Newscasting: The Great Imponderable

"We are," says NBC News Vice President Reuven Frank, "the most nervous and guilty industry in the country."

If Frank sounds slightly beleaguered, it is only understandable. All winter long, he and other TV newsmen have been warding off a chilly gale of complaints from Senators, Congressmen, city officials, policemen and viewers in general. The most frequent charge leveled by the critics is that television, with its vast reach and visual impact, is in a sense the germ carrier that spreads the plague of riots across the U.S. The question, in short, is whether the sight of a Harlem youth hurling a brick through a store window and shouting "Black Power!" induces a ghetto teen ager in Detroit to do the same.

TV newsmen say no, yet their generally restrained coverage of the "disturbances" following the King assassination, compared with the full-blast coverage of last summer's riots, proves that television need not err on the side of sensationalism. Though the President's riot commission report tends to discount TV's role as an inciter it guardedly adds that "the question is far-reaching and a sure answer is beyond the range of presently available scientific techniques."

McLuhcmalysis. That qualifier suggests what is really the great imponderable of all TV news: picture power. It bears not only on the question of riots but on every news event in which TV with live coverage (in color), turns reaction into action. To what extent have strikers, angrily airing their grievances on TV, caused other union men to hit the picket lines? Have scenes of racist mobs screaming insults at Negroes in spired white viewers to march for civil rights? What would Stokely Carmichael's influence be without his exposure on TV?* And how many suburbanites, after seeing a white housewife firing her new rifle at a target in her basement, bought guns to protect themselves against rioters?

No amount of McLuhanalysis can give the complete answer, but there is a growing appreciation, as well as apprehension, of TV's power. Last week, in an address at Tulane's law school' U.S. Solicitor General Erwin Griswold said: "There may be real room to question whether we have psychologically caught up with the developments in communications speed and distribution, whether we are capable of absorbing and evaluating all of the materials which are now communicated daily to hundreds of millions of people."

Party Line. For TV newsmen, the problem is to satisfy viewers who have come to expect the news to match the action of other programs. Too many "talking heads," regardless of their message, can be deadly, and thus, as one newsman admits, "we're still basically in show business." That fact has led some newsmen to overstep their charter. Recently, Los Angeles' KNBC sent a film team to Claremont Men's College to shoot a debate on Viet Nam, and caused a ruckus when the students' spotted the newsmen unpacking half a dozen posters with pro and con war slogans. Later, a spokesman for KNBC admitted that the posters were intended as "colorful additions to the set." On other occasions, a TV cameraman induced protesters to burn a city bus, while another persuaded two hippies to attempt to block President Johnson's entrance into a Washington club.