The Media and the Public:
MAY, RONALD W.
The Media and the Public Responsibility in Mass Communication. By Wilbur Schramm. Harper. 391 pp. $4.50. Revieived by Ronald W May Washington correspondent, Madison (Wis.) "Capital-Times ';...
...The jacket also informs us that for an unspecified period he was a "correspondent" for the Associated Press, but this experience is clearly subordinate to his teaching English at the University of Iowa, directing the latter's journalism school, advising the Army, Navy and Air Force (we are not told on what), and winning a 1952 fiction prize...
...This seems like a chicken-and-egg question...
...Mostly, the name of the newspaper, television program or whatever is not given, but we are told they were actual incidents in which value judgments were made...
...Schramm is mildly critical of mass-media directors because they seek to avoid sticky decisions...
...He agrees with the "social responsibility" concept gradually coming into force that the press —and the other media—should attempt to give the unvarnished facts in its news sections and offer interpretations and prejudices in clearly separate compartments—personal columns, editorial pages, commentary programs...
...Today we played big a murder, two accidents and a society divorce...
...Case 94...
...Schramm reviews the gradual movement in American newspapers away from the "libertarian" concept that the press represents a marketplace of ideas and that it isn't too important if newspapers distort news since these distortions cancel each other out and the truth will be apparent to the citizenry...
...The best feature of the book is a series of 107 "cases" in which the right or wrong of an action is in doubt...
...The nation still awaits the book, written from inside, that will point fingers and name names...
...We say, 'But that is the stuff people are interested in...
...We would like to know editors' thinking on these compromises, and how it varies among large and small newspapers, Eastern and Western newspapers, newspapers that have monopolies in their cities and those that don't...
...Nearly every editor has wrestled with a similar issue, resolving it in a compromise that leaves him dissatisfied...
...Professor Wilbur Schramm, of Stanford University, is the latest member of the academic community to analyze newspapers—throwing in radio and television for good measure...
...He sees, correctly, that this method may be merely confusing and that the truth may often not emerge victorious from a battle of untruths...
...He is on the editorial board of the Public Opinion Quarterly, Journalism Quarterly and Communication Review...
...But these problems are not new...
...An enormous amount of thinking, researching and interviewing went into this study, and anyone who wants a source book of current theories about newspapers— the chief subject—-should not miss it...
...Unfortunately, the average consumer of mass-media news fare, and certainly the average worker in those fields, would find it boring...
...But the question, nevertheless, has some weight because of its implications concerning responsibility...
...But readers of Responsibility in Mass Communication merely come away with a vague feeling that something is wrong, without knowing exactly what it is or what should be done about it...
...The book takes note of current charges that the press is "one-party," suppresses stories uncomfortable to editors and publishers, condones sloppy writing, puts too little emphasis on clarity, fragments national and international news, fails to tell the true picture because of overemphasis on "objectivity," hesitates to crusade, shies away from controversy (especially local), and increasingly permits public-relations men to move between the reporter and the news source...
...Schramm is a professor of "communication" and journalism...
...What would be new—and immensely valuable—is a comprehensive report on how well the media are living up to the ideals they constantly prate about...
...All this is not to say that Professor Schramm doesn't present the problems faced by mass media in playing their roles in a democratic society...
...Reported by a Midwestern editor...
...Few subjects touch more people where they live, as they say on Madison Avenue...
...Capital-Times '; co-author, "McCarthy" Why are books on the press seldom written by working newsmen...
...Instead, we are told: "The question critics raise is really the question of dynamics: Has the great trend toward popular art come about be-caues public taste has shaped the media in its own image, or because the media have manipulated public taste into a pattern which they can most easily and profitably serve...
...The book makes a fine basis for discussion at a faculty club...
...Perhaps the author felt impelled to pull his punches somewhat because the book was written for the National Council of Churches of Christ and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation...
...The UN and the new bond issue got secondary play...
...One can say the same about Schramm...
...That's what sells the paper.' But is it right...
...He has delved with long, probing, academic fingers into every corner of a vital issue: Do the mass media live up to their responsibilities...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 4
