If Bernard Schwartz is listening, I want to make it clear at the outset that I paid my own expenses here tonight.
I cannot truthfully say, however, that I am not in debt to the broadcasting industry. My debt goes back to the Democratic National Convention of 1956. If that turbulent session on the Vice Presidential nomination had not been limited in time because of broadcast commitments, there might have been time for a third ballot instead of asking states to change their second ballot choices – I might have beaten out Senator Kefauver for the Vice Presidential nomination – and my political career would now be over.
I stand before you tonight as a fugitive from an isolation booth known as the United States Senate. Once inside that booth, we contestants are unable to see or hear the public who is our audience. We receive questions that become harder and harder. We are required to answer whether we are ready or not. When we finally lose, there is no Cadillac convertible as consolation – just a law office back in Pocatello. The only trouble with this quiz show is that many, for some strange reason, are clamoring to go on the show – but no current contestant ever wants to take his winnings and go home. Apparently they all hope someday to advance to Quizmaster.
The more serious links between broadcasting and politics are very real and meaningful. The first regularly scheduled broadcast in the history of radio took place on November 2, 1920 – a report of the Harding-Cox election returns. In the more than 37 years that have followed, radio – and now television – has brought politics and political processes closer to the American electorate than ever before. A disappointed young man who listened to that first broadcast was Governor Cox’s running-mate on the Democratic ticket – Franklin Roosevelt. Less than two decades later he was to become one of the first political masters of radio appeal – in his fireside chats, his convention addresses, his campaign speeches about "Martin, Barton and Fish" and the slurs against his "little dog Fala."
Another who listened that November night in 1920, broken in health and spirit, was Woodrow Wilson, outgoing President of the United States. Thirteen months earlier he had suffered a stroke – brought on in large measure by his exhausting cross-country speaking tour on behalf of the League of Nations. The tour was made, against his doctor’s advice, as the only means the President knew to take his case for peace directly to the American people. For three weeks he worked his way West, down the Pacific Coast, then back toward the East, making 37 speeches. But the pace damaged his health – and consequently his cause. What would he have thought if he could have known that 36 years later President Dwight Eisenhower, addressing the nation on the Little Rock situation, would reach an estimated 65 million people in one 15-minute period?
Permit me to cite one more example. In 1868 the political struggles of the post-civil war period culminated in the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson before the United States Senate. This unhappy affair dragged on for nearly three months, before crowded galleries. It was perhaps the greatest political drama of the century, avidly followed by all the nation. Calculating the number of days the impeachment proceedings continued and the number of seats in the Senate Galleries, we come up with the realization that, even if a new person had occupied each seat each day of the trial, no more than three thousand people could have seen even a small portion of that somber turning-point in American history. But in the month of May, 1954, an estimated seventy million people watched part or all of the Army-McCarthy hearings before a Senate Committee.
No politician today, I can assure, you, ignores the power of radio and television. It has altered drastically the methods of campaigning, the nature of campaign speeches, the personalities, the timing – and the cost. In the 1956 campaign, for instance, the Republican National Committee, according to the Gore Report, spent over three million dollars for TV time as opposed to one and a third million on newspaper space. In the same campaign the Democratic National Committee spent two million, eight hundred thousand dollars on broadcast air time as opposed to nearly 695 thousand dollars on newspaper space.
That radio and television have a tremendous impact upon public affairs and public servants is not news, of course. All of you, I am certain, are aware of your power and influence – in your local communities and in the nation. The very fact of your gathering here indicates that you are aware, also, of your responsibility. You are aware that a private industry which utilizes public airwaves and TV channels – and which is necessarily regulated by public agencies – has a tremendous responsibility for public service.
I congratulate you upon your efforts and attendance. I congratulate you upon the achievements in the field of public service radio and television which you have already accomplished. And I congratulate you on your patience in coming to hear a United States Senator who makes no pretense of being an expert on the law, science, or problems of broadcasting.
But you are not here to be congratulated – to rest on your laurels. Nor are we here to look backward, to examine either the triumphs of the failures of the past. We are here to talk about the future of public service broadcasting – and you have asked me to offer my views as a public servant.
The public service broadcaster and the public servant – we have a great deal more in common than we might at first realize. In the last analysis, we are both dependent in large measure on the same factor – public approval. The broadcaster who offers shows that are neither seen nor heard is not offering a public service, no matter how high the quality of his show. The politician whose indifference to public opinion costs him his seat will no longer be able to perform effective public service, no matter how high principled his courage or independence might have seemed.
We both need, in short, public approval – not necessarily instant, or unanimous, or easily identified – but enough in the long run to keep us on our course.
The question facing us both is: will that desire for public approbation become dominant? Will Gresham’s law operate in the broadcasting and political worlds wherein the bad inevitably drive out the good? Will the politician’s desire for reelection – and the broadcaster’s desire for ratings – cause both to flatter every public whim and prejudice – to seek the lowest common denominator of appeal – to put public opinion at all times ahead of the public interest?
For myself, I reject that view of politics – and I urge you to reject that view of broadcasting. I do not say that we shall all be as independent as Congressman John Steven McGroarty of California, who wrote a constituent in 1934:
"One of the countless drawbacks of being in Congress is that I am compelled to receive impertinent letters from a jackass like you in which you say I promised to have the Sierra Madre mountains reforested and I have been in Congress two months and haven’t done it. Will you please take two running jumps and go to hell."
But I do say that we should not underestimate the American people. We must not sell their intelligence short. At no time in our history have the people been so well-educated, so well-informed on issues, or so well aware of the complex crises we face at home and abroad. Our political and governmental life are beginning to reflect this – the egghead is coming into his own. Is the broadcasting industry also reflecting this trend? Are your programs in general – and your public service programs in particular – literate, constructive, stimulating?
I recognize full well the broadcasters' familiar response to criticism – "we only give the public what it wants." We politicians fall back on that answer frequently, too. But I am suggesting a greater faith in the American public – in their ability to respect independent judgment and courage, even when they do not embrace the results – in their willingness to honor a politician for his conscience and a broadcast for its quality, and to reward both in the long run with approval, even when they disagree with the position taken.
But even more importantly, politicians have a responsibility to do something more than simply follow public opinion – and so do broadcasters. If we are to fulfill in full these responsibilities to that public which we share, then we must on occasion lead, inform, correct, help to shape, and sometimes even ignore popular opinion.
You have still another response, I know – that broadcasting is a business – that a business needs sponsors – and that sponsors are interested only in the quantity of people reached. But we politicians need sponsors, too – I am looking for more than a million sponsors in Massachusetts this November. If I do not secure them, the Senate has no provisions for "sustaining time" to keep me on the air.
But the people of Massachusetts – and the people of the nation at large – have on more than one occasion demonstrated their willingness to "sponsor" politicians whose views were controversial, or unpopular. Some of these stories I have tried to describe in my book "Profiles in Courage." Others are serving in the Senate and House today.
I am equally convinced that sponsors are willing and available to back public service radio and television programs of quality, even though they may be more literate, more controversial, or less exciting than quiz shows and pop music. I am not asking you to increase the amount of sustaining time you now give to public service programs. I am suggesting – and the experience of WBC among many others has demonstrated – that sponsors can be found for good, worthwhile, significant public service shows – that such shows can win a responsive audience of importance to you and the sponsor.
Quantity is not the measure. The merit of a broadcasting station or network is not to be judged by the number of hours a month logged under the category of "public service."
The question is one of quality. I, for one, am convinced that the American people—and, if you please, the sponsors – are prepared for more and better high-quality public service programs. They are prepared for more substance instead of froth, more controversy instead of pap. They are prepared for programs intentionally designed to be more complex, more penetrating, more literate and more constructive than those to which their taste has become accustomed in the past.
I speak as one concerned over public interest and participation in national affairs – as one also subject to the pressure of popular opinion – and as one who is an unabashed radio and television fan. In those capacities, I bring this message to our nation’s radio and television leaders – a message as old as ancient writ: "Be not afraid."
First, do not be afraid of stimulating the viewer. You may become involved in heated or delicate controversies. You may wish to use the rights of editorializing which the F.C.C. has given you. You may antagonize some viewers and some sponsors, and even some Senators. But if the program is good – if it is honest and constructive and thoughtful – then I am convinced that you will gain increased respect from the American people and their elected officials.
I realize that high quality programs are possible without stirring up powerful interest groups or intense emotions. The fields of culture and scholarship offer endless opportunities that should not be ignored. But this nation faces critical challenges in a score of fields – international relations, race relations, education, the economic dip and others. Should the broadcast industry hope to steer clear of it all? As George William Curtis asked a century ago during the Kansas-Nebraska Controversy:
"Would you have counted him a friend of Ancient Greece who quietly discussed the theory of patriotism on that Greek summer day through whose hopeless and immortal hours Leonidas and his three hundred stood at Thermopylae for liberty? Was John Milton to conjugate Greek verbs in his library, or talk of the liberty of the ancient Shunamites, when the liberty of Englishmen was imperiled?"
No, the station interested in public service – like every public servant and citizen – has a duty to participate actively in these affairs. Many of you have already fulfilled that duty nobly.
Secondly, do not be afraid to be literate – to assume a high level of intelligence and understanding on the part of your audience – to assume great public interest in current issues and events – and to direct at least a substantial part of such programs to the highest instead of the lowest I.Q. range among your listeners. Perhaps you will not obtain the same high ratings as a variety show or 1938 movie. Perhaps you will receive some complaints that the show is over people’s heads – but, if Adlai Stevenson's experience is any precedent, the complainants will always be talking about other people’s heads, not their own.
I realize that intellectualism has for some time been suspect in America… so much so, that a 1956 survey of American intellectuals by a national magazine elicited from one of our foremost literary figures the guarded response, "I ain’t no intellectual." But the eggheads, as I have said, are on their way back. People are willing to think, think hard, and respect hard thinkers. We can expect – I hope – more literate campaign speeches, much as in the Presidential campaign of 1856, when the Republicans sent three brilliant orators around the campaign circuit: William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. (In those carefree days, it seems, the "eggheads" were all Republicans.)
Third and finally, do not be afraid of being constructive as well as sensational or dramatic. No one denies the public’s appetite for scandal and excitement. But your responsibility of public service goes beyond this, in your examination of public issues.
Take, for example, my membership on the McClellan Committee on Labor Racketeering. Radio and TV have given excellent coverage to our investigations, including the scandalous abuses of union welfare and pension funds. But I am also chairman of the permanent Labor Subcommittee handling all legislation on this matter. We have reported a bill concerning these funds which is gigantic in its impact – but dull.
More than 75 million people are affected. Pension fund reserves are the largest single source of equity capital in the country. They total more than 25 billion dollars. Our legislation, though involving the most sensitive and complex problems, does not lend itself to dramatic hearings or lively debates. But it represents, in my opinion, a challenge to the resourcefulness of your industry – to find ways of bringing this work and these issues home to the American people. It may be hard going, dull, and complex – but I am convinced that a substantial part of the public is not afraid of such material. I trust you will not be afraid of it either.
If our nation and your industry are to live up to the challenge of our times, then what we need is not fear but enlightenment – not weakness but courage.
In his book, "One Man’s America," Alistair Cooke tells the story which best illustrates my point. On the 19th of May, 1780, as he describes it, in Hartford, Connecticut the skies at noon turned from blue to gray and by mid-afternoon had blackened over so densely that, in that religious age, men fell on their knees and begged a final blessing before the end came. The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session. And as some men fell down in the darkened chamber and others clamored for an immediate adjournment, the Speaker of the House, one Colonel Davenport, came to his feet. And he silenced the din with these words: "The Day of Judgment is either approaching – or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought."
Leaders of the broadcasting industry, we who are here today concerned with the dark and difficult task ahead ask once again that you bring candles to illuminate our way.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 900, "Westinghouse Broadcasting Company (WBC) 2nd Conference in Public Service Programming, Baltimore, Maryland, 6 March 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.