displayed a shocking indifference to the real possibility that their organization and funds were being made use of to further illegal activities. The control exercised by CBS Management in New York over the activities of the producer in the field seems to have been practically nonexistent.... Had the decision ... not to proceed with the documentary been founded on a recognition of any of the deficiencies indicated above, the only remaining question would be why the decision was so long in coming. But, under the circumstances, the rationale for the decision is itself far from reassuring. Rather than responding to any taint of artificiality or fraud in the considerable volume of film which had been prepared, the decision was apparently made on the basis that the project was journalistically unsatisfactory in view of the unfinished nature of the enterprise."
“The law requires television quiz shows and commercials to be honest. Unfortunately, however, the public enjoys no similar protection against documentaries," a credibility gap which the Subcommittee hopes to bridge. We would like to offer a proposal or two of our own. Believe it or not, Frank Stanton, president of the Columbia Broadcasting System Inc., serves as Chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information. Unlike Vice President Agnew, who backed away from the idea, we suggest that he be asked to resign. Moreover, to judge by the record cited above (which has exhausted our space, but barely scratched the surface), CBS television stations stand wide open to challenge on their license renewals, and we urge concerned, public-spirited citizens – as well as the FCC – to respond. CBS, in our view, has forfeited its access to the nation's airwaves. The time has come to turn it off.
Mr. Speaker, television has become one of the most important forms of communication for information on the events of the day. Because the strength of our democratic system is based on a well-informed population, I greatly fear the consequences of activities such as those of CBS News. Furthermore, I am afraid that television news will suffer a serious credibility gap if these unwise and unfair techniques continue.