Letter to the Editor

1eman• orts December 1968 Pressures on the Press Dr. Frank Stanton • Also in this Issue: William B. Dickinson Irving Dilliard Norman E. Isaacs Howard C. Cleavinger CalM. Logue Howard A. James Nieman Notes • New Committee Appointed To Select 1969-70 Nieman Fellows 2 Reardon Plan was conceived. It was not developed over night. A lot of work, a lot of debate and a lot of under standing fashioned that program. NiemanRe:ports There were problems, obviously, and there will be prob lems in the future but we think we have the best approach VOL. XXII, NO. 4 DECEMBER 1968 by far to solving them. We have and we are confident that we will continue to have free press, fair trial and an in Louis M. Lyons, Editor, 1947-64 formed citizenry in our state. We don't expect the Reardon Plan will affect us at all. Dwight E. Sargent, Editor For example, our Chief Justice has said that we have no need for the Reardon program and he predicted that the Editorial Board of the Society of Nieman Fellows bench and the bar, the news media and law enforcement Robert W. Brown C. Ray Jenkins in our state will have no part of it. Augusta Chronicle Alabama Journal Now, I don't believe there is any stigma attached to Millard C. Browne John Strohmeyer being called a dove in this field but, even if there were, Buffalo News Bethlehem Globe-Times I would gladly assume that appellation if what we have William B. Dickinson E. J. Paxton, Jr. been doing in the State of Washington is dove-ish. We Philadelphia Bulletin Paducah Sun-Democrat have achieved a common sense accommodation of the Tillman Durdin Harry T. Montgomery problems involving bench, bar and press. We have done it New York Times Associated Press voluntarily with the full cooperation of news media, the Roy M. Fisher Sylvan Meyer courts, lawyers and law enforcement. Chicago Daily News Gainesville Daily Times Now, I should point out right here that the newspaper Robert B. Frazier Robert Lasch members of the State Bench-Bar Press Committee include St. Louis Post-Dispatch Eugene Register-Guard battle-scarred veterans from the Freedom of Information Thomas H. Griffith Edwin A. Lahey fight who have been fighting a good fight for years. Our Life Magazine Knight Newspapers group certainly was not led down the primrose path. Rebecca Gross Smith Hempstone, Jr. The impetus for our state program came from the Lock Haven Express Washington Star Washington Judicial Conference which is composed of all Published quarterly by the Society of Nieman Fellows from the Supreme Court Judges and all of the Superior Court 77 Dunster Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138. Sub Judges in our state. The Conference passed a resolution scription $3 a year. Second-class postage paid at Boston, asking the Chief Justice to appoint the Committee. Massachusetts. Some of the first meetings of the full Committee were hairy. The tension was electric. We were suspicious of the motives of the bench and the bar and I'm sure they were suspicious of us. I know that I was one of the real doubting Thomases. How to Cooperate I was skeptical about the Committee's value or its future. I felt essentially that we had good relationships and that By Howard C. Cleavinger nothing much would come out of the Committee's work except attempts to restrict the press. Then we had more meetings and the problem was dis Mr. Cleavinger is managing editor of the Spokane Chron cussed frankly. There were some sharp differences but icle. These remarks, and those of Mr. Dickinson in the gradually, through discussion and communication, under following article, were made at the last annual meeting of standing developed and with it mutual respect and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. confidence. The result: we have progressed a long way in the field of bench-bar-press relationships. Our Committee has adopt It wasn't easy and I don't expect that it will be easy in ed a statement of principles and also guidelines on the the future but we do have a successful, voluntary, coopera reporting of criminal proceedings, civil proceedings, juven tive bench-bar program in the State of Washington. It is ile court proceedings and public records. We are doing the product of the Bench-Bar Press Committee of Washing ton which was appointed by the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court in February of 1964, long before the (Continued on page 10) NIEMAN REPORTS 3 By Dr. Frank Stanton C. P. Snow has painted a rather grim picture of this would have us suppress anything which they find disagree world of ours. In a lecture at Westminster College in Fulton, able, troublesome or embarrassing, and publish or broad Missouri, he said-in fact-that he was on the brink of cast only that which serves some loftier social or ethical total despair. What is going wrong with us, he asked? purpose-as they see it. As a result, the fundamental freedom Why is there all this suffering, hatred and unease around of the press, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is in us? grave danger-not, of course, of outright repudiation but Frankly, I do not share this dark, almost morbid sense from constant erosion and qualjfication. And unless we of hopelessness that many people feel today. But I do con turn back these threats, journalism as we know it today cede that there are tremendous forces of change tearing -and indeed, the whole nature of our democracy itself and at our world-and particularly at our country and its in the people's right to know-may never be the same again. stitutions. We are the richest, strongest and most advanced The warning signs are all around us. We hear the sug nation in the history of the world. Yet we are bogged gestion that right-of-reply regulations now confined to down in a war that none of us wants and few understand. broadcasting-which we are now contesting in the courts Discipline is breaking down in our homes, our schools and be imposed upon newspapers. These regulations amount to our churches. Our cities are in disarray. Assassins plot an extension of the equal-time doctrine which has locked against our public officials. broadcast coverage of election campaigns into a straitjacket. At a time when science is literally lifting us to the stars, The idea of applying right-of-reply regulations to news the major issues of our election came down to the decep papers is now supported by the American Civil Liberties tively simple question of law and order, and man's relent Union, which is considering a series of lawsuits to force the less inhumanity to man. This turmoil is tragic. But it is issue to a court test. At the same time, we have judges, also, as James Reston wrote, "the biggest story in the prosecuting attorneys and police chiefs who are using the world today." Reardon report on fair trial and free press as an excuse to As journalists, it is our job to tell that story-all of it, close the doors and records of our courts, and to slap far the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the noble heavier restrictions on reporters than Judge Reardon ever and the ignoble. Yet increasingly, attempts are being made intended. There is also, as Sigma Delta Chi recently to block us in that job. The people behind these attempts warned, a continuing trend in Washington toward greater feel that something other than professional news judgment management of the news and manipulation of reporters. should control the flow of information to the public. They In electronic journalism, we are subject to even more 4 NIEMAN REPORTS pressures. After last year's wave of ghetto riots, one public government. Thus the value of such hard-hitting reporting official after another criticized television for its thorough is not only that it keeps the public informed-but that it coverage of the disturbances and threatened the network keeps the government informed, as well. news services with all sorts of investigations. As with other The three television networks encountered another kind disturbances in the past, we were accused of inflaming and of governmental surveillance as a result of their coverage of sometimes escalating the riots by the mere act of reporting the Democratic National Convention. The FCC sent each them. of us a 20-day letter. We were told that the FCC had While we did not welcome the involvement of the received "hundreds of complaints" about television's treat President's National Advisory Commission on Civil Dis ment of the convention, and that we, therefore, had 20 days orders, we note that its report concluded that, far from in which to explain why we made the news judgments aggravating the riots, broadcast reporters "made a real that we did in Chicago. I feel that television rose admirably effort to give a balanced, factual account" of such disorders to the unprecedented demands put to it on that occasion. and were no more a cause of riots than they are a cause of Certainly, we made mistakes. But we also made history, anything else they report. However, we take little comfort in our running report of an extremely complex and fast from this, for a Presidential commission which could pre breaking situation. sume to give journalists a clean bill of health had the poten One of our Delaware viewers, who was shocked over the tial of releasing a report that could be used as a basis of FCC ultimatum, put it very well.

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