An Interview With Edith Efron
An Interview with Edith Efron Edith Efron is the author of The News Twisters, a study of network news which argues that in the seven weeks prior to the 1968 presidential election, network news...
...Nixon had simply shed his light upon them, but he didn't do it...
...There is an elitist concept that anyone who is an avowed radical or an avowed conservative is definitionally a partisan human being who cannot be objective...
...The Alternative: In such a free press situation do you think the liberals would lose their near monopoly of the airwaves...
...Miss Efron: Well, because that is'the state of the intellectual culture, and they would still continue to dominate it, and since the Republicans and conservatives who would be the logical ideological competition for them don't particularly invest in intellectual activities and virtually never support their intellectuals, competition would be hard to come by...
...When you consider who were Mr...
...I was curious about just this since Mr...
...What about people like Bill Buckley...
...The Alternative: What's the answer then...
...The problem only exists in the one government regulated industry which gives away the ideological and artistic product as a sort of accessory to advertising - as if novels were given away as a side issue with mattresses...
...They live like poor orphans...
...They've been turned into bigshots - Galbraith is another - they've been erected into tremendous figures of great significance by Democratic politicians...
...And better than that we can't ask...
...The Alternative: And what exactly would this do...
...But the real problem is not that there are no conservative intellectuals...
...How do you think the bias can be removed...
...See Miro Todorovich's review elsewhere in this issue...
...Miss Efron: Well that argument, in principle, was folly to begin with...
...In addition, in the business of writing it's hard to find good writers, it's hard to find good TV people and they rely heavily on personal recommendations...
...I was wondering why this limitation on the intellectual things that he pushes when he has that kind of money and that was what I questioned him about...
...You can't violate the First Amendment...
...Practically speaking one would have a free press operating within the culture as it is, and at least the Republicans and conservatives would no longer have anyone but themselves to blame if the thing keeled over against them...
...The Alternative: Why do you think this liberal bias existed in the first place...
...Do you favor selling the airwaves...
...Miss Efron: It still isn't a plot...
...But they will not look at a broke little intellectual and understand that he contains the ammunition they need for a different kind of battle...
...And, at one point in the conversation he boasted to me that there were 125 newspapers which would print his letters to the editor...
...Hunt has limitless fortunes apparently and yet he he puts out something equivalent to a mimeographed sheet...
...Land is limited...
...The Alternative: If government would get out of the business of regulating the medium we could sell the airwaves to the highest bidder and with cable television and all the other technological advancements, we would then have a wider spectrum...
...Rich Republican trustees are financing these universities which are, most of the time, persecuting the conservative professors, squeezing them out...
...When you get right down to it, in my own experience, the Republicans and conservatives have expressed great joy with my existence and with my book, but it never occurred to the Republican party to buy 50,000 copies...
...The Alternative: You are saying that Republicans and conservatives tend not to be interested in ideas...
...In the following interview The Alternative questions her about the underlying reasons for this bias and her suggestions as to how the bias might be eliminated...
...This is liberal megalomania...
...Miss Efron: Then presumably television stations would all be catering to whatever audiences they could get, which is no more and no less than other people do in other media...
...William Buckley would be considered partisan and Mr...
...That this requires intellectual skills is a major reason no such vision is apparent after four years of Republican rule...
...The Alternative: The argument is though, isn't it, that the government has to be involved in broadcasting because the number of frequencies is limited...
...Do you think a plot exists today...
...The Alternative: What you're saying, in effect, is that if the liberals were cagey they would come out for selling the airwaves...
...Books are not something that they deal with...
...It's as if, psychologically, that is not their terrain, that they feel they may not enter and they don't even know why...
...The culture is dominately liberal, has been so for some forty years and has been moving steadily to the left in the intellectual world for that period of time...
...And that is, because the government has been handing out monopolies the whole broadcast industry has not had its First Amendment rights intact since practically the beginning...
...Miss Efron: What it would do, simply, is create a free market situation in which ultimately it would reflect the culture such as it is...
...Republicans don't appreciate this and unless they put money behind intellectuals and hire them, and support them and nurture them nothing will change...
...Yes, yes it's a tragedy...
...And it is totally decentralized, so you don't have anything but individuals selling to individuals...
...Miss Efron: You can't...
...Miss Efron: There is a tendency, and when members of their own group need help - and there are thousands and thousands and thousands, but they would still be in the minority next to the liberals - they don't support them...
...It is the government control of broadcasting that causes this...
...In other words, it didn't start out as a plot against those who did not share their views, but historically and professionally it has ended up with virtually all of them coming from one small portion of the spectrum...
...But please notice they are selling to papers that are operating in a free market...
...I saw a very remarkable example of this when I had dinner with H.L...
...Hunt, you could buy those papers," and he looked at me as if I had gone mad...
...Miss Efron: Well, in a general way, I think one of the major reasons is historical...
...The Alternative: You seem to feel then that the medium is pretty much dominated by liberals and that this distorts the news...
...When they think of a powerful man, they think of a big industrialist who could manipulate the materials of the earth in a long range and potent way, and that is power - that's one kind...
...It says, "To maintain some claim to political power in such times, a dominant party or elite needs to have articulated some vision of the common good - something a party can stand on and stand for beyond its own continuation in office...
...Nixon isn't unique in this seeming disdain for intellectual battles...
...So does that mean that because all the land is bought up in Scarsdale that we should rush out and nationalize Scarsdale...
...But, unless they grasped the opportunity - and they show no inclination of doing this - things wouldn't improve...
...That is exactly right...
...Do you agree...
...The Alternative: I take it you feel Mr...
...And that is the reason you have the total variety of thoughts and art out on the market...
...Schlesinger, Mr...
...They really have to be neutral because they just won't get bought if they aren't...
...I think opening the airwaves would make things a little better anyway, but maybe most of all it would take way the defense that Republicans and conservatives have which keeps them from acknowledging their own responsibility for the vacuum...
...The Alternative: And you're saying this is the big failure of Republicans and conservatives...
...The Alternative: Why is this...
...The Alternative: An editorial in the Wall Street Journal on August 21 suggests this very idea...
...Miss Efron: It would give them the opportunity...
...There is some evidence of that, but I'm not prepared to say until I've finished the study I'm doing now...
...Miss Efron: The only way, theoretically, is to run networks the way you run TV Guide, which is to say that you have people from all points of the political spectrum doing your coverage and your interpretation...
...It is widely known that Miss Efron feels television news is dominated by liberals...
...Why is it that there are many, many rich conservative and right wing foundations, but that tremendous grants to produce intellectual studies that would influence the culture do not come from them...
...Miss Efron: That's the basic problem or at least to get them to understand that the problem is ideas and to put money be mind it...
...They would no longer be able to say that broadcasting was legally and politically and economically rigged against their views...
...A tremendous compensation could be made to try to be more fair...
...Miss Efron: Yes I do...
...The Alternative: You used the word "plot...
...Miss Efron: Theoretically, it would exist, but it could be very restrained...
...And journalists tend to come from that world...
...Miss Efron: Yes, that's right...
...They're extremely rare and when they are really sophisticated and articulate as Bill Buckley is or Bill Rusher or James Kilpatrick, then they tend to be grabbed up as tokens...
...Miss Efron: Right...
...materials influencing the culture artistically, politically and every which way, and the great big conservative and Republican foundations are investing their dough in banks and real estate...
...The Alternative: And how would this be done in practice...
...There is this weird assumption that only an avowed liberal - if he doesn't wear a button of some kind - is capable of such objectivity...
...That increases the likelihood of people of like mind recommending each other...
...There are, and there are conservative professors from coast to coast, but they're hopelessly abandoned...
...The Alternative: In this situation would a few influential national networks still get a high proportion of viewership...
...The Alternative: How can the networks be opened up to diverse opinions...
...If television news departments are now controlled by an elitist group of liberals who refuse to hire people with opposing viewpoints, how do you make them hire other people...
...Miss Efron: Yes, that is exactly right...
...Miss Efron: My answer is to go underneath the reason for which they are in this position of untouchability...
...Republicans just don't do that...
...The last four years there could have been a tremendous collection of brains walking in and out of those White House doors and there would have been a whole group of prominent intellectuals of a contrasting persuasion if Mr...
...Miss Efron: They're rare you see...
...It's totally irrational...
...Com-mager, and they're just two of a band of historians...
...Why is it that Human Events and National Review and publications of that type are always broke...
...At any rate, as of the present, cable television renders this argument for government control of the frequencies technologically anachronistic...
...Why is it that only Ford and Rockefeller are pouring out...
...An Interview with Edith Efron Edith Efron is the author of The News Twisters, a study of network news which argues that in the seven weeks prior to the 1968 presidential election, network news showed a distinctly liberal bias...
...For one thing, I might as well have been talking Greek...
...I'm also talking about the businessmen who never give Bill Buckley any advertising...
...The Alternative: You said the underlying problem is that conservatives generally aren't interested in ideas...
...The Alternative: So what you are saying then is that if we would open up the airwaves this would give Republicans and conservatives, for example, a better opportunity to get their points across, but you don't think it would have any real effect...
...I said, "But Mr...
...It was as if he couldn't grasp that there was a more complex dimension open to him...
...Miss Efron: Just the way AP and UPI sell enormous amounts of material...
...The Alternative: In summary you feel the only way to eliminate or offset liberal bias of the media is to first, open the airwaves, and second, to get Republicans and conservatives interested in ideas...
...The Alternative: Do you think that bias still exists...
...Thus Mr...
...The normal and natural fighters in that realm are intellectuals...
...A great many things are limited...
...Miss Efron: Well, definitionally this would knock out monopoly, but they would not lose their dominance of the culture...
...It's all pay...
...it's pay poetry, pay novels, pay newspapers, pay movies, pay theaters, pay everything...
...The Alternative: As I understand it, the overall conclusion of The News Twist-ters was, very briefly, that television news had a liberal bias in 1968...
...Every other medium of communication in the United States works on a privately owned basis - the product is sold on a free market...
...There are now a limitless number of channels...
...Hunt...
...A third book, a study of network coverage of the 1972 presidential election is in the works...
...If they were really intelligent they would let the airwaves be free and then stand there and grin, because they would have deprived the conservatives and Republicans of a legitimate argument and they would still run the roost...
...President Nixon gets in the White House and in four years there has never been a Republican intellectual brain trust...
...Republican or conservative journalists have not immediately been turned into the guys that get the scoops.Whereas the Democrats and the liberals always take care of their own...
...Her most recent book, How CBS Tried to Kill a Book (Nash, $7.95), details one network's reaction to The News Twisters...
...Miss Efron: Yes, and I think that the present situation actually acts as a disguise, because it's very convenient for them to be able to shout that they're victimized, without ever facing the fact that they have fortunes they are not fighting with...
...Miss Efron: That's right...
...Eric Sevareid, who is a lifelong liberal, is not...
...This bias they complain about is an intellectual and ideological problem...
Vol. 6 • November 1972 • No. 2
