On Television
FRANK, REUVEN
OnTelevision GET YOUR FREE TV TIME HERE BY REUVEN FRANK AFTER to-ing and fro-ing, and hemming and hawing, the "big three" television networks have responded to a full-page advertisement in the...
...A trade newspaper quoted a network executive who said, "The issue was not worth fighting over...
...But enabling candidates to speak out unmediated and uncensored will not convince them, or their hired hands, to abjure negative campaigning, slick 30-second commercials and other vile new techniques, like "push polling," that American campaign professionals have developed and are exporting around the world...
...Why should they send expensive camera crews out to film the standard bearers barnstorming the country...
...It will be television for those who find C-SPAN too exciting...
...Its two principal causes were self-criticism among journalists—occasionally almost masochistic —and the plummeting regard for both journalists and politicians that showed up in the opinion polls...
...One could, of course, turn off the set...
...It pleaded with them to liberate America from the evils of sound bites and negative spots by affording candidates the opportunity to speak to voters directThe force behind the Coalition is a former Washington Post political reporter named Paul Taylor, who gained a minute of fame in the primary season leading up to the 1988 election when he asked Gary Hart whether he had committed adultery...
...After several years of writing and talking about the subject on his own, Taylor quit newspa-pering altogether this year to devote himself to the cause...
...Finally, to return to the national elections, Taylor's initiative is putting a healthy development at risk...
...Still, the coercive nature of this proposition fits poorly with the goody-goody tone of the basic idea or the rest of the language in the advertisement...
...PBS has promised the candidates will address its audience directly, but has yet to supply any particulars...
...Actually Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, was first to offer the candidates free prime time...
...CBS, as part of its regular news programs, will air 90-second statements by the candidates on issues that polling has identified as important to the public...
...Since Fox has no regular network news programs, it needs a waiver...
...Anyway, less than a year ago, the Economist wrote: "Britain's biggest television switch-off may soon be switched off...
...For some years now, network news departments, along with most of American journalism, have been improving their Presidential campaign coverage...
...Paul Taylor and his doughty band apparently see their victory differently...
...Euthanasia cannot be far away...
...Why should they try to analyze positions taken on serious but unexciting topics like reorganizing health care or nuclear disarmament...
...Broadcasters and the public, who have always hated party political broadcasts, are at last being joined by the political parties, which doubt their effectiveness...
...Or will it be a free-for-all...
...As I write, what the ad appears to have achieved is the following: • ABC will present a one-hour program during the final weeks of the campaign that will have the candidates discussing the key issues with each other...
...OnTelevision GET YOUR FREE TV TIME HERE BY REUVEN FRANK AFTER to-ing and fro-ing, and hemming and hawing, the "big three" television networks have responded to a full-page advertisement in the April 18 New York Times urging them to turn over free prime time to the major Presidential candidates...
...He got some foundation money, established a nonpartisan organization and recruited big names in news, politics, academia, and entertainment...
...Indeed, they have done well enough in their exposure of negative commercials to force those who produce them to circumlocution and other devices they hope will make them look better...
...the president of the League of Women Voters...
...Few local TV stations transmit to only one Congressional district...
...More television time given to the campaign is better than less, even though it will not bring Utopia...
...Taylor was so remorseful that he vowed to change the way Presidential elections are covered, especially by television, although he did not put his question to Hart on TV...
...At the traditional networks the candidates' statements can be folded into regularly scheduled news and information programs, which are exempt from the equal time rule...
...At the local level, the constitutionality of barring "minor" candidates from this bonanza of free time will be severely tested in the courts...
...We call on the networks," it said grandly, "to offer free prime time to the Presidential candidates this fall for use in straightforward 'talking head' presentations...
...The Coalition's initial endeavor was the ad in the Times...
...No unseen narrators...
...If the candidates supply their own MEGO (mine eyes glaze over), why should the networks spend money adding to it...
...This was one of the factors in the destruction of Hart's still feasible candidacy for President...
...No tricky images...
...Others included a few former national chairmen of both major parties, most of whom are now doing nicely as lobbyists...
...The object is to make it as difficult as possible for a viewer to find anything else to switch to while a candidate is making his pitch...
...It was such suggestions that gave rise to the phrase "can of worms" in our vernacular...
...Among the 77 signers of this appeal for "no journalists" were Fred Friendly, Robert MacNeil, Roger Mudd, Howard K. Smith, John Chancellor, and—with his name in boldface type leading the list —Walter Cronkite...
...Nevertheless, Fox went on to ask the Federal Communications Commission to let it proceed without having to allot time to candidates of minor formations like the Natural Law Party and the Vegetarian Party...
...At the extreme, the dozen or so New York stations that transmit their signals from atop the World Trade Center are the primary TV sources in 22 Congressional districts...
...Ed Turner, executive vice president for news gathering at CNN, which owns no local stations and thus would bear no burden here, chimed in: "Local stations need to do their duty and be permitted to provide time to Congressional candidates, who have a hard time making their views known...
...WHY, THEN, did the networks give in even to the degree they did...
...Unless it prevails, not only will every New York station have to make room for each candidate in 22 districts—or 15 in Los Angeles, a dozen or so in Chicago, and so on—but as night follows day the prospect of free TV appearances will double and triple the number of candidates...
...a couple of Senators from both sides of the aisle...
...No journalists...
...Allowing that perhaps Russia is not a good example of a "mature democracy," this hardly accords with news reports of recent elections in Italy or Austria or even France...
...And who is to say who is a major candidate and who is not...
...It happens in the state races for senate and for governor and for Congress...
...There is no denying, though, that what continues to mattermost in the upper echelons of American television journalism are high ratings and low budgets...
...They have been giving more time to candidates' utterances and spending more time analyzing their positions...
...The Fourth Estate's improvement was palpable in 1992...
...It may reduce what network news divisions will spend covering the campaign...
...and a sprinkling of Hollywood people...
...Getting stations to do this for local offices would be of greater importance than the networks doing it for Presidential candidates, "because the worst of political communications doesn't happen at the Presidential level...
...Lyn Nofziger, Newton Minow and Ralph Reed...
...No surrogates...
...Meanwhile three other networks, without being asked, have made their own Presidential year arrangements: • On cable, CNN will allot each candidate five minutes a week over the campaign's last four weeks...
...The subliminal reference here may be to Britain's "party political broadcasts," familiar to every American reporter who has ever bought a trench coat in the Hay Market...
...Free television time will not reduce what candidates spend on negative advertising and slick commercials...
...They were not moved...
...Furthermore, the arrangements proposed by the networks ignore an essential request of the April advertisement: "If possible, these nightly segments should be'road blocked'—shown simultaneously on all network stations, PBS and interested cable stations...
...To oppose this proposition is to oppose motherhood and apple pie...
...There are certain differences between our "mature democracy" and theirs, however, that reduce the usefulness of the example: Britain is a one time-zone country, its political campaigns last only eight or 10 weeks, and British political parties are strong and important...
...the founder, and the current and past presidents of Common Cause...
...Fox, also in the closing month of the campaign, will allow each candidate 10 one-minute spots for statements on issues important to the public, and will provide a one-hour block for candidates' statements on election eve...
...In other words, they were paying as little as they could to get rid of a nuisance—like settling a suit everyone knows has no merit because that's cheaper than winning in court...
...Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington on February 26, Murdoch unveiled Fox' plan and challenged the big three to join in an effort to raise the standards of the Presidential race...
...Each station would be required, during election season, to provide free time to the major candidates in all 22 districts...
...The parties may press the broadcasters instead to run snappy American-style party commercials...
...Moreover, the specifics are vague...
...So having the candidates make their own statements is throwing temptation before TV executives too weak to resist...
...Who, for example, will moderate the ABC discussion...
...Just the candidates making their best case to the biggest audience America assembles every night...
...Everything is, of course, subject to revision...
...To support its call for free, unmediated TV time for Presidential candidates, the ad says, "That's the way it's done in almost all the mature democracies of the world except ours...
...The advertisement that ABC, CBS and NBC ultimately reacted to was produced by the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition...
...We ought to think about ways of, hopefully on a voluntary basis, adapting [free television time for candidates] to the state and local level," he told Electronic Media...
...NBC, in the 60 days before Election Day, will include candidates' statements on Dateline NBC, NBC Nightly News, Today, and Meet the Press...
Vol. 79 • June 1996 • No. 3
