NICHOLAS JOHNSON: 'The Citizen's Least Frightened Friend'

...The speech was given in response to the Vice President's earlier speech in Las Vegas which cited rock music lyrics as the purveyors of the drug culture...

...As The Washington Post observed in 1965, "The appointment of this apple-cheeked landlubber jolted hard-bitten old timers in the industry...

...NICHOLAS JOHNSON: 'The Citizen's Least Frightened Friend' by PAUL DICKSON TVs a safe bet that not more than one in 100,000 persons knows who heads the Interstate Commerce Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission...

...Information Agency...

...Johnson is genuinely optimistic about some aspects of communications...

...Most have more than one...

...King once said, 'Negroes, having been denied access to television, have had to write their most persuasive essays with the blunt pen of marching ranks.' That's quite an indictment...

...They were to be jolted even more after he had gotten his sea legs...

...He has crossed swords with Vice President Agnew on more than one occasion...

...opportunity for creative and talented people in network-dominated program production...

...In many of these cases his side has lost, but in each he has prepared long, carefully written dissents...

...He has contributed to Esquire, Saturday Review, and The Washington Post.en in opposing the proposal by Rhode Island's Senator John Pastore which would curtail the right to contest license renewals, a right that was given to the public by the Communications Act of 1934...

...Although Johnson has expressed himself on a variety of issues, there are certain key concerns which he feels are of particular importance to the nation...

...His first government job was a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, shortly after his graduation from the University of Texas law school...

...Five days later, as a part of his fall offensive, Agnew singled out Johnson as espousing the kind of "radical liberal philosophy that has encouraged so many of our young people to turn to pot and worse...

...No institution can do as much to banish the habit of despair and replace it with the habit of democracy...

...Who knows, maybe someone will try to start something by resurrecting some old "Kennedy-Johnson" campaign buttons...

...He would not, as might be expected from his criticism, abolish the regulatory commissions of government...

...Johnson's criticisms of the Nixon Administration have been blunt and to the point...

...He has fought consistently for the rights of dissenters—whether they be the Democratic National Committee, a lone Marxist, the San Francisco Women for Peace, or Friends of the Earth—for access to the media...

...Ironically, it is Johnson, not Burch, who advocates competition for AT&T...

...For example, he is excited by the possibilities inherent in cable television, which would greatly increase the number of channels available on U.S...

...Johnson's proposed reforms for broadcasting are firmly rooted in the idea that some of the tremendous power that has been given to the broadcaster must be given to the people...

...He has fought consistently for the rights of dissenters • • ." As a public speaker and writer Johnson is colorful, articulate, and often brash...

...In 1967, he blasted five fellow Commissioners for their practice of renewing station licenses without studying the stations' programming content...

...Burch, it will be remembered, first came to national prominence running Barry Goldwater's 1964 Presidential campaign...

...Johnson strongly advocates the premise that cable television must be regulated on a non-discriminatory basis so that everyone has access to at least some of the new channels...

...locally-owned stations instead of monopoly ownership...

...See "Listen, Mr...

...Surely," he concluded, "less discussion, less controversy, less relevant comment are not the answer...

...For example, he told his fellow Phi Beta Kappa key holders that they had better wake up to the fact that intellectuals, in their disdain for television, have turned their backs on it as a means of getting ideas across, thereby cutting themselves off from the nation...

...As he explained it to me, "Few ghetto homes are without at least one radio receivei?—even if it is just a pocket transistor...

...Last August, after running a survey to find the "most wanted" men for college presidencies, Newsweek reported that the four mentioned most often were John Gardner, Ramsey Clark, Mc-George Bundy, and Johnson...

...In 1969, a group of five state broadcasting associations petitioned President Nixon to remove him from the FCC four years before his seven year term was up...

...public participation in the FCC's license renewals...

...locally-originated public service programming...

...It provides the reader with names and addresses of groups that are pushing for further reform, such as the Television Improvement Society of America (1500 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C...

...They are the people who cannot even count on coming home to a mailbox full of junk mail...

...audience supported stations...

...In some two years in that slot he charted a new course of change and innovation which inevitably led to controversy...

...2005), which exposes far right and far left extremism, and combats hate programming on the air...

...What the nation needs," Johnson told the lawyers, "is a thousand Naders, not just one, with hundreds of thousands of dollars, so rusty legal machinery can begin humming again...

...In late 1966, for example, he voted against the FCC-approved merger of the American Broadcasting Company and the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation...

...J. Kenneth Gal-braith calls him "the citizen's least frightened friend in Washington...

...The merger case was reopened later and IT&T announced its decision to drop the plan...

...The reaction to the speech came swiftly...

...Johnson has voted and spoken in behalf of the right of citizens' groups to compete at license renewal time for station franchises that have been routinely renewed by rubber stamp...

...It is the best evidence we have to support the Kerner Commission's charge that the communications media, ironically, have failed to communicate...

...For example, a few days after the Cambodian invasion, he stood on the steps of the Capitol addressing Federal employes protesting the war...

...He termed Johnson's argument that the increasing use of drugs is linked to unjust forces in American society as "the sort of fatuous nonsense being perpetrated on the American public by the super-permissive officials that have been allowed to take so much control of our government...

...His central theme in this area, as he propounded it to a conference on minority broadcasting in 1968, is: "No institution in our land, inside or outside of government, can match the power of minority radio stations to administer day-in, day-out therapy to the root cause of the worsening malaise of our cities...

...More important, he is also public in the sense that he has established himself as an advocate of what he believes is the public interest...

...He has made himself public in the sense that he has spelled out his beliefs on communications in forums as diverse as the Commission hearing room, the late-night television talk show, and the college auditorium...

...The White House let USIA Director Frank Shakespeare know, in no uncertain terms, that Johnson was not to be given such a platform again and that it had been a mistake to let him speak at all...

...As a Commissioner, Johnson has, as might not be expected, moved with or helped move the majority decision in many cases...

...Johnson, who had been invited to talk about popular music, attacked the Vice President's contention...

...Further proof that Johnson supports the goals of such organizations is the fact that he is turning over to them all of the royalties from his book...

...Johnson believes that the obligation of a station owner with an audience that is predominantly black or poor is especially difficult to fulfill since the broadcaster himself is unlikely to be either...

...The gist of these appeals generally centers on the need for society to give all views an airing and thereby maintain its vitality through pluralism...

...The term will expire on July 1, 1973...

...On June 18, 1966, President Johnson named him to fill the vacant spot on the FCC left by the resignation of Commissioner E. William Henry...

...Second, he urged that the press, and thereby the public, be given much f ree-er access to the administrative process...

...Even his most persistent critics concede that his dissents are well researched, creative, and forceful...

...He sports bushy sideburns and a Zapata-style moustache...

...Unlike most regulators who prefer to be left alone by the public and by pesky public interest pressure groups, Johnson eggs them on...

...Probably his strongest statement to Agnew was delivered at ,a symposium for Foreign Service Officers at the U.S...

...rather he would put them to work, taking full advantage of their existent, but seldom applied, powers of prosecution, legislation, and judgment...

...Close to the top of those he discussed with me is his concern for minorities and their access to the media...

...Johnson believes that the test of marketplace competition would help tone up the mammoth corporation...

...He termed the situation "ludicrous" in that the FCC was revoking its own investigative franchise...

...Ideologically, Johnson and Burch are a spectrum apart...

...Johnson's relationship with the Nixon Administration is less than cordial...

...Speaking at the University of Iowa in November, 1969, he said, "We must work, not for less, but for more: citizen commentary presenting all points of view...

...Upon accepting the position, he immediately conceded that he had little knowledge of shipping and that he had been picked to bring an unprejudiced fresh look to the Commerce Department's Maritime Administration...

...His article on Ralph Nader, "What Makes Ralph Ron?/' appeared in the January, 1970 issue...

...Broadcasting, the dominant trade magazine in its field, has called for Johnson's resignation or removal and has advised the President to offer him another job somewhere else in government...

...funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...

...The people of the ghetto will be heard...

...Understandably, Johnson's outspoken approach to communications policy has not been well-received in all quarters...

...They include: open investigative hearings in communities throughout the country, fact-finding tours by regulators, greater attention to citizen complaints, wide public notification when regulatory decisions of major importance are handed down, and the dissemination of "primers" to let the citizenry know how to present its views to regulatory bodies...

...He told them that the President's actions had seriously jeopardized peace negotiations, threatened the SALT talks, and alienated millions of Americans...

...Often he does not tell people what they want to hear...

...He is often mentioned as one of the handful of men around who might have enough imagination and broad rapport to steer a major university successfully in these troubled times...

...He is, depending on whom you talk to, an innovator, an obstructionist, a breath of fresh air in musty Federal corridors, an enfant terrible, one of the few practicing idealists in government service, or anti-business...

...For this reason, I tell white station owners, 'You have to constandy show that your radio station exists to educate the ghetto, not to exploit it...

...In his seventy-two-page dissent Johnson said the majority's decision made "a mockery of the public responsibility of a regulatory commission that is perhaps unparalleled in the history of American administrative processes...

...to promote vigorous leaders who represent the community, not to limit entry to your studios to those phoney spokesmen who represent only yourself.' " Another message that Johnson labors hard to get across is the tremendous and, he feels, largely unrecognized influence of television...

...These are the people who receive little communication from any other source —even the telephone or their own neighbors...

...He outlined three key steps toward regulatory reform in a position paper delivered last September to the Federal Bar Association's Symposium on Consumer Protection: First, he suggested that the development of a breed of public-interest advocates, whom he calls "private attorneys general," be encouraged to balance the adversary process instead of leaving it, as it is now, dominated by the corporate elite...

...To drive the legal points home he cites precedent, and to drive his moral points home he is likely to include virtually anything from a few lines from a folk song to a Herblock cartoon...

...As Dr...

...Johnson in turn observed wryly that the broadcasting industry would be amused to hear that he was "super-permissive," and for the second time noted the location where the Vice President was bringing up the drug issue—this time it was Louisville, the heart of tobacco country...

...Agnew," Page 29...

...television sets...

...This fact is especially disheartening since the men and women who sit on these commissions are not concerned with parochial or limited issues but with the very essence of public policy in such vital areas as transportation, communications, food, health, and the practices of the marketplace...

...No move was made to remove him—a step which would be almost impossible to accomplish...

...A riot is, among other things, a form of communication...

...And if microphones do not pick up the sounds of their voices, the forces which are propelling minority-group America toward a new group consciousness, toward a sense pf community, will take an uglier tone...

...He says, "The white licensee of a Negro-oriented station cannot know and feel the needs, tastes, and interests of his audience firsthand as a local black can...

...Third, he said that the agencies need greater independence from the pressures of the industries they regulate, Congress, and the Executive branch...

...Johnson's career as a public servant has been short but lively...

...His dress is conservative, but he seldom wears a jacket indoors and his tie is usually loose...

...When Nicholas Johnson's term expires, there is no telling where he will pop up...

...It is a real "how-to" book that gives illustrative case histories of people who have changed things by challenging the status quo...

...To Johnson, this is an example of technology that could lead to greater citizen involvement in shaping the future of broadcasting, while preempting even greater concentration of communications power in the hands of the few who now dominate it...

...There is, however, no debate over the fact that he is controversial, liberal, and uncompromising...

...After that, the young Iowa-born lawyer went on to the University of California in Berkeley where he taught courses in ^utility regulation and administrative law...

...In addition, Burch was chosen on the theory that he would be an agile public adversary for Johnson...

...right of access to the mass media by all Americans...

...The fact that twenty-three Senators and 118 Representatives supported Pas-tore's proposal to deprive the public of one of its few communications rights prompted Johnson to assert, "The broadcasting industry is, without question, the single most powerful lobby in our nation's history...

...In the same year he attacked the Commission's decision to lighten its load by relying on citizen complaints to catch violators of FCC rules...

...Since Burch's swearing-in, he and Johnson have been at odds on everything from setting rates for AT&T to permitting anti-war commercials on television...

...It is an open secret that one of the reasons for picking Dean Burch as FCC chairman was to offset Johnson's vigorous attempts at communications reform with Burch's conservative beliefs...

...this would replace the present regulatory agency relationship with the press which is characterized by "leaks," secret staff memos, executive sessions, closed meetings, and the like...

...He believes that black and other minority oriented radio does not adequately serve its millions of listeners...

...Aside from these major points, Johnson also has suggested other specific measures that can be taken to open the administrative process to citizen participation...

...Then there is always the possibility that there may be a time—off in the future—when he may run for office...

...He is a popular speaker, and his writings are likely to crop up anywhere from TV Guide to the Phi Beta Kappa newsletter...

...His recent book, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set, is more than an indictment of television as a national humiliation...

...The most notable exception to this general situation of public invisibility is Nicholas Johnson, the thirty-six-year-old Commissioner who sits on the Federal Communications Commission...

...20005), which is fighting violence on television, and the Institute for American Democracy (1330 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C...

...In answer to a question about the role that television has played in the nation's response to the Vietnam War he says, "I think the necessary prerequisite to an understanding of the impact of telePAUL DICKSON is a Washington-based free lance writer...

...One of the implicit criticisms of our Federal regulatory agencies today is that few outside those commercial groups that are supposed to be regulated know anything about the regulators themselves or even their names...

...He is opposed to expanding the FCC either in size or scope, and feels that the Commission should not be involved in directing new technological developments...

...He notes that of the more than 300 Negro-oriented stations in the nation only a handful are owned by blacks...

...Another possibility is that he will move into the realm of public interest law that he advocates so strongly...

...He recently completed a book on think tanks which will be published later this year by Atheneum...

...He is the most public of all the regulators...

...to broaden the slum dweller's understanding and build his confidence, not to spurn his intelligence and stunt his growth...

...Among the descriptions it has applied to Johnson are: "teenybop-per," "the shrill and frequent critic of his elders," and "the self-anointed savior...

...A year later he was selected by President Johnson (no relation) to become Maritime Administrator...

...Johnson is a tall, imposing man who moves in the awkward manner of a muscular football end whose graceful moves are saved for running at full tilt...

...In 1963, he took a leave of absence and returned to Washington to work for the prestigious law firm of Covington and Burling...

...He is a self-described "laissez-faire capitalist" who believes, along with many broadcasters, that the marketplace is the best regulator of the nation's communications...

...His dissents are usually concerned with major policy issues...

...Such freedom could be fostered by strengthening agency staffs, paying them and Commissioners better so they do not have to keep an eye open for a job in an industry while they are regulating that industry, and encouraging citizens' groups to keep and publicize lists of recommended regulators just as the bar associations now act as a force in judicial appointments...

...Johnson does not just criticize but goes beyond criticism to the actions he believes are called for to effect major improvements...