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Vice President Spiro Agnew
"On the National Media"
Speech Delivered at Des Moines, Iowa
November 13, 1969

Tonight I want to discuss the importance of the television-news medium to the
American people. No nation depends more on the intelligent judgment of its
citizens. No medium has a more profound influence over public opinion. Nowhere
in our system are there fewer checks on vast power. So, nowhere should there be
more conscientious responsibility exercised than by the news media. The question
is: Are we demanding enough of our television news presentations? And, are the
men of this medium demanding enough of themselves?

Monday night, a week ago, President Nixon delivered the most important address
of his Administration, one of the most important of our decade. His subject was
Vietnam. His hope was to rally the American people to see the conflict through
to a lasting and just peace in the Pacific. For thirty-two minutes, he reasoned
with a nation that has suffered almost a third of a million casualties in the
longest war in its history.

When the President completed his address--an address that he spent weeks in
preparing--his words and policies were subjected to instant analysis and
querulous criticism. The audience of seventy-million Americans--gathered to hear
the President of the United States--was inherited by a small band of network
commentators and self-appointed analysts, the majority of whom expressed, in one
way or another, their hostility to what he had to say.

It was obvious that their minds were made up in advance. Those who recall the
fumbling and groping that followed President Johnson's dramatic disclosure of
his intention not to seek reelection have seen these men in a genuine state of
non-preparedness. This was not it.

One commentator twice contradicted the President's statement about the exchange
of correspondence with Ho Chi Minh. Another challenged the President's abilities
as a politician. A third asserted that the President was now "following the
Pentagon line." Others, by the expressions on their faces, the tone of their
questions, and the sarcasm of their response, made clear their sharp
disapproval.

To guarantee in advance that the President's plea for national unity would be
challenged, one network trotted out Averell Harriman for the occasion.
Throughout the President's address he waited in the wings. When the President
concluded, Mr. Harriman recited perfectly. He attacked the Thieu government as
unrepresentative; he criticized the President's speech for various deficiencies;
he twice issued a call to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to debate
Vietnam once again; he stated his belief that the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese
did not really want a military take-over of South Vietnam; he told a little
anecdote about a "very, very responsible" fellow he had met in the North
Vietnamese delegation.

All in all, Mr. Harriman offered a broad range of gratuitous advice--challenging
and contradicting the policies outlined by the President of the United States.
Where the President had issued a call for unity, Mr. Harriman was encouraging
the country not to listen to him.

A word about Mr. Harriman. For ten months he was America's chief negotiator at
the Paris Peace Talks--a period in which the United States swapped some of the
greatest military concessions in the history of warfare for an enemy agreement
on the shape of a bargaining table. Like Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," Mr.
Harriman seems to be under some heavy compulsion to justify his failures to
anyone who will listen. The networks have shown themselves willing to give him
all the air-time he desires.

Every American has a right to disagree with the President of the United States,
and to express publicly that disagreement.

But the President of the United States has a right to communicate directly with
the people who elected him, and the people of this country have the right to
make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a Presidential
address, without having the President's words and thoughts characterized through
the prejudice of hostile critics before they can even be digested.

When Winston Churchill rallied public opinion to stay the course against
Hitler's Germany, he did not have to contend with a gaggle of commentators
raising doubts about whether he was reading public opinion right, or whether
Britain had the stamina to see the war through. When President Kennedy rallied
the nation in the Cuban Missile Crisis, his address to the people was not chewed
over by a round-table of critics who disparaged the course of action he had
asked America to follow.

The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this little
group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every
Presidential address, but more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting,
presenting, and interpreting the great issues of our nation.

First, let us define that power. At least forty-million Americans each night, it
is estimated, watch the network news. Seven million of them view ABC; the
remainder being divided between NBC and CBS. According to Harris polls and other
studies, for millions of Americans, the networks are the sole source of national
and world news.

In Will Rogers' observation, what you knew was what you read in the newspaper.
Today, for growing millions of Americans, it is what they see and hear on their
television sets.

How is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering perhaps no
more than a dozen "anchormen," commentators, and executive producers, settle
upon the 20 minutes or so of film and commentary that is to reach the public.
This selection is made from the 90 to 180 minutes that may be available. Their
powers of choice are broad. They decide what forty to fifty-million Americans
will learn of the day's events in the nation and the world.

We cannot measure this power and influence by traditional democratic standards,
for these men can create national issues overnight. They can make or break--by
their coverage and commentary--a moratorium on the war. They can elevate men
from local obscurity to national prominence within a week. They can reward some
politicians with national exposure, and ignore others. For millions of
Americans, the network reporter who covers a continuing issue, like ABM or Civil
Rights, becomes, in effect, the presiding judge in a national trial by jury.

It must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the
national knowledge. Through news, documentaries, and specials, they have often
used their power constructively and creatively to awaken the public conscience
to critical problems.

The networks made "hunger" and "black-lung disease" national issues overnight.
The TV networks have done what no other medium could have done in terms of
dramatizing the horrors of war. The networks have tackled our most difficult
social problems with a directness and immediacy that is the gift of their
medium. They have focused the nation's attention on its environmental abuses, on
pollution in the Great Lakes, and the threatened ecology of the Everglades.

But it was also the networks that elevated Stokely Carmichael and George Lincoln
Rockwell from obscurity to national prominence. Nor is their power confined to
the substantive.

A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the
middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of
a public official, or the wisdom of a government policy. One Federal
Communications Commissioner considers the power of the networks to equal that of
local, state, and federal governments combined. Certainly, it represents a
concentration of power over American public opinion unknown in history.

What do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce
and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the
commentators, most Americans know little, other than that they reflect an urbane
and assured presence, seemingly well informed on every important matter.

We do know that, to a man, these commentators and producers live and work in the
geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C. or New York City--the
latter of which James Reston terms the "most unrepresentative community in the
entire United States." Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their
own parochialism. We can deduce that these men thus read the same newspapers,
and draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they
talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to
their shared viewpoints.

Do they allow their biases to influence the selection and presentation of the
news? David Brinkley states, "Objectivity is impossible to normal human
behavior." Rather, he says, we should strive for "fairness." Another anchorman
on a network news-show contends: "You can't expunge all your private convictions
just because you sit in a seat like this and a camera starts to stare at you . .
. I think your program has to reflect what your basic feelings are. I'll plead
guilty to that."

Less than a week before the 1968 election, this same commentator charged that
President Nixon's campaign commitments were no more durable than campaign
balloons. He claimed that, were it not for fear of a hostile reaction, Richard
Nixon would be giving into, and I quote the commentator, "his natural instinct
to smash the enemy with a club or go after him with a meat axe." Had this
slander been made by one political candidate about another, it would have been
dismissed by most commentators as a partisan assault. But this attack emanated
from the privileged sanctuary of a network studio and therefore had the apparent
dignity of an objective statement.

The American people would rightly not tolerate this kind of concentration of
power in government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration
in the hands of a tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no
one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government?

The views of this fraternity do not represent the views of America. That is why
such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the President's
address--and how the networks reviewed it.

Not only did the country receive the President's address with a warmer reception
than the networks; so, too, did the Congress of the United States. Yesterday,
the President was notified that 300 individual Congressmen and 59 Senators of
both parties had endorsed his efforts for peace.

As with other American institutions, perhaps it is time that the networks were
made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the
people they serve.

I am not asking for government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am
asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that
forty-million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men
responsible to their corporate employers, and filtered through a handful of
commentators who admit to their own set of biases.

The questions I am raising tonight should have been raised by others long ago.
They should have been raised by those Americans who have traditionally
considered the preservation of freedom of speech and freedom of the press their
special provinces of responsibility and concern. They should have been raised by
those Americans who share the view of the late Justice Learned Hand, that "right
conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than
through any kind of authoritative selection."

Advocates for the networks have claimed a first-amendment right to the same
unlimited freedoms held by the great newspapers of America.

The situations are not identical. Where The New York Times reaches 800,000
people, NBC reaches twenty times that number with its evening news. Nor can the
tremendous impact of seeing television film and hearing commentary be compared
with reading the printed page.

We are not going to cut off our television sets and listen to the phonograph
because the air waves do not belong to the networks; they belong to the people.

A decade ago, before the network news acquired such dominance over public
opinion, Walter Lippmann spoke to the issue: "There is an essential and radical
difference," he stated, "between television and printing.... the three or four
competing television stations control virtually all that can be received over
the air by ordinary television sets. But, besides the mass-circulation dailies,
there are the weeklies, the monthlies, the out-of-town newspapers, and books. If
a man does not like his newspaper, he can read another from out of town, or wait
for a weekly news magazine. It is not ideal. But it is infinitely better than
the situation in television. There, if a man does not like what the networks
offer him, all he can do is turn them off, and listen to a phonograph."

"Networks," he stated, "which are few in number, have a virtual monopoly of a
whole medium of communication." The newspapers of mass circulation have no
monopoly of the medium of print.

A "virtual monopoly of a whole medium of communication" is not something a
democratic people should blithely ignore.

And we are not going to cut off our television sets and listen to the phonograph
because the air waves do not belong to the networks; they belong to the people.

As Justice Byron White wrote in his landmark opinion six months ago, "It is the
right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is
paramount."

It is argued that this power presents no danger in the hands of those who have
used it responsibly.

But as to whether or not the networks have abused the power they enjoy, let us
call as our first witnesses, former Vice President Humphrey and the City of
Chicago.

According to Theodore H. White, television's intercutting of the film from the
streets of Chicago with the "current proceedings on the floor of the convention
created the most striking and false political picture of 1968--the nomination of
a man for the American Presidency by the brutality and violence of merciless
police."

If we are to believe a recent report of the House Commerce Committee, then
television's presentation of the violence in the streets worked an injustice on
the reputation of the Chicago police.

According to the Committee findings, one network in particular presented "a
one-sided picture which in large measure exonerates the demonstrators and
protestors." Film of provocations of police that was available never saw the
light of day, while the film of the police response which the protestors
provoked was shown to millions.

Another network showed virtually the same scene of violence--from three separate
angles--without making clear it was the same scene.

While the full report is reticent in drawing conclusions, it is not a document
to inspire confidence in the fairness of the network news.

Our knowledge of the impact of network news on the national mind is far from
complete. But some early returns are available. Again, we have enough
information to raise serious questions about its effect on a democratic society.

Several years ago, Fred Friendly, one of the pioneers of network news, wrote
that its missing ingredients were "conviction, controversy and a point of view."
The networks have compensated with a vengeance.

And in the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the
end value--to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result--to inform or to
confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitement, more
drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability?

Normality has become the nemesis of the evening news.

Gresham's law seems to be operating in the network news.

Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the
rational.
Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver
is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crisis settled at the negotiating
table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike--or,
better yet, violence along the picket line. Normality has become the nemesis of
the evening news.

The upshot of all this controversy is that a narrow and distorted picture of
America often emerges from the televised news. A single dramatic piece of the
mosaic becomes, in the minds of millions, the whole picture. The American who
relies upon television for his news might conclude that the majority of American
students are embittered radicals; that the majority of black Americans feel no
regard for their
country; that violence and lawlessness are the rule, rather than the exception,
on the American campus. None of these conclusions is true.

Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the offices
of the government in Washington, but in the studios of the networks in New York.

Television may have destroyed the old stereotypes--but has it not created new
ones in their place?

What has this passionate pursuit of "controversy" done to the politics of
progress through logical compromise, essential to the functioning of a
democratic society?

The members of Congress who follow their principles and philosophy quietly in a
spirit of compromise are unknown to many Americans--while the loudest and most
extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every man in the street.

How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know
that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their antics for the
next news show?

We have heard demands that Senators and Congressmen and Judges make known all
their financial connections--so that the public will know who and what
influences their decisions or votes. Strong arguments can be made for that view.
But when a single commentator or producer, night after night, determines for
millions of people how much of each side of a great issue they are going to see
and hear, should he not first disclose his personal views on the issue as well?

In this search for excitement and controversy, has more than equal time gone to
that minority of Americans who specialize in attacking the United States, its
institutions and its citizens?

Tonight, I have raised questions. I have made no attempt to suggest answers.
These answers must come from the media men. They are challenged to turn their
critical powers on themselves. They are challenged to direct their energy,
talent and conviction toward improving the quality and objectivity of news
presentation. They are challenged to structure their own civic ethics to relate
their great freedom with their great responsibility.

And the people of America are challenged, too--challenged to press for
responsible news presentations. The people can let the networks know that they
want their news straight and objective. The people can register their complaints
on bias through mail to the networks and phone calls to local stations. This is
one case where the people must defend themselves; where the citizen--not
government--must be the reformer; where the consumer can be the most effective
crusader.

By way of conclusion, let me say that every elected leader in the United States
depends on these men of the media. Whether what I have said to you tonight will
be heard and seen at all by the nation is not my decision; it is not your
decision; it is their decision.

In tomorrow's edition of the Des Moines Register you will be able to read a news
story detailing what I said tonight; editorial comment will be reserved for the
editorial page, where it belongs. Should not the same wall of separation exist
between news and comment on the nation's networks?

We would never trust such power over public opinion in the hands of an elected
government--it is time we questioned it in the hands of a small and unelected
elite. The great networks have dominated America's airwaves for decades; the
people are entitled to a full accounting of their stewardship.