Shh!

Replacing the old-fashioned fiery public debate, TV's countless panels run a week-long talkathon on every conceivable subject. To Literary Critic Diana Trilling, it seems a bad trade. The trouble: TV's moderators. Wrote Critic Trilling last week in the New York Herald Tribune: "If there was once a time when the moderator was a referee between antagonists, today he is a ubiquitous avoider or smoother-over of differences. One of the most distinguished is Howard K. Smith of The Great Challenge (CBS). Let one of the discussants so much as intimate a fresh idea or engage another of the panelists in controversy, and there is Mr. Smith, quick on the switch, shunting the discussion into more neutral territory. The result of Mr. Smith's tactful control of the situation is that no one on his program ever manages to say anything that will lead either his colleagues or the audience to considerations other than those already established in our enlightened culture.

"All this is far indeed from the spirit of wholesome controversy which informed the old debate. The essence of an old-fashioned debate was its recognition that profound, even violent, disagreement was a natural part of the human and social process. It was habitual to speak of a debate as a fierce debate or a hot debate, and these adjectives were used, not disparagingly, but in admiration. Adversaries are no more, except--if you will--on programs like those of Mike Wallace or John Wingate, where there is but a shallow pretense of intellectual substance. The panel has moderated them out of existence."

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