another anchorman on a network news show contends, and i quote: “you can’t expunge all your private convictions just because you sit in a seat like this and a camera starts to stare at you. i think your program has to reflect what your basic feelings are. i’ll plead guilty to that.”
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
yesterday, the president was notified that 300 individual congressmen and 50 senato