○ spiro theodore agnew: television news coverage ○
less than a week before the 1968 election, this same commentator charged that president nixon’s campaign commitments were no more durable than campaign balloons. he claimed that, were it not for the fear of hostile reaction, richard nixon would be giving into, and i quote him exactly, “his natural instinct to smash the enemy with a club or go after him with a meat axe.”
had this slander been made by one political candidate about another, it would have been dismissed by most commentators as a partisan attack. but this attack emanated from the privileged sanctuary of a network studio and therefore had the apparent dignity of an objective statement. the american people would rightly not tolerate this concentration of power in government. is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government?
the views of the majority of this fraternity do not -- and i repeat, not -- represent the views of america. that is why such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the president’s address and how the networks reviewed it. not only did the country receive the president’s speech more warmly than the networks, but so also did the congress of the united states.
yesterday, the president was notified that 300 individual congressmen and 50 senators of both parties had endorsed his efforts for peace. as with other american institutions, perhaps it is time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve.
now i want to make myself perfectly clear. i’m not asking for government censorship or any other kind of censorship. i am asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that
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