Mail Call

In his two televised attacks on the news media, Vice President Spiro Agnew urged readers and viewers to join him in commenting on the performance of the nation's newspapers and television stations. Thousands accepted his invitation, and the result has been one of the greatest outpourings of mail in American journalistic history. The three major TV networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, have received more than 130,000 letters, telephone calls and telegrams, most of them supporting Agnew. Several newspapers report a greater volume of critical mail than at any time since the McCarthy era.

Many of the letters are expectedly heavy with vitriol. Some show an irrational readiness to blame the messenger for the message and hold the news media responsible for the social ills that they report. A significant number reflect a disturbing increase in overt antiSemitism. NBC said last week that it had received more than 500 anti-Jewish letters; the New York Times reported a dozen such letters, more than it has received on any issue since the Arab-Israeli war.

Angry as all the mail is, it could be worse--and has been for the television networks, where issues more vital to viewers than politics are at stake. NBC, for example, has received 60,000 Agnew-inspired letters. It got far more when it canceled the space opera Star Trek at the end of last season.

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