How to Handle Violence

According to a recent Gallup poll 45% of Americans think that newspapers report unfairly on political and social issues, and 42% think that the TV networks are unfair in the same areas. Many Americans also think the press and TV place too much stress on unpleasant news. Thus the timing was perfect for last week's release of the most comprehensive review of the nation's news media since the report of the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press in 1947.

The report, called Mass Media and Violence, was produced by a task force for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Much of it has been said before and it is hardly a model of writing, editing or even proofreading (typographical errors extend to the title page). Yet the paperback, which weighs nearly two pounds, should interest both the critics and the criticized --though it will likely delight neither.

Appeal Boards. It rebuffs, for instance, those who would have the press and TV ignore protest demonstrations. "Protest is an attempt to communicate, to tell the public that the social machine is in trouble. Without media attention, the tensions of change could not be identified, much less alleviated." The report suggests a different way in which press and TV could help decrease demonstrations: by making it easier for would-be protesters to gain access to news columns and airwaves. Specifically, it recommends more attention to regular activities of minority groups, more interpretive reporting on social issues, and the use of part-time reporters within ghettos. It also urges news organizations to establish internal appeal boards to hear complaints about coverage from any citizen--a proposal that goes far beyond letters to the editor.

For TV, the report suggests that it should be possible to reflect conflicting sides of an issue without necessarily giving those involved equal time. In fact, says the report, "the belief that balance, regardless of merits, is required seems to have had a dampening effect on willingness of many broadcast news organizations to treat controversial subjects." Other recommendations for TV seem less realistic. Among them: that the Government provide its Corporation for Public Broadcasting with $40 million to $50 million a year for news and public affairs programming. (Federal financing for C.P.B. in '68-'69 totaled only $5,000,000.)

Press Council. The report's most sweeping proposal is that a press council, independent of the media and Government (but without disciplinary powers), be set up as a public watchdog for all news outlets. Describing this as "a first step toward government over-lordship," the New York Daily News cried: "The late Adolf Hitler and Dr. Joe Goebbels would have loved that." The suggestion hardly goes that far, but there are two important counts against it. Such bodies rarely prove effective and, in this particular case, the council's independence might be suspect because its members would initially be appointed by the President.

Action on any of the report's proposals will probably depend on the willingness of the news media to go along, prodded perhaps by public opinion. The task force that prepared the report has no official power. Like other reports prepared for the Violence Commission, this one has been published without the commission's endorsement.

Based on mounds of existing material, public hearings and a three-day private session with some 50 journalists, the report was prepared by people with little experience in journalism. Its section on the news media (there is a larger section on TV entertainment and violence) was written mainly by Robert Baker, 29, a former attorney in the Justice Department. Baker apparently had few illusions about the immediate impact of the report. At the end of his press section, he wrote: "The government can no more legislate good journalism than it can legislate good manners. More important than the adoption of specific suggestions is that each news organization make an independent determination of what is significant."

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