The News Twisters
Todorovich, Miro
Book Review: The News Twisters by Edith Efron Nash, $7.95 The Summer of 1968 was not just an interlude in yet another presidential election year. Memories from media-reporting of the Chicago...
...Others collected interesting horror stories ("Did you SEE last night...
...Excerpted stories contained explicit or implicit opinions in the form of direct quotes, paraphrases, narrative reports and editorials...
...Unfortunately, over the past years, no such analytical method has been devised, and the FCC has no way of checking systematically on the neutrality of the nationwide network news services...
...The entire content-analysis aimed at the establishment of an objective measure with which to gauge the degree of compliance of the national TV networks with the so called "Fairness Doctrine...
...The press, on the other hand, is not subject to licensing and the First Amendment is presently understood as giving the press the right to be biased...
...Miss Efron zeroed in with good reason on the TV-segment (and by implication on the radio counterpart) of the general news media: It is this segment which is within the purview of the Fairness Doctrine...
...The Fairness Doctrine constitutes one of its regulatory rules and its appropriateness was upheld by the Supreme Court...
...These fine and yet so far-reaching distinctions which caused a very great difference in the treatment of the airwave and paper media may have by now lost most of their validity...
...Gone are the golden days of the lone, hardworking, competitive, investigative reporter...
...Miss Efron noted very succinctly that "in the theoretical void which prevails, the Fairness Doctrine is virtually unenforceable...
...This doctrine, promulgated in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission requires from broadcasters that they seek and provide "non-partisan," "equal" and "equally forceful" coverage of contrasting opinion on controversial issues...
...Will this time the various news-faucets be kept even-handedly open or will the flow be manipulated to produce a biased propa-gandistic mixture...
...The number of these main communication channels is now the same, three, as the number of the coast-to-coast TV networks...
...has pulled out of the ground conflict in Indochina and the eighteen-year-olds will be showing up at the polls...
...These were collected and tabulated in two basic columns: for or against each particular issue (or person...
...Over a period of seven weeks, from September 16 to November 4, she and her associates tape-recorded the prime-tim'e newscasts of the three national TV networks...
...Four years have passed from the last presidential race and many things have changed...
...in particular, longer monitoring periods would supply larger statistical samples from which to extract more definitive verdicts...
...The tapes were subsequently transcribed yielding some 300,000 words, and this output was analyzed for a selected number of topics related to the campaign in progress...
...Edith Efron's book can help everyone come to a personal conclusion...
...But one thing has surely not changed: the grip of the TV medium on the supply of news ∔ and opinion ∔ towards the American voter...
...The trustee of this domain, the FCC, was therefore given power early in the game to issue licenses and regulate the operation of licensees...
...As every "first," her operating model can stand further improvements and refinements...
...the printed word is not...
...Thus the Fairness Doctrine...
...The News Twisters makes extremely interesting and enjoyable reading...
...Edith Efron went them one better: she looked for hard facts before announcing a judgment...
...However, even in its present rudimentary form, the EE (Edith Efron) test supplies valid and unimpeachable conclusions which point an accusing finger at the main pillars of the TV industry...
...The Soviets have been eased out of Egypt while, at home, fiscal matters have captured the attention of the American electorate to a degree unprecedented in recent memory...
...As the political process geared itself for the final days of the preelection finish, many questioned the even-handedness and quality of campaign coverage...
...In general it is agreed as a matter of sheer applicability, that every order, statute or doctrine must have an associated criterion, methodological procedure or what have you by which an agency, court, legislator or ordinary citizen can test and ascertain an assumed compliance (or noncompliance...
...The final results of her endeavor are now in book form...
...All this means that selectivity aspects of both television and newspaper journalism are becoming increasingly similar...
...Some lamented the sad state of the art...
...Her approach was quite simple...
...Most of the news from foreign lands ∔ stories, quotes, photographs ∔ are supplied to the domestic market by the Associated Press, the United Press International and the New York Times Service...
...Its title, The News Twisters aptly summarizes her reported findings...
...In the case of electronic media, one could, on the other hand, have expected at most only a very limited number of networks with a significant national impact...
...Memories from media-reporting of the Chicago scene were still quite fresh in the minds of those for whom the TV tube is a window towards the outside world...
...The U.S...
...If one of the media branches needs the Fairness Doctrine to protect the citizens from possible propagandists aberrations, it is only fair to assume that the other news-disseminating branches are also in need of such a doctrine...
...It permits for the first time, and in a relatively simple statistical way, an evaluation of the state of affairs within the area supposedly covered and regulated by the Fairness Doctrine...
...Any slanting or bias in their news and opinion coverage could then result in a propa-gandistic rather than informative programming...
...Miss Efron, naturally, names names and supplies their transcribed opinion...
...The above difference in approach was once justifiable because of the numerical abundance of printed materials ∔ newspapers, periodicals and books which guaranteed an even-handed availability of news and of equally forceful opinion if not from a single publication then from the totality of all publications...
...Finally, Miss Efron added up the numbers of words spoken on both sides of each issue and used the resulting totals as indicators of a possible opinion-induced selectivity by network reporters and editors...
...The same is true for the bulk of the non-local domestic news...
...In order to fill this vacuum, The News Twisters presents not only the conclusions from her investigative endeavors but also supplies a newly developed procedure...
...These are even more interesting when juxtaposed with current pronouncements made by many of the old faces found in the present campaign...
...Simultaneously, the continuous decline in the number of independent newspapers and magazines is bringing the reading public ever closer to the time when it will be at the mercy of the monopolistic power of the surviving few...
...Justice Byron White wrote that, "Congress need not stand idly by and permit those with licenses to ignore the problems which beset the people or to exclude from the airways anything but their own views of fundamental questions...
...Miro Todorovich Miro Todorovich is executive secretary of the University Centers for Rational Alternatives...
...Historically, the very existence of this doctrine ∔ and of the earlier more restrictive "Mayflower Decision" of the FCC ∔ rests on the fact that the airwaves are considered to be within the public domain...
Vol. 6 • November 1972 • No. 2
