MONITORING MEDIA: TELEVISION'S UNCERTAIN IMAGE
Rivers, William L.
MONITORING MEDIA TELEVISIONS UNCERTAIN IMAGE WILLIAM L. RIVERS Some day television, which for twenty years has been at the center of our popular culture, will be subjected to the kind of close...
...Efron does not report on such matters...
...Nixon's campaign visit to Seattle as an anti-Nixon editorial: "says Nixon is over-confident...
...The chart comparing the number of words spoken on network news for Nixon with the number spoken for Humphrey, for example, showed 1,620 for Nixon, 8,458 for Humphrey...
...What else...
...On Page 284, Ms...
...The report on which this judgment is based reads: "In 1960, Nixon tried to run his campaign from top to bottom...
...This time he's found a group of smooth, intelligent, middle class loyalists, who, like Nixon, believe in heroes, the Puritan ethic, and the American pantheon...
...The New York Times headed its story: TV Violence Held Unharm-ful to Youth...
...Possibly the sharpest criticism came from Representative John M. Murphy, New York Democrat, who spoke in the House of "the shabby machinations of the television moguls on the latest study," and has introduced legislation for a new study to be made by the Federal Communications Commission...
...The bias, as it turned out, leaned the other way...
...She knew, and, believing that network reporters are a liberal cabal, she had no trouble deciding that their reports damned Nixon and promoted Humphrey...
...But the trouble with trying to revise my impressions so they will fit Ms...
...Well, it's simple to prescribe "a command of the English language," to treat only the thorniest of Ms...
...A critic may sniff that Ms...
...This time he lets them work and sometimes play...
...mocks their 'forgotten American' crusade...
...Did my own bias account for this impression...
...Many psychologists, communication specialists, and assorted researchers have, of course, offered narrow findings, some of them important...
...That, I think, is the great point...
...The Washington Post announced: Study Links TV, Child Aggression...
...a man with a love of country...
...warm...
...Perhaps all conservatives consider themselves under attack when someone deplores "extremists of the right...
...The report on television and violence carries many ifs and buts, and more than its share of howevers...
...His books include "The Opinionmakers" and "The Adversaries: Politics and the Press...
...and a thorough knowledge of the rules as set forth...
...Humphrey—considered themselves attacked by verbal assaults on extremists of the left...
...Perhaps the public hearings Senator Pastore has scheduled to begin in late March will provide a forum that will point the way toward such an analysis...
...She is concerned with the meanings and effects of words, not with inflections, expressions, and nuances...
...In the May 22, 1970, issue of Science, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Philip Boffey and John Walsh reported that broadcasters had been given veto power over the selection of the Scientific Advisory Committee and had blackballed seven leading social scientists...
...Those who did remember usually recalled more than one story, but the average for all viewers was a recall of only one story per newscast (of an average on the three network newscasts of nineteen stories...
...Efron's charts and summaries...
...His most interesting thoughts lurk in a sea of alluring nonsense that may be a devious sort of salesmanship...
...Senator Pastore's disappointment must be total...
...a man of perception and compassion...
...endowed with courage, common sense and compassion...
...Communication specialists Wilbur Schramm, Jack Lyle, and Edwin Parker published a notable book in 1961, Television in the Lives of Our Children, that established this unmistakably: What children bring to television—that is, what the children are—is as important in determining its effects as what television brings to them...
...and Otto Larsen, professor of sociology at the University of Washington, who had edited a book on violence and the mass media...
...Among them were Albert Bandura, professor of psychology at Stanford, who had published research indicating that children become more aggressive after watching violent films...
...an impressive man...
...a man with a passion for education...
...Robert Finch, who was then Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, explained: "It was probable in each case that the report of the advisory committee would contain substantial criticism of the industry, and it was felt that to protect the Government [his emphasis] from the charge of establishing a biased committee, whose recommendations would be suspect, the industry should be given the opportunity to identify any individuals whom it felt were not impartial...
...Andrew Stern, the lecturer, and Russ Neuman, the doctoral candidate, set out to determine what viewers remember from network television news reports...
...Efron spent an unreported amount of money and three years to produce The News Twisters...
...The Christian Science Monitor came down in the middle: TV Violence Has Some Effect...
...understanding...
...But over the years there have been remarkably few broad-gauge projects...
...Efron classifies a CBS report as an anti-Nixon editorial because "Reporter describes Nixon and staff as squares who don't conform to liberal-left cultural standards...
...The composition of the Committee drew heavy fire...
...On NBC: Hubert Humphrey is declared to be: a man of perception, compassion, who can understand the epic forces at work in the world and will guide the country to peace...
...Nixon in his campaign for the Presidency of the United States...
...It is ironic that a little study of television news by a senior lecturer and a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Berkeley is likely to tell us more and last longer than Television and Growing Up or Ms...
...They are more vintage Bing Crosby than Pete Seeger, and the Nixon staff is the prototype of their candidate's forgotten American...
...That being true, the fact that most of those of voting age in 1968 preferred squares to free-thinkers and Crosby to Seeger would lead me to classify this as pro-Nixon, if anything...
...Of those who watched all or part of a program, half did not recall a single broadcast story...
...Whether Marshall McLuhan's theories—which are nothing if not broad-gauge—offer anything more than tantalizing ideas will be a provocative question until someone finds a way to analyze and test them...
...Nor, apparently, a lazy one...
...It may be that another researcher, or perhaps even several others, would classify this as an anti-Nixon editorial that charges him with overconfidence...
...When viewers were asked whether they remembered anything from the newscasts they had seen, not one of those who watched ABC and NBC recalled the East Pakistan story...
...Perhaps the Surgeon-General's Scientific Advisory Committee should have hired Edith Efron to write its report...
...But when Pegler, a vehement anti-Communist, was confronted in court with some strident passages that sounded a bit unorthodox, he pronounced them the work of a Comsymp or worse—only to be told that he himself had written them years before...
...a man who is for racial and economic justice...
...Judging by Ms...
...The Surgeon-General's Scientific Advisory Committee spent $1 million and more than two years to say "however...
...a man with understanding of the epic forces governing the world...
...Senator Pastore may be interested to know that news stories picturing violence were well remembered...
...Newsweek, probably true to the spirit of the Committee's work, simply labeled its story: The However Report...
...Now we are given two new and massive studies that are making their way into the discussions of those who take television—or its influence—seriously...
...a man with a capacity to do good...
...I decline to go the whole distance and read the twenty-six volumes that house Ms...
...a man of great political sensitivity, strength and leadership qualities...
...a humanitarian...
...two others serve as industry consultants and another has done so...
...a man who is likely to bring peace...
...The hearings, scheduled to open momentarily, may well shed more light on Pastore's original question than does the million dollar equivocal response by the Surgeon-General's Committee...
...But Ms...
...Reading them might prove to me that the quotations I have cited (and others I could cite) are the only instances of error by Ms...
...Efron's The News Twisters, there is not an equivocal gene in her makeup...
...Now, it may be that the reporter delivered these words condescendingly, or even with a sneer...
...MONITORING MEDIA TELEVISIONS UNCERTAIN IMAGE WILLIAM L. RIVERS Some day television, which for twenty years has been at the center of our popular culture, will be subjected to the kind of close study and hard analysis that will enable us to say: This is what we know about how television affects us...
...Efron is also concerned about attacks on conservatism...
...suggests he is a liar...
...Efron's accounting, mean this: "All three networks clearly tried to defeat Mr...
...it is not at all surprising that news stories on the report cover a wild range...
...This judgment is based on these two sentences in the CBS report: "This week's tour, all in friendly territory, is to reassure the faithful, and to boost local GOP candidates...
...Of those who watched CBS, thirty per cent needed no reminding to recall the brutality...
...In the end, then, her ability to command the English language was immaterial...
...I was among many others who judged that the late Westbrook Pegler commanded English about as masterfully as anyone...
...Leonard Berkowitz, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, who had published research showing that aggressive films provoke aggressive behavior...
...For example, on Page 281 of her book, Ms...
...I can think of nothing that qualifies as landmark analysis—the kind of wide-ranging analysis so persuasive that it forces its way into any serious discussion of the impact of television...
...Senator Pastore seemed to expect the report on television and violence to be as clear-cut and unequivocal as the report of an earlier Surgeon-General's Committee on Smoking and Health, whose consequences included banning cigarette commercials from television...
...To say that they are revealing is to understate the case...
...During a seven-week period, she recorded the prime-time newscasts of all three television networks—a total of more than 300,000 words—isolated all stories that dealt with ten pivotal issues in the Presidential campaigns, then excerpted all "for" and "against" opinion on those issues...
...The songs aboard the press plane on the electric piano soothe, they do not protest...
...Ms...
...Nixon says he is warning his staff against overconfi-dence, but he himself hardly looks worried...
...Efron classifies a CBS report on Mr...
...Efron's description of her method, which requires only "a command of the English language...
...On Page 309, she classifies a Humphrey quotation broadcast by CBS as "Anti-Conservative...
...Efron...
...Efron's conclusions is that she does present charts and summaries...
...It began work more than two years ago as a result of a letter to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from Senator John O. Pastore, Connecticut Democrat, requesting an investigation directed by the Surgeon-General "which would help resolve the question of whether there is a causal connection between televised crime and violence and anti-social behavior by individuals, especially children...
...Pollster Elmo Roper conducted a series of viewer surveys from 1959 to 1967 which made it clear that television has become the prime source of important news for most Americans...
...self-confident...
...It seems clear from all this that we are still pretty much in the dark concerning the impact of television, and that the truly broad-gauged, impartial analysis which is needed is still in the future...
...The reason is Ms...
...Perhaps...
...enthusiastic...
...An aide of Murphy's, Carl Perian, who was staff director of a 1964 Senate Subcommittee that did a partial study of the same subject, looked at the documents in the new study and said that in view of "the involvement of the television industry" in it, neither he nor Representative Murphy has any doubt "that the report is a fraud— purposeful fraud...
...On CBS: Hubert Humphrey is declared to be: a fighter and a patriot...
...Humphrey's words were: "The Rap Browns, the Stokely Carmichaels, the extremists of the left and the right will not have their way, and we will not allow them to terrorize or stampede America or cause us to lose our sense of perspective...
...Efron's conditions, but who has it...
...an intense, aggressive man...
...a man with a commitment to freedom...
...The report never seems to offer even a tentative conclusion in one sentence without withdrawing it in the next...
...a fighter and a patriot...
...imaginative...
...a detailed knowledge of the major positions and arguments on the political controversies to be studied...
...This was predictable...
...Efron set out in 1968 to determine whether the newscasts on the Presidential election were biased...
...The wonder is that we now know so little...
...Efron was not playing such guessing games, that she knew who had delivered the sentences she classified...
...A staff writer for TV Guide, Ms...
...Of these, five had links with the television industry including two who are full-time executives of networks...
...When the seven had been eliminated, staff members at the National Institutes of Mental Health and HEW chose twelve to serve on the Scientific Advisory Committee...
...I wrote to the networks to ask for direct quotations from the period...
...To put a fine point on it, a report that Nixon's aides were unconventional might have injured him...
...Efron's book...
...CBS (which has hired two independent research organizations, one to study Ms...
...The more ambitious, Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence, is the report of the Surgeon-General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior...
...Only CBS showed brutality...
...I have read only The News Twisters, ten pages of quotations provided by CBS, and a report from ABC...
...When the interviewers helped by reading off headlines, the average viewer recalled four stories but could recall no details about them, and four others for which he could provide some of the details...
...William L. Rivers, professor of communication at Stanford University, has worked as a reporter, editorial writer, Washington correspondent, editor, columnist, and radio and television news analyst...
...Whether they deserve this kind of attention is another matter...
...Efron summarizes the personal praise for Humphrey this way: "On ABC: Hubert Humphrey is declared to be: able to lead and heal the world...
...But that would make sense only if all liberals—including Mr...
...The results, by Ms...
...a man of exacting qualities of mind and spirit, of settled principles and clear vision...
...the last best hope of the unfortunate...
...a man with a capacity to lead us to peace...
...her book is almost devoid of the direct quotations that might prove her case...
...a good and honorable man...
...spontaneous...
...I have reason to believe, though, that slogging through all those volumes isn't necessary...
...The report met such a barrage of criticism that Pastore, obviously frustrated by its ambiguous qualities, scheduled public hearings on the Committee's controversial production...
...But surely only an extreme partisan would consider anything in those two sentences a suggestion that Nixon is a liar...
...On one occasion, all three networks broadcast stories about troubles in East Pakistan...
...Humphrey had seemed to me to be such a pathetic figure during the 1968 campaign that the notion that anyone had been promoting him was almost as surprising as Ms...
...Efron's transcribed tape recordings...
...They made many telephone calls immediately after news programs broadcast by ABC, CBS, and NBC...
...Efron supports this conclusion with page after page of bar charts and paragraph after paragraph summarizing and judging newscast statements—nearly all of them showing a bias favoring Hubert Humphrey that can only be described as stunning...
...beloved by the poor and downtrodden of the nation...
...A foundation official who has been doling out funds for research for more than a decade told me recently that he receives so many requests for money from researchers studying television that there are times when he wonders whether anyone studies anything else...
...Efron's research methods, the other to review the seven-week broadcast period she analyzed in her book) provided ten pages of quotations from relevant broadcasts...
...Senator Pastore said last September: "I would hope that the Surgeon-General in due time will come before this committee not with a lot of ifs and buts, but will tell us in simple language whether or not the broadcasters ought to be put on notice and be very, very careful in this area, because it might have an effect on certain people...
...If so, the marks of the anti-Nixon editorial would be clear...
Vol. 36 • April 1972 • No. 4
