Monitor's Monitor

Is the U.S. press competently doing its job of keeping its readers informed? Last week, Editor Erwin Canham of the Christian Science Monitor (circ. 174,624) answered with a blunt no. Before the National Association of Radio News Directors in Manhattan, "Spike" Canham declared that the failure of the newspapers and the radio to fulfill their responsibilities has caused a "crisis in confidence."

"I believe that the public's mistrust of what they read in the newspapers and hear over the radio," said Canham, "has grown to ... a degree which is alarming to the integrity and future of our function . . . In the case of newspapers, this is due to a fundamental change in the relationship between the press and the public in the last 25 or 30 years.

"The newspaper [once] stood as the organ or the expression of a cohesive body of opinion. There were . . . many more newspapers [per capita] . .. and the newspaper was the organ of a particular segment of thinking . . . Today . . . these representatives of cohesive fractions of public opinion have almost entirely gone and . . . monopoly papers have come into being."

Instead of representing small groups, such papers must "achieve the largest possible degree of ... service and representation . . ." They have failed notably on national and international affairs. Pollsters have found, said Canham, that "on any major issue of foreign policy, 30% of the American public is totally unaware of ... the question; 45% ... just barely knows it by name and that [only] 25% ... would be capable of answering two or three simple questions about the issue." To eliminate these great gaps in knowledge, said Canham, the press must find a better solution to "the eternal compromise . . . between reader interest and significance. The fact that people are immensely more interested in little girls who fall down wells than in the wheat crop in Italy is a fundamental [news problem] from which we can never hope to escape . . . But we should constantly be aware of the necessity of handing on ... important and significant news . . . and not simply the easy news which is sensational and violent. . . We [must convert] into terms of human comprehension and human interest the news which is of primary significance to people's lives everywhere."

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