Remarks made during
In 1961 the broadcast industry was still feeling the sting of the quiz
show scandal of the late 1950s. In a major speech as Chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission, I challenged broadcasters to ask themselves if they
were truly honoring the public interest they were licensed to serve.
The American broadcast system faced then, and still faces today, a contradiction: commercial broadcasters are supposed to operate under the legal test of the "public interest, convenience, and necessity," a standard applicable to public utilities.
During the last 30 years, advances in communications technology have increased exponentially television's audience and programming, but it is an open question whether the public interest has been served. Indeed, in an increasingly global television marketplace, where many nations' public service systems are strained by commercial pressures, the issue stands in sharper relief than it did even in 1961.
This 1961 speech is remembered for two words--"vast wasteland"--not the two I intended to be remembered. The words we tried to advance were "public interest." To me, the public interest meant, and still means, that we should constantly ask: What can television do for our country--for the common good--for the American people?
Newton N. Minow
Director
The Annenberg Washington Program
Many who have watched Quiz Show say that it evokes an innocence that can hardly be remembered, it's so long gone.
Because television has a defining role in our culture today that was only being discovered when the quiz shows created mass audiences for the first time, the stakes now are higher than many anticipated when the scandal unfolded 35 years ago.
In this film, NBC President Robert Kitner looks Charles Van Doren in the eye and says, "Television is a public trust. We can't afford even a hint of scandal at our network."
According to the script, what he means by the "public trust" is that he wants the public to trust his network, not that his network has a special duty to the public.
And it is also telling in the film, I think, that the senior producer of "21" shrugged his shoulders at the unfolding disaster.
He said, "It's not like the quiz shows are a public utility. It's entertainment. We're in show business."
There, it seems, is the dilemma.... Is television a public trust? If so, how should that be defined? Who holds the responsibility for it? What have we learned from this scandal 35 years ago? Is such deception still prevalent today, but perhaps in more subtle ways?
Finally, I think the most important question is: What incentives can be devised to bring out the best in television to actually serve the public trust, if there is one?
Ellen Hume
Annenberg Senior Fellow and Moderator
First I would like to give an accolade to this film. And I think it is one of the great films of our time in every respect and most especially in its integrity in the fullness of its picture of the times.
Now, this also suggests to me that there is an atmosphere of utopianism and other worldliness in this very worldly crowd this evening.
And I remember when Mortimer Adler came to the Library of Congress some years ago. He complimented the Library by saying it was the world's greatest library of bad books, which was actually the kind of thing that not very many people had noticed.
But that's not what the librarians of the Lenin Library would have said or the librarians in Nazi Germany.
A free society is one which allows the free interchange of ideas. And I think that we should not expect that television should be different from all of the other arts.
All of the arts are a public trust. It happens that because of the technology of television, we're more impressed with its impingement on our sources of energy than other resources.
On the other hand, every time a book is published, it uses a good deal of public energy and resources. And I think that we should celebrate the opportunity to produce books on all subjects and to collect the bad books and preserve them and make them available, and also the opportunity which Quiz Show provided which gave us the occasion for this great movie which we've seen tonight.
And I think that to sit around people who have made many good programs and movies and good stories in the press and to lament that it's not perfect is a mistake.
A free society is a society of creative chaos. And that, I think, is something worth celebrating and worth recognizing.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Librarian Emeritus, Library of Congress
from remarks made during "Quiz Show and the Future of Television"
As someone who travels about the country a lot and does a lot of speeches, I am black and blue from the media bashing that I get. I'm constantly being called to task for things the media does.
And the public is making no distinction between "ABC News," "60 Minutes," the National Enquirer, "Oprah," or "Inside Edition." We are all the media, and in the public's mind there is a total blurring of what we call the responsible media versus the entertainment shows.
But my biggest complaint...is that it's the public. We're blaming television. We're talking about television, but what gets the ratings? When you put Amy Fisher's story on, it got huge ratings on all three networks, even though it was repetitious, and they all had their own view of it.
"Hard Copy," "Inside Edition," they get big, big numbers. If you were to put the three evening newscasts against "Inside Edition" or "Hard Copy" or "Current Affair," I'm sure they would get a higher rating than our news shows... What is a business supposed to do if the money, the ratings, the acclaim comes from numbers and base appeals to prurient interests of the American people?
My problem is the public. Yes, we're to blame, too; I'm not defending television. There are horrible things...but still, the public watches this stuff.
You put on a quality program, they're not watching it. So I just pose that as my own dilemma of how we get around the problem--which I see as a very big problem.
Carole Simpson
Anchor, World News Sunday, ABC News
Remarks made during "Quiz Show and the Future of Television"
