portunities for discussion by major political candidates because of the requirement that all official candidates serious or not-must be given equal time?

Here the difference in approach between broadcast and print journalism is most graphically illustrated.

While section 315 was suspended in the 1960 presidential elections, it has been in force ever since. And it is going to cause us many problems in this election year as it has in the past. ABC's position-as previously expressed-is that section 315 should be suspended on a trial basis for all candidates for public office-National, State, and localuntil after the coming election.

It is our feeling that this temporary suspension as to all candidates would give everyone concerned a valid basis to judge whether a permanent suspension as to some or all of these offices would be desirable. In the alternative, we favor a proposal which would permanently exempt presidential and vice presidential candidates from the requirements of section 315.

I think my comparison of the broadcast and print media-with respect to the unique qualities of each, and the Federal regulation of one and not the other makes one thing clear: Each has its own unique kind of impact and influence on the public.

No one of the news media has a better claim on informing the public than any of the others. Each complements the others. Complete news coverage comes from a combination of all of them. Perhaps competition among the media is the greatest protection in that it helps the people to determine for themselves where the truth actually lies.

Taken together, the news media best accomplish what each one strives for individually-a better informed America that more fully understands its problems as the first giant step toward overcoming them.

Thank you.

Dean BARROW. Thank you, Mr. Lower, for an excellent contribution. Mr. Louis Lyons will comment on paper No. 1.

COMMENT ON PAPER NO. 1, BY LOUIS M. LYONS

Mr. LYONS. Thank you.

Elmer Lower's statement is characteristically fair, informed, and covers the waterfront. I find little to dispute.

My own experience for two-thirds of my working life was with the newspaper and the last 17 years in broadcasting news and public affairs over an educational or noncommercial television station.

This is not quite the same thing as the commercial broadcasting that Mr. Lower has discussed-much short of it in resources and in audience reach.

I do not have to train myself in split-second timing to weave the news around the commercials. But I do know the limitations of TV time to do a satisfactory news report in 15 minutes.

You just can't do it. At best you cover the front page news, almost nothing of what's inside the paper. I reach for the New York Times next morning to check whether their front page has anything, other than local to New York, that I missed at 7 o'clock last night. This is because the Times undertakes to put its front page in perspective.

But I find a close reading of such a paper, and of the whole range of periodicals, indispensable to doing an informed news report. Without that, my report, if just from the agency wire, would lack the background to give such meaning, depth, and continuity as justifies an educational station having any news program at all.

One of the contributions of television has been to force the newspaper to go into more depth in background of the news. For TV gets the news first. The newspaper must try to supplement this, to give more dimensions to the news.

The TV report catches the headline reader and probably satisfies him with as much as he wants to know about most things most of the time.

It catches even people who can't read at all or wouldn't bother to. Thus, it certainly extends the number of people exposed to information that they would not acquire by reading. It unquestionably incites many to turn, at times anyway, to more information from a newspaper. I have no doubt that TV gradually develops newspaper readers and the newspapers in turn develop readers for magazines and books.

But television cannot or does not do much of what makes certain essential reader services of the newspaper. It does not list the votes of Congressmen on civil rights. It does not cover the city council or the school committee or keep tabs on the regulation of utility rates.

It cannot provide the needed text of the riots commission, or the cables on the Tonkin incident, or a Presidential message on housing, or the farm program that needs to be read in detail to have meaning. It does little or nothing in the whole area of criticism-books, theater, music, art, that affects public taste, although TV certainly has a total effect on public taste greater than all other media.

What TV does do incomparably is live coverage of events that can be scheduled, to get the cameras set up and the commentators mobilized the national convention, inauguration, election, Presidential press conference. It is magnificent in covering sports events.

It drives home with indelible impact the condition of migrant workers, the race conflict, the Vietnam war, a space launching. It gives us a sense of considerable acquaintance with the public men who seek

our votes.

It can, when it chooses, as Edward R. Murrow showed, explore the great issues and give them an immediacy and reality that the printed word cannot match. It stretches the imagination to comprehend the importance of things that had hardly reached our consciousness by reading.

I would not limit the influence of television to what we call news and public affairs. Its influence is pervasive, often subtle. The cracks of the Smothers brothers about politicians and institutions and our mores are not to be discounted.

Or, in another direction, the frequent infiltration of the military into big football games must be more appreciated by Secretary Rusk than by Senator McCarthy. People are probably influenced more when they are caught off balance.

Broadcast music and plays bring them to people who never would have them. And it may well be that such an infrequent event as a 4hour African program is more instructive to many than day-to-day news reports from Africa.

The intimacy of the broadcast is a dimension beyond the printed word.

Mr. Lower spoke about this, I thought, very effectively.

People feel acquainted with the personality of the broadcaster whose voice and features are familiar night after night.

I know that even on a small educational station, my broadcasts bring me more mail than I or any of my colleagues experienced when I was covering top stories on a newspaper of several times the circulation of our station.

This intimacy is a real factor in the confidence of viewers that Elmer Lower mentioned.

As one who has worked both sides of the street, I do not fully accept these statements of greater confidence in broadcast news.

The newspaper has more time to make its report accurate and adequate. The newspaper reader has a better chance to detect error. I think the broadcaster gets off more easily if he smiles and looks pretty. And many people can't remember what they heard. If they come in at the middle of a broadcast and get a confused notion, they are apt to assume that the part they missed would have cleared it up.

Then I think there is a feeling about newspaper headlines, that they look sensational. The broadcaster escapes that, although some try to pitch their voices up to overcome this deficiency.

Then we have, I think, some hangovers from the days of intensely competitive yellow journalism. That is just newspaper talk.

We haven't yet developed an equivalent cliche about broadcasting. We have been considering mostly television performance in terms of what the great networks produce.

As Mr. Lower says, though, if you don't happen to be at home at that particular time, you can't turn back and pick up the TV program you missed. Our educational station in Boston repeats on weekends the most important programs of the week. This is a very appreciated service.

But in very many areas, the network programing is not typical TV fare. The local news broadcasts, outside a few metropolitan centers-such as parts of New England-are parochial to trivial, and the rest of the fare in prime time is more to be compared with what the local movie theater dispenses than with the content of a good newspaper. The local station does not compete at all with the newspaper in adequate reporting staff, nor will it give time for adequate treatment of public affairs. It is primarily an entertainment medium.

The journalistic side of broadcasting, even in the networks, is incidental to entertainment, and even the talent sought in the news broadcaster is more as performer than analyst of news. Eric Sevareid is unique.

The pace of change and the urgency of our public affairs have made information of contemporary events increasingly important. The need of the citizen is to be informed. TV on one side and the magazines on the other, have become increasingly journalistic. They have moved into what used to be the province of the newspaper.

Television has not yet developed this side of its programing to do the full job. The magazines can do it in more depth than the newspaper, with more time for consideration. Look at the March issues of

the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. Each is entirely given over to a single report in depth.

This is, to be sure, unusual. The Atlantic had Dan Wakefield exploring for 4 months the mood of America in relation to its two wars, in Vietnam and in our cities, for this one article.

Harper's has Mailer's personal report of his participation in the march on the Pentagon. Two very different approaches to what's going on.

Paperback books on a great event can be brought out almost as fast as the Sunday newspaper to join the media of journalism.

I would have little question that the impact and influence of TV is greater than that of the newspaper and all other print media, but that TV does not fully compete in journalistic performance with the printed media.

Of course, with either TV or the newspaper, the quality of service depends on who is running it. But the differences in structure, purpose and tradition are significant.

The newspaper is almost equally dependent on advertising revenue. But it had a couple of hundred years to develop certain minimum standards before the day of mass advertising. It has its own autonomy.

Its articles and departments are not produced for advertisers or tailored to the prescriptions of advertisers. It does not determine whether to have an editorial page or a sports department or a political column by the question of whether it can find a sponsor.

Its sponsors are the whole range of advertisers who accept the total function of a newspaper as a productive channel to reach the public with their ads. But the newspaper separates news from ads and keeps ads off the front page and the editorial page.

The newspaper has a character of its own-I mean a good newspaper. It is not the personality of a broadcaster. It includes many personalities but the whole of it is more than that. It is an institution in its community whose readers expect it to serve a certain roleinformation, entertainment-and also as a civic force in their public affairs. In this full sense of what journalism is, TV still has to develop its journalistic role, and its primary energies are directed otherwise. I will not take time for any separate consideration of radio. My own broadcasts are simulcasts because for its first 5 years WGBH was only in FM radio. I know many commuters habitually listen to the news report on their car radios who used to read a newspaper on a train.

I am homesick for the more relaxed time of radio-time for an easy conversation. We put many fine lectures and panel discussions, chamber music, poetry, on radio that wouldn't get a show on the 10 times as expensive television. My programs are repeated at the end of the evening on radio, not on TV.

As to the fairness doctrine, I will settle for Elmer Lower's statement, and I found Dr. Stanton very persuasive.

In 17 years of broadcasting, often stating vigorous views and interviewing on controversial issues, and having complete independence of any news policy or supervision, I have had no real problem.

On the rare occasions when we have had to give equal time, it has been accidental. We didn't know there was any other side to exploring some situation that seemed of general concern.

Or if we have asked a legislative leader to explain some proposed structural change in government, it would turn out, not that there was opposition to the issue, but that he had an opponent for his seat who expected equal exposure. This has wasted a little time.

We have wasted more time and bored more people when I have had to moderate a candidate's night, to which we give all the evening, perhaps in cooperation with the League of Women Voters, and we have had to present the Prohibition candidates and the Socialist-Labor candidates and so on for every State office, so that we couldn't go into the congressional contests in any conceivable timespan.

I do feel strongly that, in presidential years at least, the rules should clear the decks for the great debate, not make it so cluttered or hampered as to be unmanageable.

Let me add that I think the Prohibitionists et al. should be given an inning, at least on an educational station, as part of the total American scene.

But not that we should be obliged to include them at a moment when it is totally irrelevant to 99.9 percent of the public, so as to make it impracticable to perform the essential service to present the alternatives the electorate faces election day.

Dean BARROW. Thank you, Mr. Lyons.

Mr. DINGELL (presiding). Dean Barrow, the staff advises me it would be appropriate to request at this point that the legislative history of the fairness doctrine be inserted into the record of the hearings. Without objection, that will be done.

(The document referred to appears on p. 183.)

Dean BARROW. May I take this opportunity to commend Mr. Daniel J. Manelli, of the subcommittee's staff, for the excellent work he has done in the compilation of the legislative history.

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you. I am sure those words will be most pleasing to him.

Dean BARROW. Mr. Lower in his paper pointed out the different treatment which is given under the fairness doctrine of broadcasting and to the news media.

As I happen to have before me what I consider to be the best judicial statement of the reason for that, and it is very brief, I think I would like to read it into the record.

This is from Office of Communication of United Church of Christ versus FCC, which appears in 359 Federal 2d 994. This was handed down in 1966.

This brief quotation is from page 1,003.

A broadcaster has much in common with a newspaper publisher, but he is not in the same category in terms of public obligations imposed by law. A broadcaster seeks and is granted the free and exclusive use of a limited and valuable part of the public domain; when he accepts that franchise, it is burdened by enforceable public obligations. A newspaper can be operated at the whim or caprice of its owners; a broadcast station cannot. After nearly five decades of operation, the broadcasting industry does not seem to have grasped the simple fact that a broadcast license is a public trust subject to termination for breach of duty.

Of course, that last sentence was made in respect of the particular broadcast handling in that case. I thought that might be pertinent to the panel discussion which would follow upon these two papers, and that it was good to place it into the record at this point.