Television and Politics

Report Outline
Role of Television in the 1968 Campaign
Growing Use of Television by Politicians
Fairness Problem and Image Projection
Special Focus

Role of Television in the 1968 Campaign

Politics and television have contracted an informal, mutually uneasy alliance of convenience in this presidential election year. No candidate for high national or state office can afford to ignore a medium that reaches at least 98 per cent of all American households wired for electricity. And the networks must perforce devote a considerable amount of time to political speeches and to news coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Politics on television is costly—both to the candidates and to the broadcasters. If the goal is to enlighten the electorate, are political telecasts worth the outlay of time and money?

Television has been praised for bringing the candidate and the voter into more intimate contact than was formerly possible. On the other hand, it is argued that TV tends to stress “image” at the expense of substance and thus to reward the facile candidate. Gene Wyckoff, a writer and producer of television films, supports that somewhat controversial view. In a new book on The Image Candidates: American Politics in the Age of Television, Wyckoff prophesies, moreover, that “American politics in the age of telesion” will undergo “a subtle increase of incompetence in high places at crucial moments, a subtle corrosion of our government's traditional dedication to being representative of and responsive to a consensus of informed public opinion.” Voicing a more widely held view, Kenneth P. O'Donnell, former special assistant to John F. Kennedy, has asserted that while television “thrusts people into prominence,” they “must have the qualities of greatness” to remain there. “TV cannot manufacture them. It can only transmit what is there.”

Call for Debate Between the Candidates

President Johnson's announcement, March 31, that he would not be a candidate for renomination gave rise to proposals that the principal 1968 nominees for President and Vice President engage in a series of “great debates” similar to those between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in 1960. Frank Stanton, president of the Columbia Broadcasting System, urged in telegrams to the chairmen of the Senate and House Commerce committees, April 1, that “the views of the leading contenders for the nominations of the major parties be placed fully before the public during the primary campaigns, and that such parties' nominees have the fullest opportunity to present their views during the general election campaign.” Vincent T. Wasilewski, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, made a similar suggestion before the N.A.B. convention in Chicago the same day.