In Washington, two dozen bills are currently before Congress for a Federal shield law. Some of them would give the press "unqualified privilege," a blanket exemption from forced testimony such as that which covers most doctor-patient and husband-wife relationships. Other proposals take a middle road. A bill offered last month by Sen. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut would provide two types of protection: (1) "absolute" immunity from forced disclosure before grand juries, legislative committees or government agencies and (2) limited immunity before open courts trying major criminal cases. In the latter instance, reporters would have to give information about such crimes as murder, rape, airline hijacking or serious espionage the sort of cases in which most reporters would testify voluntarily anyway. Support for some kind of shield law seems to be growing in Washington, despite opposition from both President Nixon and hard-line civil libertarians, who would prefer to rest their case on the First Amendment alone. But at this point, it is unclear what kind of law—if any— will emerge from Congress.

POLICING THE BEAT

Inspired in large part by recent criticism, the news media are making greater efforts to police their own performance. Some television stations have hired conservative commentators to counter whatever liberal bias the networks might transmit. In recent years, many newspapers have established "op-ed" pages to make room for a broadened range of opinion, and some of them are even giving greater prominence to corrections of their own errors. In a still more ambitious step, The Twentieth Century Fund announced plans late last year for a "national press council" of fifteen members, nine of them newsmen. The council will investigate, among other things, complaints about inaccuracies and unfairness in the national media. Although some journalists doubted whether the council could be effective, others welcomed the concept. "If there are going to be any good results from the attacks on the press," says Robert Manning, editor of The Atlantic, "perhaps they will be in cutting away a lot of the news media's self-satisfaction and providing some self-scrutiny.”

THE BRITISH EXAMPLE

For all its complaints, the American press is still freer than almost and other. Britain, the font of so many American liberties, offers much less independence to the press. Libel laws and the rules governing coverage of trials are far tougher than in the U.S. There is no journalist's privilege not to identify news sources during court cases or police investigations. The British Government has much more authority to restrict the flow of information. Currently, under the provisions of the powerful Official Secrets Act, Scotland Yard is investigating a minor trade magazine, the Railway Gazette, which published an advance copy of a plan for service reductions and job layoffs on the nationalized British rails. The case has caused a furor in Britain,

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but in the U.S., the Gazette's story would have been no more than a routine scoop on the workings of government.

It is also healthy to bear in mind that U.S. Presidents have always scrapped with the press-including even Thomas Jefferson, the newsman's patron saint. John F. Kennedy who had much more affinity for journalists than Mr. Nixon, once canceled all 22 White House subscriptions to the now-defunct New York Herald-Tribune in a fit of pique-or cold calculation. Harry Truman, who brawled lustily with the press when his policies or his daughter Margaret's musical career demanded it, may have summed up the peculiar relationship best: "Whenever the press quits abusing me, I know I'm in the wrong pew." As a matter of fact, in the current controversy between President Nixon and the media, it is often the national press that is in the wrong pew, as far as many Americans are concerned. The majority of citizens seems to agree with the President, not the liberal press, on such issues as busing. The major newspapers, newsmagazines and networks generally have been more agitated over Watergate and the renewed bombing of North Vietnam than most of their readers and viewers appear to be. And in the heartland, many lcoal TV stations and smaller newspapers are still relatively unconcerned about the Administration's attacks on the major media-although a tide of concern is beginning to rise. "Too many editors think the pressure from the government won't touch them," complains Lewis Harris, assistant managing editor of The Dallas Times Herald. "They think it's not going to hurt us, that it's just those good old 'red-tinted' newspapers up East. But in the end it's gonna be us, too."

A CLIMATE OF OPINION

Few of the President's opponents would argue that the Administrais engaged in a deeply malicious plot against all of the media. Many of them do argue, however, that the White House pressure on the press is quite premeditated. "I'm certainly not saying that they all sit around a table and plan some grand strategy to hit the media on all fronts," says CBS White House correspondent Dan Rather, himself one of the Administration's least favorite commentators. "But I am convinced that in a broad, general way, the people around Nixon have come to know that it's OK to attack the media. I think people like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Buchanan et al. did set out to create this climate, knowing that just creating it would be enough to make the press pause."

The press and all the media have undoubtedly taken pause-and that alone may not be wholly unhealthy. The key question is whether the strains between Mr. Nixon and the press may not be moving to a point where, as a result of force or intimidation or simply Presidential reclusiveness, journalists are prevented from doing their job as well as they might. There work is flawed-anyone, any President, can point to error and unfairness. But a free press is the best way anyone has discovered to inform a democratic people. And to tamper with the media is to tamper dangerously with that most imperfect, most perfect, political system yet devised.

[From the Washington Post, Jan. 21, 1973]

AN ERA OF TIMIDITY ON TV?

How many times have you seen on-the-spot reports of the fighting in Vietnam in the last two years, or how many specials dealing with the issues of this crucial conflict have you watched?

(By Alan M. Kriegsman)

Whither television in the next four years? Unless there is a drastic change in the atmosphere already generated by the Nixon administration in its first four years, we appear to be headed for an era of timidity, fecklessness and bland program content, on both commercial and public TV.

The key current exhibits are the now celebrated speech by Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP) director Clay T. Whitehead last month censuring network newscasts for "ideological plugola," and the ongoing battle between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) for control of public television programming.

The clear implication of the Whitehead speech despite later assurances to the contrary was that the government, and in particular, the executive branch, would be keeping close watch on network affiliates for evidence of said "plugola." And the equally clear implication of the CPB bid to wrest control from PBS is that the White House, through its appointees on the CPB board (including new president Henry Loomis), is a better judge of the country's informational needs than PBS, whose board consists mostly of local public TV station managers.

These are the most conspicuous traces of the trend in recent months, but they are scarcely isolated. To gauge their importance, they must be seen against the cumulative record of the past several years-a background which includes the Agnew attacks on the media starting in 1969, federal subpoenas of CBS files on the Black Panthers in 1970, the Caldwell contempt citation that same year and the jailing of other reporters since, the Pentagon Papers flap, the government antitrust suit against the networks, executive criticism of the Watergate case coverage, the gradual abandonment of the presidential press conference, and other items too numerous to cite.

If you don't think any of this has had any serious effect on television, just ask yourself how many times you've seen on-the-spot reports of the fighting in Vietnam in the last two years, or how many specials dealing with the issues of this crucial conflict you've watched, or how many films of the recent bombings, or how many discussions-involving, say, the secretary of state-of the negotiations you've noticed on the tube.

In his most recent press conference, Whitehead protested that his speech had been misinterpreted, and that the legislation he had pro

posed was anything but repressive. True, there is nothing in the wording of the bill itself about "plugola" or "elitist gossip in the guise of news analysis," or any of the other vague but ominous phrases in the Indianapolis address. But does it take actual legislation to get the point across in the right quarters? Maybe just a word to the wise is sufficient. The next week the papers carried a story about New York's WNBC-TV, announcing that it was dropping four of its Sunday public affairs programs and replacing them with a magazine-format series. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the move could hardly be more emblematic of the growing climate of caution. "Why stick your neck out" may become the industry motto, wherever the principle isn't already in force.

On the other hand, some of the network rebuttals involving the sacrosanct "freedom of the press" have tended to sound a bit ingenous. How "free" can the press be when the primary outlet for national news in the broadcast industry consists of three giant corporate combines, with all the attendant merchantile, social and political pressures this implies? The networks have been with us so long we sometimes forget that they aren't a fact of nature but man-made structures, motivated first and last, if not always, by profit. True, the network newsmen, for the most part, are topnotch and responsible professionals who do a conscientious and occasionally brilliant job. But the very limitation of their number is a barrier to a full and free flow of ideas as the representation of blacks or women among network anchor people shows all by itself.

The real question, then, is how does one compensate for restrictions and possible abuses of network journalism-by multiplying the outlets and increasing the alternative sources of information, or by White House intimidation?

The legislation proposed by Whitehead would actually tend to reduce alternatives, by making it harder for rival groups to challenge existing TV licensees, and by extending the life of the licenses from the present 3 to a proposed 5 years.

One obvious alternative to network programing is public television. Indeed that was part of the rationale for Federal support, originally, and the conviction that an independent, noncommercial public system could fill in some of the gaps applied across the board to news and public affairs as well as other areas. It's particularly interesting, therefore, to note that while Whitehead thinks commercial broadcasters are now entitled to greater license stability, the administration is headed in the opposite direction when it comes to public TV.

The White House has made it perfectly clear, on more than one occasion, that it does not feel that public television-as now constituted is ready for long-range funding (the rough equivalent of extended license terms for commercial broadcasters). Indeed, it has done everything in its power to scuttle congressional initiatives toward this goal, including use of the veto. However, precisely because public television attempts to be more innovative and experimental than its commercial counterpart, its need for fiscal security over a period of years is all the greater. Intelligent, imaginative, creative programing requires planning and forethought-it's as simple as that. Yet we even hear talk of tightening the current budgetary noose, in a situation that has already resulted in severe cutbacks in adventurous PBS production.

Time and again, too, the White House has told us--and Whitehead has recently reaffirmed that television ought to be more responsive to local interets and needs. Yet the legislation Whitehead suggested would further insulate entrenched broadcasters against the challenge of local citizenry. And when Hartford Gunn, president of PBS, comes up with a novel, carefully considered plan to put both funds and programing control more directly and in the hands of local stations, he is virtually ignored. Instead, CPB, with its Nixon-packed lineup, proposes to strip authority from the locals almost entirely, and dole out money and programs according to its own highly "centralized" lights. In the face of all these developments, what other conclusion can we come to than that, when it comes to communications, the present administration speaks with a forked tongue. It makes high-sounding pronouncements about fairness and balance, and pays lip service to the themes of diversity and local autonomy. Meanwhile, it woes about shutting off channels of meaningful variety or creative independence, draws the reins of command ever closer to the seat of executive power, and raises a budgetary fist as a warning to those who may not get the message. I'm not sure who'll be the gainers if this drift continues, but it's certain who'll be the losers-the viewing public, as usual.

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 6, 1973]

AN AUDIENCE OF VIGILANTES ?

(By Joseph Kraft)

"The issue is what kind of society we want to shape through television."

The Nixon administration has launched a phony attack on the television networks, and the networks have responded with a bogus defense. Uninstructed people, as a result, have the impression that freedom and liberty are under serious fire in this country.

In fact, the issue is what kind of society we want to shape through television. It is a question of whether we want a self-indulgent society with anarchic tendencies, or a society of tighter common bonds including a touch of elitist culture.

The starting point for all this is that the administration feels that the networks, and especially CBS, are hostile to Mr. Nixon. Presidential advisers have been trying to put the networks on the defensive for years.

The latest effort comes from Clay Whitehead, the Director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy. In a speech on December 18, Mr. Whitehead called on local station owners to monitor the networks for "ideological plugola" and "elitist gossip" in the evening news shows. The networks shot back with the usual charge that the White House was threatening the First Amendment guarantees of a free press.

A moment's reflection disposes of both the attack and the defense. The bias of the networks, if it exists, had as its most important recent political outcome that Mr. Nixon received 60 per cent of the vote and carried all but one state in the last election. Freedom of expression,