tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/walter-cronkite-59318/articlesWalter Cronkite – The Conversation2023-04-27T12:31:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045092023-04-27T12:31:02Z2023-04-27T12:31:02ZSaving broadcasting’s past for the future – archivists are working to capture not just tapes of TV and radio but the experience of tuning in together<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522861/original/file-20230425-18-ro9r4q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C6%2C4479%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How will we preserve technologies so deeply embedded in daily life? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/retro-old-tv-receiver-and-outdated-broadcast-radio-royalty-free-image/1141288438?phrase=radio%20and%20television%20old%20fashioned&adppopup=true">BrAt_PiKaChU/Istock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’ve lived with broadcasting <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/history-of-commercial-radio">for more than a century</a>. Starting with <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-history-of-the-radio-industry-in-the-united-states-to-1940/">radio in the 1920s</a>, then <a href="https://dp.la/exhibitions/radio-golden-age/radio-tv">television in the 1950s</a>, Americans by the millions began purchasing boxes designed to receive electromagnetic signals transmitted from nearby towers. Upon arrival, those signals were amplified and their messages were “aired” into our lives.</p>
<p>Those invisible signals provided our kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms with access to jazz clubs, baseball stadiums and symphony halls. For a century, they have been transporting us instantly to London, Cairo or Tokyo, or back in time to the old West or deep into the imagined future of interplanetary travel. </p>
<p>The reception of those radio, then television, signals didn’t just inform us, they shaped us. Everyone experienced broadcasting individually and collectively, both intimately and as members of dispersed crowds. </p>
<p>Radio and television fostered an ephemeral and invisible public arena that expanded our understanding of the world – and ourselves. Whether it was the final episodes of <a href="https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/GangBusters.pdf">radio serials like “Gangbusters”</a>, or <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/M-A-S-H">television’s “M*A*S*H</a>” or “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Seinfeld">Seinfeld</a>,” Americans often marked the passage of time by shared broadcast experiences. </p>
<p>Even today, more <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/13/for-world-radio-day-key-facts-about-radio-listeners-and-the-radio-industry-in-the-u-s/">Americans use standard AM/FM radio broadcasting</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/tiktok-now-150-million-active-users-us-ceo-tell-congress-rcna75607">than TikTok</a>. At a time when most Americans get their <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/local-tv-news/">news from local TV stations and broadcast television</a> networks, and radio remains pervasive, it might seem frivolous to express concern about preserving technologies so deeply embedded in daily life. </p>
<p>Yet a media evolution is occurring, as paid subscription video streaming and audio services climb in popularity, and fewer Americans are <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/186833/average-television-use-per-person-in-the-us-since-2002/">consistently tuning in to broadcast media</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite reports on the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Demise of shared moments</h2>
<p>The broadcasting era is becoming eclipsed by new media technologies. In the era of TV and radio dominance, “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mass-media">mass media</a>” was defined by shared experiences. </p>
<p>But now, new media technologies – cable TV, the web and social media – are changing that definition, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01616.x">segmenting what was once</a> a huge, undifferentiated mass audience. All those new media fragmented what were once huge collectives. Bottom line: We’re not all watching or hearing the same thing anymore.</p>
<p>With fewer Americans simultaneously sharing media experiences, the ramifications of this evolution stretch beyond the media industries and into our culture, politics and society. </p>
<p>The shared moments that electrified and unified the nation – from <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-fireside-chat-provided-a-model-for-calming-the-nation-that-president-trump-failed-to-follow-133473">President Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats</a> to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-jfk-media/how-the-jfk-assassination-transformed-media-coverage-idUSBRE9AK11N20131121">TV news coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination</a> and up through the <a href="https://archive.org/details/911/day/20010911">Sept. 11, 2001, attacks</a> – have become more rare. Even national events, such as a presidential election, are different today in that our collective experiences now seem more individualized and less communal. People get their news about presidential elections from sources with radically different perspectives on what used to be shared facts.</p>
<p>The very idea of collectively tuning in to history as it happens has been altered, as the profusion of channels and platforms now funnels audience members into self-segregated affinity groups where messages are shaped more for confirmation than enlightenment.</p>
<h2>How to remember</h2>
<p>As we move into this new media world, broadcasting risks being relegated to the rustic past like other old media such as the rotary telephone, the nickelodeon, the 78-rpm phonograph and the DVD. </p>
<p>That’s why, from April 27-30, 2023, the Library of Congress is hosting a conference, titled “<a href="https://radiopreservation.org/2023-conference/">A Century of Broadcasting</a>,” that invites scholars, preservationists, archivists, museum educators and curators, fans and the public to discuss the most effective ways to preserve broadcasting’s history.</p>
<p>The goal of the conference, convened by the Library of Congress’ <a href="https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-recording-preservation-plan/about-this-program/radio-preservation-task-force/">Radio Preservation Task Force</a>, is to begin envisioning the future of this technology’s past. As a <a href="https://cmj.umaine.edu/faculty-staff/michael-j-socolow/">radio historian</a> and member of the Radio Preservation Task Force, I was invited to serve on the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-plan/documents/23-LOC-conference-program.pdf">conference organizing team</a>. <a href="https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-plan/documents/23-LOC-conference-program.pdf">Panels, papers and presentations</a> will look at how broadcasting is currently being archived, and how we, as a society, can think more systematically and formally about how we’ll remember broadcasting. While the task force is primarily concerned with broadcasting’s inception as radio, aspects of television’s past will be included as well. </p>
<p>Preserving radio – and TV – is not as simple as storing machines or tapes. To understand broadcasting history, preservationists must try to describe an experience. It isn’t enough to show somebody the printed script from a 1934 Jack Benny radio program, or <a href="https://www.si.edu/object/archie-bunkers-chair-all-family%3Anmah_670097">the theatrical stage set</a> used when “All in the Family” was taped before a live studio audience in 1973. To comprehend what Jack Benny, Gracie Allen or Jackie Gleason meant to the people of the United States involves trying to imagine, and almost feel, an experience.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A recording of the Jack Benny radio show of Jan. 1, 1955, titled “Jack Doesn’t Have a Script.”</span></figcaption>
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<h2>‘Essential’ first step</h2>
<p>The Radio Preservation Task Force seeks to go beyond the big corporate commercial collections that already exist. <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/record/recnbc.html">NBC’s radio and TV archives</a>, as well as the <a href="https://invention.si.edu/rca-corporation-records-1887-1983-bulk-1914-1968">Radio Corporation of America’s</a> and others, are already well-preserved and housed at repositories like the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. </p>
<p>The Radio Preservation Task Force is concerned with the diverse universe of broadcasting, including the many types of stations and networks that defined American broadcasting. </p>
<p>“Millions of Americans listened to college, community and educational radio stations that were less famous than CBS and NBC but still played an important role in daily life,” notes University of Colorado <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/media-studies/josh-shepperd">scholar Josh Shepperd</a>, chair of the Radio Preservation Task Force. “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/j/jcms/18261332.0062.701/--presencing-through-preserving-sound-history-at-historical?rgn=main;view=fulltext">Preservation projects associated</a> with the Radio Preservation Task Force have revealed to us that <a href="https://www.wyso.org/hbcuradioproject">African American radio stations</a> played an important role in helping catalyze the Civil Rights Movement by fostering and inspiring community.” </p>
<p>Shepperd added that “those are just two examples of often-overlooked but essential components of our nation’s broadcast history.” </p>
<p>At the “<a href="https://radiopreservation.org/full-conference-schedule/">Century of Broadcasting” Conference</a>, scholars will examine such varied topics as how gender roles were performed on the air and how Spanish-language radio maintained listener identity with the community while broadening outreach. The conference also includes discussion of international and global radio communities, with scholars presenting on broadcasting history from France, Germany and Latin America. </p>
<p>“There’s even a panel on preserving the history of unlicensed and illegal ‘pirate’ radio,” says Shepperd. </p>
<p>Our media remains so atmospheric – it’s everywhere, all the time – that we too rarely pause to concentrate on how it evolves and how those transformations ultimately influence us. </p>
<p>Radio and TV might not technically be “endangered” right now; after all, we all still use telephones even if they look completely different and serve functions largely unimaginable 40 years ago. </p>
<p>Yet moving beyond the broadcast era holds important ramifications for all of us, even if we cannot precisely discern them in this moment. Recognizing the need to preserve radio and TV’s past marks an essential first step, so that the future will be properly informed about how we lived and communicated for over a century of American history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Socolow is a member of the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force, and was on the conference organizing team for the "Century of Broadcasting" conference. </span></em></p>Scholars, preservationists, archivists, museum educators and curators, fans and the public are meeting in late April in the nation’s capital to figure out how to preserve broadcasting’s history.Michael J. Socolow, Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1956342023-01-18T13:38:02Z2023-01-18T13:38:02ZFictional newsman Ted Baxter was more invested in fame than in good journalism – but unlike today’s pundits, he didn’t corrupt the news<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504264/original/file-20230112-60681-z7fdw6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C3906%2C2910&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fictional anchorman Ted Baxter, center, flanked by newsroom boss Lou Grant and colleague Mary Richards, on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' in 1970.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/newsroom-boss-lou-grant-newscaster-ted-baxter-and-mary-news-photo/517428674?phrase=Ted%20Baxter&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pundits are commonplace in today’s cable news environment, with <a href="https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444">politically tilted news coverage</a> coming from both left and right. Particularly dangerous are characters like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who have stoked anger and polarization by promoting bigotry and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/business/media/vaccines-fox-news-hosts.html">spreading misinformation about COVID-19</a> <a href="https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/the-damage-being-done-by-fox-news/">and the 2020 election</a>. </p>
<p>It’s sobering, then, to recall that during its first half-century of existence, from the 1950s until the ascendance of slanted channels such as Fox News and MSNBC, TV news strove for fairness and objectivity.</p>
<p>In the old days, analysis that provided a point of view was explicitly labeled as “commentary.” It was believed to be helpful to viewers, whom the news divisions understood not just as consumers – what advertisers cared about – but also as citizens. </p>
<p>Ed Klauber, who set CBS News standards in the 1930s, declared that “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p069413">in a democracy</a> it is important that people not only should know but should understand, and it is the analysts’ function to help the listener to understand, to weigh and to judge, but not to do the judging for him.” Fred Friendly, CBS News president from 1964 to 1966, distributed Klauber’s guidelines to his team on pocket-size cards. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with glasses and wavy hair and a receding hairline, wearing a jacket and tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504269/original/file-20230112-26-gzyrng.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">CBS News President Fred Friendly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/friendly-fred-w-former-pres-cbs-news-news-photo/161968179?phrase=Fred%20Friendly%20CBS&adppopup=true">Denver Post/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The national news appeared on only three channels, and the networks strove for political neutrality. They were seeking a wide, mass audience but were also influenced by their own professional standards and the government-imposed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fairness-Doctrine">Fairness Doctrine</a> requiring balanced coverage of controversial issues. Within this context, celebrity <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Cronkite">anchormen like Walter Cronkite</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Brinkley">David Brinkley</a> downplayed their own stardom.</p>
<p>Back then, the only TV newsman with an oversized personality who was familiar to a national audience was an entirely fictional one: <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jul-16-et-kaltenbach16-story.html">Ted Baxter, of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show</a>,” a character who was funny precisely because he was so implausible. The sitcom, which ran from 1970 to 1977, centered on a single woman working in a TV newsroom in Minneapolis. Baxter was the station’s anchorman, and his incompetence doomed the “Six O'Clock News” to low ratings. </p>
<p>Notwithstanding the common perception that it was an unprofitable, strictly altruistic venture, the national news did make <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884910379707">significant revenue from their nightly broadcasts</a>. Still, the lofty objective of these operations was public service. There was a baseline understanding that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saving-the-news-9780190948412?cc=us&lang=en&">democracy demands a free press and an informed electorate</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/33733/a-reporters-life-by-walter-cronkite/">Cronkite argued in his memoir</a>, encapsulating – and also mythologizing – the ideals of that era, “Newspapers and broadcasting, insofar as journalism goes, are public services essential to the successful working of our democracy. It is a travesty that they should be required to pay off like any other stock-market investment.” </p>
<p>Ted Baxter, played by actor Ted Knight, had no such concerns. Like many of today’s pundits – though without their ideological commitments – he was an anchorman more invested in fame than in good journalism.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ted Baxter being Ted Baxter.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Alive in Minneapolis, dead in Tokyo</h2>
<p>Ted Baxter was a slow-witted egomaniac. </p>
<p>To pick up extra cash, he did <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhvNfg8Nw1E">undignified commercials</a> for sausage, dog food and even some kind of befuddling “woman’s product.” Impressed by the very existence of time zones, he once said, “It’s actually tomorrow in Tokyo. Do you realize that there are people alive here in Minneapolis who are already dead in Tokyo?”</p>
<p>His only professional assets were good looks and a fine baritone. In one episode, a blizzard made the <a href="https://youtu.be/U9A3-xvj_Y4">phones go down during local election coverage</a>. Unable to receive updates on the vote count, the news team was forced to pull an all-nighter until a winner could be accurately declared. </p>
<p>Baxter wanted to call the race prematurely so he could go home, a flagrant dereliction of duty. </p>
<p>Forced to stay, he displayed his typical incompetence, mistakenly reading the entirety of a cue card aloud on the air: “We’ll stay on the air until a winner is declared. Take off glasses, look concerned.” </p>
<p>Ted’s priority was stardom. When he was tempted to quit the news for a lucrative job as a game show host, his boss, Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner, talked him out of it by evoking the higher purpose embodied by newsmen like CBS’ acclaimed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/06/books/always-on-the-side-of-the-heretics.html">Edward R. Murrow</a>. </p>
<p>Ted was nothing like Murrow, as confirmed in the next scene, when he reported about a fishing boat incident and then improvised a joke: a woman tells her sailor husband in bed, “not tonight, I have a haddock.” Ted Baxter revered Murrow as a celebrity, and his hero was Cronkite, but gravitas was simply impossible for him. </p>
<p>When Cronkite made a cameo appearance on the show in 1974, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79A4vF2UsQM">Ted was positively giddy</a>. Cronkite was a bit wooden, underscoring the fact that he was not an actor, thereby implicitly upholding a more dignified standard than Ted. </p>
<p>In fact, Dick Salant, who succeeded Friendly at CBS, had <a href="https://txarchives.org/utcah/finding_aids/01267.xml">initially refused the invitation to Cronkite</a> from the show’s producers. He was anxious that Cronkite should not deliver “lines written for him in a fictitious role,” fearing it would undercut Cronkite’s trustworthy image.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Walter Cronkite appeared on ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ on Feb. 9, 1974.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Cronkite was a fan of the show, declaring, “<a href="https://txarchives.org/utcah/finding_aids/01267.xml">The newsroom operation is realistic — even with Ted</a>.” </p>
<h2>Baxter couldn’t corrupt the news</h2>
<p>If there is anything “realistic” about the satirical, fictional Ted Baxter, though, it’s that he lived up to the norms of political neutrality that really did dominate national newscasts in the 1970s — notwithstanding President Richard Nixon and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHuA5_yTok8">Vice President Spiro Agnew</a>’s ferocious accusations of “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo183630531.html">liberal bias</a>.”</p>
<p>Today’s grandstanding cable news pundits may provoke nostalgia for the Cronkite days – and the Baxter days – but nostalgia has a way of blurring over all the unpleasant details. </p>
<p>The news was already in trouble in the Nixon years. The president had planted the idea that the mainstream media suffered from liberal bias, a notion <a href="https://www.heritage.org/insider/fall-2019-insider/interview-carrie-lukas">which was then nurtured by</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/us/reed-irvine-82-the-founder-of-a-media-criticism-group-dies.html">right-wing groups</a> like Accuracy in Media and the Heritage Foundation. </p>
<p>Newscasters accustomed to reporting “both sides” were under constant attack in the 1970s. <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/226578">Nixon besieged the networks</a> with every dirty trick, from Federal Communications Commission pressure to IRS audits. He even dreamed that cable TV could solve his problems by <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.9783/9780812293746-011/pdf">breaking the network news monopoly</a>.</p>
<p>On this count, Nixon was right. Cable did end network dominance and enable the rise of <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/nicole-hemmer/partisans/9781541646872/">highly politicized, overtly biased, personality-driven news</a>. </p>
<p>But the triumph of Baxterism was never what “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” promoted. Just the opposite.</p>
<p>Ted Baxter was a cautionary figure who showed that real news could never succeed by depending on style over substance. Ted kept letting everyone down in order to teach viewers a lesson: Even a dolt who prized financial reward over integrity could not corrupt the news, as long as others held it to a higher standard. </p>
<p>In an episode called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw0k4o46Pcs">The Good-Time News</a>,” for example, the station manager demanded a “more entertaining” format to bring up the ratings. Lou Grant protested that “news is truth … I’m not going to make it into something fake.” </p>
<p>Lou was right. The new format was a disaster, with Ted’s offensive “good-time” banter provoking angry telegrams. </p>
<p>Fool that he was, Ted nonetheless represented a golden age of TV news. If he could have read cue cards without flubbing up, he might have even been a decent anchorman. But he never could have been a pundit. </p>
<p>Ted never boosted a favorite politician or a conspiracy theory. He was politically vacant. He once ran for office as a Democrat, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmDtRMvJUww">even though he was a registered Republican</a>. He really didn’t care – he only wanted to increase his fan base.</p>
<p>Ted Baxter thus embodied the ego of the pundit, but without the opinions that often make such a person dangerous. For all his incompetence, it never occurred to him to air his own political views. By network news standards of the 1970s, this made him a friend of democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Hendershot does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Today’s anchors on politically slanted news programs feed anger and polarization with their wild claims. Their ancestor is a character from ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ – with one big difference.Heather Hendershot, Professor of Film and Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1358852020-04-19T12:17:40Z2020-04-19T12:17:40ZEarth Day at 50: A look to the past offers hope for the planet’s future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327722/original/file-20200414-117593-1jdpic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C50%2C2943%2C2023&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A crowd observes the world's first Earth Day on April 23, 1970, in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, millions of people took to the streets in cities and towns across the United States, <a href="https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2020/">giving voice to an emerging consciousness of humanity’s impact on Earth</a>. Protesters shut down 5th Avenue in New York City, students in Boston staged a “die-in” at Logan airport and demonstrators in Chicago called for an end to the internal combustion engine. </p>
<p><em>CBS News</em> anchor Walter Cronkite hosted a half-hour Earth Day special, calling for the public to heed “the unanimous voice of the scientists warning that halfway measures and business as usual cannot possibly pull us back from the edge of the precipice.” </p>
<p>Today, Cronkite’s words are eerily familiar. Warnings of impending ecological crises are now commonplace. But are we prepared to heed the warnings? In 1970, the answer was yes. The same might just be true, once again, in 2020. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">CBS News Earth Day special report, part 1, from April 22, 1970.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The road to Earth Day</h2>
<p>In 1970, the world was reaching the end of a post-war economic boom, associated with a rapid expansion of industry and manufacturing. “Better living through chemistry,” was radically changing the daily lives of many of the world’s inhabitants. Pesticides like <a href="https://jmvh.org/article/ddt-and-silent-spring-fifty-years-after/">DDT had saved thousands from malaria and other insect-borne diseases</a>, while <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/cfcs-ozone.html">chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had expanded safe and reliable refrigeration around the world</a>.</p>
<p>But dark clouds loomed on the horizon. As the air, water and land became increasingly choked with industrial wastes, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book <em>Silent Spring</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited-the-environmental-movement.html">sounded a clear warning about the poisonous effects of DDT and other synthetic compounds across the food chain</a>. </p>
<p>Increasing ecological awareness was <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/0422/Earth-Day-How-the-antiwar-movement-inspired-world-s-largest-green-campaign">fuelled by the social unrest of the civil rights and anti-war movements</a>. The youth of the day created a counter-culture that openly questioned their parents’ notions of progress.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327719/original/file-20200414-117567-lpm6yk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators hold a mock funeral at Logan International Airport in Boston to protest the airport’s pollution, expansion and the coming of supersonic jets, on April 22, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>First steps</h2>
<p>The first Earth Day helped catalyze more than two decades of sweeping legislative changes, first at national levels, and then through multilateral institutions seeking to tackle global environmental problems. </p>
<p>The 1987 Montreal Protocol and 1992 Rio Earth Summit produced framework agreements to <a href="https://www.state.gov/key-topics-office-of-environmental-quality-and-transboundary-issues/the-montreal-protocol-on-substances-that-deplete-the-ozone-layer/">limit the accumulation of ozone-destroying CFCs</a>, protect <a href="https://www.cbd.int/rio/">global biodiversity and mitigate human impacts on the climate system</a>. These agreements sought to balance economic growth with ecological and social justice.</p>
<p>Within a few years of the Rio Earth Summit, other powerful forces of globalization began to emerge. In 1995, the <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/history_e/history_e.htm">World Trade Organization was created</a>, ushering in a new economic order that has exerted a profound impact on planet Earth and its inhabitants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327732/original/file-20200414-117549-53nulj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau chats with former prime minister Brian Mulroney following Mulroney’s speech at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ron Poling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the mid-1990s, rapid expansion of trade in the new digital economy has stimulated development in some of the world’s poorest countries, <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/publications_e/wto_wbjointpublication_e.htm">lifting millions out of poverty</a>, but also <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/article/globalization-and-inequality">greatly increasing income inequality</a>. At the same time, globalization has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9769-8">expanded the ecological footprint of the world’s wealthiest countries</a> over supply chains stretching across the planet. </p>
<p>Today, 25 years into our new globalized era, we must reckon with the unintended consequences of progress, much as we did in 1970. Between 1945 and 1970, and again from 1995 to 2020, our societies have transformed through geopolitical shifts, economic expansion and technological developments. </p>
<p>While the specifics are different, there can be no doubt that both periods left a strong imprint on planet Earth. But are we ready to tackle profound challenge of redefining our relationship with Earth? </p>
<h2>The ties that bind us</h2>
<p>Ignorance is no longer an excuse for inaction; a half century of science has provided <a href="https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0193">clear evidence of the ongoing deterioration of Earth’s biophysical systems</a>. What we lack is determination and courage in the face of powerful oppositional forces. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327735/original/file-20200414-117604-72710j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rachel Carson stands in her library in Silver Spring, MD., holding her book ‘Silent Spring.’ She wanted to bring to public attention information that pesticides were destroying wildlife and endangering mankind.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much as Carson did in the 1960s, we still struggle against vested economic and political interests intent on maintaining the status quo. We must also recognize that the problems are now embedded deeply into the fabric of societies; tackling climate change, for example, requires nothing short of <a href="https://www.unsdsn.org/climate-and-energy">re-imagining the global energy sector</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-year-of-resistance-how-youth-protests-shaped-the-discussion-on-climate-change-129036">A year of resistance: How youth protests shaped the discussion on climate change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We face a daunting task, but there are signs of hope, particularly as we see a resurgence of youth movements willing to challenge our notions of progress. The first Earth Day protesters were overwhelmingly young; they didn’t have a Greta Thunberg, but they did strike from school. And just as their message caught the attention of Walter Cronkite, at least some adults are listening now. </p>
<h2>Disruption and new opportunities</h2>
<p>What will it take to move us from listening to action? </p>
<p>Perhaps the current COVID-19 pandemic could provide a trigger. Our relentless drive to move goods and people across the planet has been hijacked by a microscopic bundle of protein and RNA, inflicting significant human suffering and damage on the global economy. </p>
<p>The pandemic is, no doubt, a global health catastrophe. But the disruption of the status quo also presents an opportunity to question our core values and to re-examine our relationships with each other and with Earth’s natural systems. For COVID-19, as with our most complex environmental challenges, any <a href="https://www.un.org/pga/73/2019/02/11/world-government-summit-climate-change-forum-climate-action-in-a-multilateral-skeptic-world/">viable solutions will require co-operation rather than isolation across borders</a>. </p>
<p>The pandemic also demonstrates how societies can mobilize rapidly in the face of existential threats. While our current emergency response to COVID-19 has been reactive, rather than proactive, perhaps it need not have been entirely so — <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lessons-from-past-outbreaks-could-help-fight-the-coronavirus-pandemic1/">why did we not learn from SARS, MERS, H1N1 and other global respiratory virus outbreaks</a>? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328171/original/file-20200415-153318-1jystrk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People gather before participating in a student-led Climate March in Vancouver in October 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Must we also wait for more dire impacts of climate change before taking action? Now is the time to mitigate environmental threats through proactive measures, developing the societal tools to maximize human well-being in a rapidly changing world. </p>
<p>The economic pain inflicted by COVID-19 should not limit our ability to take bold action. The environmental triumphs of the 1970s and 1980s occurred against a backdrop of significant <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23607032">economic uncertainty after the post-war boom</a>. </p>
<p>When the current crisis passes, as it surely will, we must seize the opportunity to re-imagine, and to create, a <a href="https://medium.com/@green_stimulus_now/a-green-stimulus-to-rebuild-our-economy-1e7030a1d9ee">different kind of future</a>, much as the original Earth Day protesters did on April 22, 1970.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philippe Tortell receives funding from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada</span></em></p>When the current crisis passes, we must seize the opportunity to re-imagine, and to create, a different kind of future.Philippe Tortell, Professor and Head, Dept. of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1229802019-11-08T12:14:49Z2019-11-08T12:14:49ZHe was Trump before Trump: VP Spiro Agnew attacked the news media 50 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300483/original/file-20191106-12481-degdkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vice President Spiro T. Agnew on Aug. 8, 1973 at a Washington news conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-A-DC-NY23-FILE-PM-OBIT-AGNEW/15b3d673a6e0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/8/0">AP/file</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Americans witnessed an unprecedented event 50 years ago: live television coverage on all three national networks of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQpQyJQm2Mk">a speech by the vice president of the United States</a>.</p>
<p>Speeches by vice presidents never received such attention. But the address on Nov. 13, 1969, by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to the Midwest Regional Republican Committee Meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, blandly titled “<a href="https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm">The Responsibilities of Television</a>,” set off a public uproar. </p>
<p>Almost overnight, it made Agnew one of the most significant conservative political leaders in the country.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y97l3n8pVP8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Agnew, delivering the speech in Des Moines.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Querulous criticism’</h2>
<p>Agnew argued that the television network news programs, and the “tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men” who produced them, had acquired “a profound influence over public opinion,” with few checks on their “vast power.”</p>
<p>He then attacked their treatment of President Richard Nixon’s recent speech on the Vietnam War, known now as <a href="https://mass.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/23784e9a-e7c1-4be2-a64c-80aaa6e52f6e/nixons-silent-majority-speech-the-day-the-60s-died/">the “Silent Majority” speech</a>. </p>
<p>According to Agnew, after the president finished the “most important address of his administration,” a “small band of network commentators and self-appointed analysts” subjected it to instant and “querulous criticism,” demonstrating their outright hostility to the president’s policy. </p>
<p>In Agnew’s view, their opposition was at odds with how the majority of Americans viewed the speech. </p>
<p>Although he said he was not calling for any censorship, Agnew posed the question of whether it was “time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve.”</p>
<h2>Suspicious of the media</h2>
<p>In many respects, Agnew was Donald Trump before Donald Trump. He was a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/19/us/spiro-t-agnew-point-man-for-nixon-who-resigned-vice-presidency-dies-at-77.html">polarizing political figure</a>, beloved by conservatives, hated and mocked by liberals, yet favored as the likely Republican nominee to succeed Richard Nixon. </p>
<p>In his attacks on television news, Agnew struck a chord with conservatives who had long regarded the media with suspicion. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UyfcLYY9F0gC&pg=RA1-PT445&lpg=RA1-PT445&dq=%E2%80%9Cwithin+a+few+hours+telegrams+began+arriving+at+the+White+House;+the+switchboards+were+tied+up+all+night+by+people+calling+to+express+their+relief+that+someone+had+finally+spoken+up.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=HqfAcTpdoM&sig=ACfU3U2hDbaU6zd4JU7sZHb3OCudZAMYlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRntPt49PlAhVC11kKHYAbDgMQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cwithin%20a%20few%20hours%20telegrams%20began%20arriving%20at%20the%20White%20House%3B%20the%20switchboards%20were%20tied%20up%20all%20night%20by%20people%20calling%20to%20express%20their%20relief%20that%20someone%20had%20finally%20spoken%20up.%E2%80%9D&f=false">Nixon later called Agnew’s speech</a> a “turning point” in his presidency. He described how “within a few hours telegrams began arriving at the White House; the switchboards were tied up all night by people calling to express their relief that someone had finally spoken up.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/tags/nixon.html">The networks themselves</a> calculated that the messages they were receiving were running almost five to one in support of Agnew.</p>
<p>Why did Agnew speak out when he did? </p>
<p>The immediate background to the speech involves the intersection of two developments, both connected to the long, bloody war in Vietnam that appeared to have no end. </p>
<p>The first was the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2019-08-12/bad-news">rise of adversarial journalism</a> during the Vietnam War. Before Vietnam most news coverage “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2019-08-12/bad-news">tended to be bland and deferential to government</a>.” The government’s lies and false optimism about the war, revealed most dramatically after the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/tet">losses of the Tet Offensive</a>, fundamentally changed the relationship. </p>
<p>Vietnam, as the historian of journalism <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7zJwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT147&lpg=PT147&dq=%22established+a+baseline+level+of+antagonism+between+the+press+and+the+government.%22&source=bl&ots=oRlWvW1ky4&sig=ACfU3U3dEQTvK9aJXtaH1owWJonvO0pwcg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjyi7WhjdblAhVEnuAKHUaoASwQ6AEwAHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22established%20a%20baseline%20level%20of%20antagonism%20between%20the%20press%20and%20the%20government.%22&f=false">Matthew Pressman argues</a>, “established a baseline level of antagonism between the press and the government.” </p>
<p>Most famously, Walter Cronkite, the anchor of CBS News and the “most trusted man in America,” delivered an unusual <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXg8BbMp1Yg">editorial</a> in February 1968 calling on the Johnson administration to negotiate an end to the war. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nn4w-ud-TyE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Walter Cronkite, delivering his Vietnam editorial.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the weeks before the Agnew speech, television news provided <a href="https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/broadcasts/calendar?clear=true">extensive and overwhelmingly positive coverage</a> of the large antiwar protests, including the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2080036_2080037_2080024,00.html">October “moratorium” against the war</a>.</p>
<p>The second development was the failure to end the protracted war. Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger tried a variety of military threats and enticement to convince North Vietnam to negotiate. They even launched <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2082-1.html">a secret nuclear alert</a> to intimidate Hanoi.</p>
<p>Nothing worked, and Nixon’s Silent Majority speech was a plea to the American people to give him more time to achieve a <a href="https://qz.com/689961/watch-peace-with-honor-richard-nixons-1973-speech-on-the-end-of-us-involvement-in-vietnam/">“peace with honor”</a> in Vietnam. </p>
<p>The absence of any dramatic new steps toward peace in Nixon’s speech was the main reason the network’s “self-appointed analysts,” including the former <a href="http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_2758B13C7014459498315BDF568EC3BC">Paris negotiator W. Averell Harriman</a>, engaged in the “instant” and “querulous criticism” that Agnew described. Their abrupt dismissal of the speech infuriated Nixon and his aides and motivated them to respond forcefully.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300501/original/file-20191106-12487-ykuoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan wrote Agnew’s speech.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-APHS106985-106985-7624-jpg/5a0d8db347784d6d8c2e7a74217420ce/15/0">AP /Anthony Camerano</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Justified aggression or ‘appeal to prejudice’?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/pat.html">Patrick Buchanan</a>, Nixon’s ultra-conservative speechwriter, encouraged the president to launch an attack on the networks, and drafted the speech for Agnew. Buchanan later remembered that as Nixon read his proposed draft, he heard him mutter, “This’ll tear <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OueiDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=%22tear+the+scab+off+those+bastards%22&source=bl&ots=jfEJ76EWHS&sig=ACfU3U1VkL_48bSJbSz9hX139_wAjVJnDw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4l9if_tPlAhWqUxUIHQI-AZoQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22tear%20the%20scab%20off%20those%20bastards%22&f=false">the scab off those bastards</a>.”</p>
<p>The networks reacted strongly, with NBC’s President Julian Goodman calling it “<a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/Audio/Events-of-1969/Hijacking/">an appeal to prejudice</a>,” implying that Agnew’s focus on the small group of “privileged men” living in New York was a code for anti-Semitism. </p>
<p>Both Goodman and CBS President Frank Stanton accused Agnew of trying to undermine the freedom of the press, especially in the attempt to “intimidate a news medium which <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=KH5iToNJhzcC&pg=PT115&lpg=PT115&dq=Stanton+%E2%80%9Cintimidate+a+news+medium+which+depends+for+its+existence+upon+government+licenses.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=L_TlGYBqlD&sig=ACfU3U2XJaPPI0Xbh83ZIWDwrxWq6sv-XQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjb3tzU_9PlAhVTT8AKHR9iBHEQ6AEwBHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=Stanton%20%E2%80%9Cintimidate%20a%20news%20medium%20which%20depends%20for%20its%20existence%20upon%20government%20licenses.%E2%80%9D&f=false">depends for its existence upon government licenses</a>.”</p>
<p>Some journalists saw this as an overreaction, and viewed Agnew’s attack as part of the larger challenge to the country’s traditional institutions that the war in Vietnam had catalyzed. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Mh-7yfEPU0sC&pg=PA35309&lpg=PA35309&dq=Richard+Harwood+and+Laurence+Stern++%22the+issue+of+media+performance+is+not+going+to+evaporate+in+this+country+simply+because+publishers+and+network+presidents+wrap+themselves+in+the+First+Amendment+and+sneer+at+Spiro+Agnew.&source=bl&ots=yHwGzKA2Gm&sig=ACfU3U0iJ-mAzNKbQ-OXUanLg_7uRjlwzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUr5Cq9NXlAhVKdt8KHTuLBe0Q6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Richard%20Harwood%20and%20Laurence%20Stern%20%20%22the%20issue%20of%20media%20performance%20is%20not%20going%20to%20evaporate%20in%20this%20country%20simply%20because%20publishers%20and%20network%20presidents%20wrap%20themselves%20in%20the%20First%20Amendment%20and%20sneer%20at%20Spiro%20Agnew.&f=false">Richard Harwood and Laurence Stern wrote</a> in the Washington Post that “the issue of media performance is not going to evaporate in this country simply because publishers and network presidents wrap themselves in the First Amendment and sneer at Spiro Agnew. For the facts are that the media are as blemished as any other institution in this society and that there is growing public concern over their performance.” </p>
<p>But CBS’s renowned news magazine, “60 Minutes,” devoted <a href="https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/broadcasts/829929?">an hour-long special</a> to rebutting Agnew’s criticism, featuring Walter Cronkite speaking at a Chamber of Commerce function in his hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri.</p>
<p>Cronkite rejected the idea that the media overreacted, and maintained that “What we’re defending is the people’s right to know, and we have to be at the frontline of that battle at all times.” </p>
<h2>Populist attacks</h2>
<p>This early version of a government war on the news media did not give Agnew what he and the president wanted. Although the networks eventually abandoned the “instant analysis” of presidential speeches in favor of giving the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/before-the-fall-an-inside-view-of-the-pre-watergate-white-house/oclc/1191758">opposition “equal time” to respond</a>, TV network news continued to <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/the-fall-rise-and-fall-of-media-trust.php">retain the trust of most Americans</a> as the most objective source for their news well into the 1970s, particularly during the Watergate period.</p>
<p>And when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/19/us/spiro-t-agnew-point-man-for-nixon-who-resigned-vice-presidency-dies-at-77.html">Agnew himself resigned in disgrace</a>, brought down by his own greed in a bribery scandal, his assault on TV news seemed discredited as well. </p>
<p>But Agnew had demonstrated the vulnerability of the mass media to populist attacks, firing some of the first shots in a culture war that persists to this day.</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Alan Schwartz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a speech in 1969 bashing the press, he fired some of the first shots in a culture war that persists to this day.Thomas Alan Schwartz, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1027562018-09-10T10:36:32Z2018-09-10T10:36:32ZViolence against the media isn’t new – history shows why it largely disappeared and has now returned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235407/original/file-20180907-90571-h4ffen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Capital Gazette in Annapolis lost five staffers in a shooting</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Patrick Semansky</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Another news outlet has been attacked in the United States. </p>
<p>A man <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/us/dallas-news-kdfw-truck-crash/index.html">rammed his car repeatedly</a> into Fox affiliate KDFW in Dallas, Texas, on Sept. 5. We can now add this to the growing list of recent attacks on — and violent threats to — the media.</p>
<p>A man recently <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/30/california-man-arrested-charges-threatening-shoot-boston-globe-employees/EejiWXLNscUR8AxDB3y7RL/story.html">called The Boston Globe</a> and threatened “to shoot you [expletives] in the head … shoot every [expletive] one of you.” Apparently, the Globe’s defense of quality journalism infuriated him. </p>
<p>At CNN, anchors report <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/08/05/brian-stelter-journalists-receiving-death-threats-vpx.cnn">an uptick in death threats</a>. And, most tragically of all, there was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/capital-gazette-annapolis-shooting.html">the shooting of five employees</a> in the office of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, on June 28.</p>
<p>Mental illness, isolation, easy access to weaponry, a renewed white supremacy movement and other variables clearly contribute to the increase in both violent rhetoric and actual violence. </p>
<p>But what these occurrences share, and what they’re illustrating, is a profound hatred towards purveyors of journalism. </p>
<p>This isn’t news. Violent acts against the media are as old as our nation. Perhaps Americans are just not accustomed to seeing the violence because most of them grew up in the second half of the 20th century, an era largely devoid of the partisan rancor that was once a hallmark of American journalism – and which seems to have returned. </p>
<h2>Ugly history</h2>
<p>As media historian <a href="https://media.illinois.edu/john-nerone">John Nerone</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Against-Press-Policing-History/dp/0195086988">writes</a>, attacks on the media occur regularly throughout our history. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0100783">James Rivington</a>, an 18th-century loyalist printer in New York City, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918851?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">barely escaped being tarred and feathered</a> by the Sons of Liberty, who ransacked his home. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York newspaper publisher and loyalist James Rivington was hanged in effigy in 1775.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://earlyamericanists.com/2016/04/20/james-rivington-printer-loyalist-spy/">The Junto</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 19th century, attacks on the press were common. Violence and journalism were intertwined in American culture, largely because of the partisan politics most newspapers propagated. </p>
<p>Abolitionist and newspaper editor <a href="http://www.colby.edu/lovejoyaward/the-story-of-elijah-parish-lovejoy/">Elijah Lovejoy was murdered</a> in Alton, Illinois, in 1837. A pro-slavery mob broke into his jail cell – where he had been placed for his protection – and lynched him. One year earlier, in New York City, The New York Herald’s <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/content/james-gordon-bennett-%E2%80%94-beneficent-rascal">James Gordon Bennett</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qHMVCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA15&dq=%22James+Watson+Webb,+caught+up+with+Bennett%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwist__CyafdAhWFmVkKHZd0Ay8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22James%20Watson%20Webb%2C%20caught%20up%20with%20Bennett%22&f=false">was savagely beaten by his rival</a>, James Watson Webb. Webb edited New York City’s best-selling newspaper, The Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, and he’d grown tired of Bennett’s attacks in his popular newspaper column. </p>
<p>When Ida B. Wells-Barnett published anti-lynching reports in Memphis in 1892, a white mob <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett">destroyed her press and threatened to kill her</a>. </p>
<p>Lovejoy and Wells-Barnett are remembered because they would later be recognized as civil rights pioneers. But the violent confrontation between two of New York City’s most prominent newspaper editors is less well-known, in part, because it occurred at a time when violence against the press wasn’t uncommon.</p>
<p>In the early days of the Republic, U.S. newspapers were not only observably partisan, they were subsidized by political parties. Because newspapers around the U.S. often represented specific political parties, news reports would be politically framed and competing outlets – often serving the rival political party – would be demeaned. </p>
<p>Countless local editors, like Bennett, were attacked. Some, like Lovejoy, were killed for their work. These attacks on journalists were so common that Mark Twain, who worked as a journalist, lampooned them in his classic short story “<a href="https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/journalism-in-tennessee">Journalism in Tennessee</a>.”</p>
<p>Twain’s satire about press violence tells the story of a young editor reporting to the office of The Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop for his first day of work. When he turns in a brief roundup of local news reported by other outlets, his boss is surprised. </p>
<p>“Thunder and lightning!” he says. “Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!” </p>
<p>The chief editor rewrites the piece, insulting and threatening the editors of the rival newspapers. Calling them scoundrels and liars, he excoriates them for “dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.” </p>
<p>“Now that is the way to write,” his boss says upon completion of the piece. “Peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods.”</p>
<h2>The ‘News From Nowhere’</h2>
<p>“Mush-and-milk journalism” that outraged Twain’s fictitious newspaper editor is inoffensive, neutral and seemingly objective. </p>
<p>It’s that kind of centrist journalism that developed in the 20th century – what journalist and political scientist Edward Jay Epstein called “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/News_from_nowhere_television_and_the_new.html?id=IyDuAAAAMAAJ">News From Nowhere</a>” — that many of us grew up on.</p>
<p>The evolution of technology, commercial imperatives and new modes of distribution combined to create American journalism’s era of objectivity. </p>
<p>Selling newspapers to millions in mass audiences, and transmitting identical reports to newspapers around the U.S. via the telegraph, both required neutering any clearly biased news reporting. </p>
<p>Regulatory mandates like the <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/publicintere.htm">public interest standard</a> and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-fairness-doctrine-in-one-post/2011/08/23/gIQAN8CXZJ_blog.html?utm_term=.7526d6e95140">Fairness Doctrine</a> followed the development of radio and television. They further enshrined a “just-the-facts” sensibility in American journalism. </p>
<p>From our vantage point as historians in 2018, we can now see this era of objectivity lasted from about 1930 to 2000, beginning with the introduction of broadcast journalism via radio to the emergence of the multichannel cable television universe and the web’s development. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walter Cronkite delivering the news on May, 24, 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP/Richard Drew</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In those decades, journalism became less partisan to be more palatable to mass audiences. Every weeknight, CBS broadcast journalist <a href="http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1603550;jsessionid=1DDDB49E4C139A4DFC2423D5FBEFECC4?from=..%2F18%2F18-03570.html&from_nm=Sinatra%2C+Frank">Walter Cronkite</a> soberly told Americans what they needed to know about the events of the day. </p>
<p>And, in this original network era, opinion was separated from reporting and clearly labeled – whether it was on-air commentaries delivered by <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/sevareideri.htm">Eric Sevareid</a> or on specially designated “editorial” or “opinion” pages in newspapers.</p>
<p>Such segregation of reporting and opinion was not the norm in American journalism history. It was a new idea that quickly gained traction because it proved so commercially advantageous. </p>
<p>Creating audiences in the millions, and then the tens of millions – on television – <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674695870">generated unimagined sums</a> of advertising revenue. Removing opinions from most reporting produced enormous profits for television networks, radio stations and daily newspapers. It became commonplace. Americans grew accustomed to it.</p>
<h2>Back to the old ways</h2>
<p>It appears the cycle has now turned. </p>
<p>Outlets like Fox News, MSNBC, and even some daily newspapers, are no longer as careful about monitoring the injection of subjectivity into journalism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Partisan cable news hosts Rachel Maddow, a progressive and conservative Sean Hannity, right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But they are not entirely to blame. Today’s audiences feel empowered by their autonomy, because they have an enormous number of available and competing media outlets. They can now watch and consume news that best matches their worldview, rather than an homogenized news product designed to be palatable to the masses. </p>
<p>Noting the higher ratings and subscription numbers that accompany this increasing partisanship, <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20160812">news outlets react accordingly</a>. Even more, social media technologies allow audiences to engage with news media like never before, often cultivating a climate of uncivil online discourse. This only intensifies the partisan rancor mirroring 19th-century levels. </p>
<p>Does the end of the depoliticized mass audience era of journalism directly correlate to what seems to be a return of violence against the media? </p>
<p>Until the four journalists were killed in Annapolis early this year (the fifth staffer was not a journalist), <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=US&start_year=1992&end_year=2018&group_by=year">only seven had been killed</a> in the last 26 years. </p>
<p>When consumers of MSNBC are baffled by the apparent ignorance of Fox News viewers, and Fox News viewers are sure MSNBC’s fans are dupes, we’ve returned to the world Twain described.</p>
<p>It might be impossible to return to the more civil, professional and respectful era of journalism that many Americans grew up in. But we can, and should, recognize the historic futility of killing the messenger.</p>
<p>Destroying Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s press did nothing to stop the anti-lynching movement, and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy spread the abolitionist message much further than Lovejoy himself ever could.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Violence against journalists is on the rise. Many people don’t realize that such acts have a long tradition in the US, where partisan rancor was once a hallmark of American journalism.Jennifer E. Moore, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Minnesota DuluthMichael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.