Newswatch

By Thomas Griffith

During the first century and a half of this republic's existence, nobody really expected the press to be fair. Papers were mostly shrill, scurrilous and partisan. In the Hearst press, Roosevelt's New Deal was constantly referred to, not only on the editorial page but in the news columns, as the "raw deal." Despite this repeated hammering, readers kept re-electing Franklin D. Roosevelt anyway. Roosevelt has since won his revenge. It's called the Fairness Doctrine.

At first it applied only to radio, then to television, both of which came under Government regulation on the grounds that channels were scarce and airwaves crowded. Stations were required to devote some broadcast time to public issues and to allow contrasting points of view a chance to be heard. It seems only--well, fair--doesn't it?

For years radio and TV have complained that they are therefore not as free as the printed press. They feel hampered even when not really hurting; the Federal Communications Commission rarely enforces the rule, even when broadcasting licenses come up for renewal. FCC Chairman Mark Fowler, being a Reaganite who believes in less government, wants to abolish the Fairness Doctrine. He knows he won't be allowed to. Too many pressure groups from right to left enjoy the Government-granted chance to have their say. In vain do broadcasters protest that with the spread of cable television, there are plenty of TV channels available, and that nearly 10,000 radio stations exist. What has become scarcer is the independent newspaper, of which there is usually only one to a community. When it comes to fairness, broadcasters have a point.

Newspapers, under the well-known New York Times vs. Sullivan Supreme Court decision, are allowed to be unfair, and in some circumstances even inaccurate, in order to ensure "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" public debate. Yet oddly enough the unregulated printed press has become as tamely balanced in its coverage and comment as are radio and TV. For fairness has caught on with the public; this is what it wants from journalism. Only in two outposts of journalism is lively vituperation still to be found--on a newspaper's sports pages and in political journals of left and right. In cities that are newspaper monopolies (as most are), editors feel an obligation to represent all elements in the community. The largest newspaper chain, Gannett, lets its 86 dailies be Republican or Democratic as they please. Gannett calls this local autonomy, though it could also be described as commercial opportunism. Gannett editors choose their own columnists but are advised to seek an ideological balance. That spectrum attitude somewhat diminishes the columnist, who is seen to be not so much speaking for himself as reflecting a point of view. It's like the phony balance of man-in-the-street interviews on TV, characterized scornfully by ABC News President Roone Arledge as "one for, one against, and one funny."

The New York Times, in sententious editor's notes, publicly rebukes its writers and editors for lapses in taste and balance (or excesses in outspokenness). The unintended effect of such after-the-fact scolding is to convey the impression that nobody in responsible authority reads the paper before it goes to press. The Times recently took away a twice-a-week column by its Pulitzer-prizewinning reporter Sydney Schanberg, who wrote passionately against real estate speculators and presumably displeased the publisher. Schanberg subsequently resigned. The editorials in most papers these days discuss the issues with the evenhandedness of a sociologist and the fervor of an accountant. They aim to inform and perhaps to persuade but not to dictate. The only outrageously opinionated fellow left is the cartoonist, no longer confined to illustrating the boss's prejudices and free to tweak Reagan or ridicule Tip O'Neill. In the past presidential election several newspapers declined to endorse a candidate. It wasn't so much a case of disliking both nominees as a decision that the paper shouldn't be in the business of proclaiming a preference.

Journalism these days is more responsible and safer. The aim seems to be to spread before the reader an uncontaminated body of information accompanied by well-labeled opinions of advocates of this or that cause. From this the reader can form his own outraged or outrageous opinions. Somebody has to, or this won't be the same old country.