Broadcasting: Electronic Hodgepodge

ABC Vice President James Hagerty, who found many a fault with reporters during the years he was President Eisenhower's press secretary, ticked off some new grievances last week. Speaking before the New York State Broadcasters Association in Albany, N.Y., he charged that TV newscasters either "overdo it or lose themselves in a mass of electronic hodgepodge." Recalling all the endless fuss the press made over Ike's illnesses, Hagerty asked whether it was worthwhile, when President Johnson caught the flu, to "flood the air with special programs and breathless bulletins that couldn't help but give the impression that his life was at stake, when actually it wasn't any more than many of us had who contracted the same bug."

Bulletins in general, Hagerty complained, are overdone: "We are at war in Viet Nam, and the international situation is serious but not disastrous. Radio and television reach every citizen of our nation; and when we interrupt regularly scheduled programs with a bulletin, the collective hearts of all our people must miss a few beats until they hear the bulletin. Unless it is a matter of vital importance, aren't we running the risk of crying wolf too many times, with the resultant loss of public confidence?"

Just as bad, said Hagerty, is the quality of TV interviews: "I don't know anyone in the industry who hasn't been embarrassed from time to time by the disgraceful and frenzied interviews of public figures that are put on the air. Hordes of radio and television reporters, augmented by photographers and reporters of the newspapers, literally swamp the person being interviewed. Hand-carried microphones are thrust into his face from all directions; he is often half-blinded by the television lights; questions are shouted at him simultaneously from two or three reporters. All too often everybody gets the same treatment—be he a high-ranking Government official, a visiting foreign dignitary, an athlete, a hardened criminal, a juvenile delinquent or a Christine Keeler.

"Only the other day, the wife of Malcolm X had several microphones shoved in her face and was asked: 'How did you feel when your husband was assassinated?' How in God's name would anyone think she felt? Incidentally, I thought her dignified answer made her look ten feet tall and the questioners very small indeed."