David and Goliath

Two years after he left the White House, Lyndon Johnson was filming some documentaries for his favorite network, CBS. During a break, Producer John Sharnick casually asked L.B.J. about changes in politics since he first went to Congress in 1937. "All you guys in the media. All of politics have changed because of you," Johnson shot back vehemently. "You've given us a new kind of people--Teddy, Tunney. No [political] machine could ever create a Teddy Kennedy. Only you guys."

Writer David Halberstam thinks L.B.J. had a good point. So good, in fact, that Halberstam is writing a book that examines power, especially the power of the television Goliath. He is two years and 400 pages into the project and reckons he has another 18 months to go. But admirers of Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest will not have to wait that long to read his new work. Two lengthy excerpts will appear in the January and February issues of the Atlantic.

Halberstam says that television plus a handful of newspapers and magazines have become powerful opinion shapers in the past 20 years. TV in particular has strengthened the presidency, he feels, because it has provided Presidents with instant access to millions of citizens. Congress, created to serve as a check on presidential power, gets little air time for its views and therefore, says Halberstam, has become weaker.

Like John Kennedy, Johnson and Richard Nixon understood the might of television and tried to use it. They ultimately failed, according to Halberstam, because the one-eyed beast was just too potent. Johnson considered Walter Cronkite's call for an end to the Viet Nam War in 1968 such a setback, says Halberstam, that it solidified his resolve not to run for reelection. Nixon Subordinate John Ehrlichman, angered by CBS's abrasive White House correspondent Dan Rather, tried to have him transferred, but CBS News stood firm.

Yet television, Halberstam contends, is a reluctant adversary of Presidents. He has studied CBS, which he considers "the best"--and concludes that profits, more than public interest, govern programming decisions. When CBS pre-empted its regular shows to televise the 1966 Senate hearings on the Viet Nam War, the loss to the network, says Halberstam, ran to $175,000 in advertising revenue for the first day. Then CBS News Chief Fred Friendly was told by a superior that housewives had no interest in the hearings; the coverage was abruptly curtailed, and Friendly quit.

According to Halberstam, the man most interested in the bottom line is CBS Inc. Chairman William S. Paley. In the early days of TV, Paley gave his news team free rein and approved a plan to expand the evening news. But as television audiences--and the cost of advertising--grew, the inevitable drive to improve profits led Paley to increase the number of popular entertainment shows. The distinguished weekly documentary See It Now with Edward R. Murrow, for example, was often shunted from one time slot to another and finally canceled. Paley, says Halberstam, found it too controversial and not profitable enough. In 1972, says Halberstam, Paley intervened in newsroom decision making in a more chilling way. He tried to cancel the second segment of an Evening News report on Watergate, the result of White House pressure. The report finally ran but at about half its planned length. Yet CBS has since aired excellent public-affairs programs and has just returned the highly regarded 60 Minutes to regular prune time.

Two Quarts. The Atlantic excerpts are vintage Halberstam, rich in anecdotes and exhaustively detailed. There is CBS Star Jack Benny's wife Mary Livingstone bullying a Paris correspondent to produce for her, during a holiday weekend, two quarts of the perfume that Paley's wife favored. Then there is Paley himself, coldly dismissing a close associate of 40 years who had angered him, saying, "We were never friends. You were my lawyer."

Halberstam, 41, estimates he will tap 600 people before he is done. Aggressive and sometimes abrasive, he uses a technique he calls "bracketing, like they do in the artillery. You lob a shell over here, then one closer to the other side. Then you narrow in." The final product, which he works on between treks on the college lecture circuit, will also include an examination of radio, the computer industry, newspapers and magazines. Halberstam's conclusion: along with TV, they control information, and "information is power."

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