Newspaper reading can I think be injurious to the mental health of those individuals in the society who are impressionable? Those people who hold a curious notion. That a newspaper. Or a Broadcast News program reflects pretty much the whole of what is transpiring. The fact is that communicators have never been greatly Adventures. there has been a running argument over what is news ever since the collection of broad range information began We've run the range of definitions. from The Very Old Man bites dog Ferry to the dog fight on Main Street being more important than any war in Europe. just touched Deceptive if not arrogant slogans like all the News That's fit to print. A pattern is involved in this long process that is given journalistic precedents to Mankind's difficulties. A great deal of this is clearly justifiable after all a war of any proportion is always important. So to the major accidents of Fate that occur constantly. I suppose that one could take the time and list a hundred or more such categories. of information or news that is unpleasant or unpalatable. but the key factor in all this, is that the communicators By handed down verdicts of what is and is not news and through peer group pressures have largely become victims. It's an unflattering comparison. But many of our communicators can be likened to the laboratory animals that are after hour and day after day run the same treadmills. The reporting an editing routines for them are unchanging. It's sad. Sad because for one thing the public has changed greatly over the past 50 years. since really the Great Depression they know more. They expect more and they need more because their Collective judgment is no better than their information. The public perception of communication has changed greatly largely because of one element. The Press is no longer trusted as it once was. What different than other reasons is the factor? The communications remain so heavy. I'm reporting the defeats of life. There is precious little about the victories of life. And the victories can be far more important because in the victories. like our future so to the question can newspaper reading be injurious to health. My answer has to be yes. Unless the reader or viewer. Is independent enough and resourceful enough to know other reliable ways of obtaining essential brother gauged information. And this then leads to the query. How fair is the press? on a scale of 1 to 10 My judgment is the fairness probably fits in the 7 to 8 range. on the high side just as the conventional wisdom have tended to curtail the adventures or Innovative streaks in journalism. So have these pressures worked to train the average news gather to automatically sync both sides of controversy and to seek to deliver information as fairly as it can be done. This query may have Arisen from the so-called. new journalism It works the new journalism in the alternative press but it's not new to this kind of opinion. Press has been with us all through the modern history of communications. It is rarely been financially productive. But it has been and it remains viable. as one important form of Journalism There is ample evidence that has been counterproductive in the standard press. The part that part of communications dealing with mass audiences. some reporters still mistakenly appear to think their mission is to tell things in a pinball tilting fashion. But more enlightened editors seem to be taking back control and that's why my present reading of fairness. In the seven to eight range. on the 10 scale and Leslie we come to the problem you and Minneapolis now face newspaper strikes. Thus far the star in the Tribune is doing precisely what I believe in devoutly. Doing everything it can to continue publication. I've lived through both sides of strikes. as editor on several such occasions and more recently as deprived reader. as editor I can tell you if the misery the misery of going through picket lines we're often there is ugly and paranoid verbal abuse. Something hard for me to understand from people who should have enough sense to recognize that management people have their functions to do. There's the misery of working under conditions where news people lack the technical support. to producing to print what is on the desks in the news rooms? People produce what they can under a mint strain. And they grow mind where he is well as emotionally drained. I'll give you just a short. Off the cuff version of what they go through. My son left home at about a quarter to 12. yesterday morning He did not return home until close to 1 in the morning. When he sat down to eat something and went to bed. So that he could be headed back to the plant this morning at 4 a.m. And he intends to stay tonight. It's his night. I had gathered to stay all night. I am Chuck Bailey and Donald White and others number of others are going through the same kind of schedule. And that I can understand when they when they start to make mistakes the kind of mistakes. I made years ago under similar pressures. Not ugly enough the same kind of emotional stress afflicts the reader deprived of standard news delivery. Richard Reeves has an intriguing piece in the current Esquire magazine. There's a good deal is about the New York Times executive editor and a big weaves his dislike for him. But this is of minor importance in the article. Music Major point is that for all its faults and there are a good many the confirm X reader is a displaced individual. Without that daily compendium of data from around the world and the nation. Radio and TV are also affected for stripped of the times as vast resources. The electronic media was clearly operating it a handicap. And as people like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor have pointed out repeatedly. One can I possibly deliver a total news guy at in 22 23 or 24 minutes? There's a building journalistic tragedy in all these labor disputes. Mini newspaper ownerships seem to be lacking in statesmanship on occasion. Sometimes it's more frequent than I would like to see. But I have seen precious few evidences of any statesmanship existing among the labor union leaders in journalism. The names of often been absurd that triggered situations where the end result has been the destruction of newspaper properties with the attendance loss of all the union jobs. We wish to we can pursue that aspect later. But no better case history exist than what has been and is taking place in Great Britain. Where the journalistic unions have operated in Mindless obduracy? The feather bedding in English newspaper ring is literally a standing. but worst has been the Union's admitting the wrong of Wildcat strikes by a handful of people that Wham or in a main Display of Power Get confused yet refusing to compel any adherence to contract responsibility. The times of London has done it seems to me absolutely the sensible step in drawing the line and stopping the paper until and unless the union has agreed to curb the wildcatting and to agree to work in the middle you of this last quarter of this century What the times of London has come to is the recognition that the acceptance of daily stoppages. And the wearying repetitive negotiation ends only in and out with cash flow. That becomes a corporate Bloodbath. Any human one for all those who have jobs and seem unwilling to curb those who endanger? the property and the jobs there are better ways of handling this kind of warfare. If Egypt and Israel can finally build a peace in the Middle East as seems to be painfully emerging then surely we in the United States can build a pattern. of a workable arrangement of dealing with management labor disputes I sound at this point like a pontificating and philosopher and Statesman, which I do not pretend to be. So I stopped with one final and relatively brief observation. We're in serious trouble in this country. All of us are in the same kinds of difficulties. The country has grown too big. For quick and easy fixes to take care of everyone to the same degree. two big bureaucracy bureaucracy in government in business in labor in all types of professional life and too much inflation bring us only more and more and more waste and confusion. the biggest trouble this week that we have let ourselves stray from the verities. Did I build every Great Society? We no longer recognize the immense value of Duty. or Pride or honor or working in unison to accomplish great things. Too many people in this land each in his or her own ways. What what it is they want and the hell with everyone else. It has never worked in history. It won't work now. journalism Communications Is reflecting the rest of society. All the faults we find in journalism are instantly observable and everything else. government the courts Education Health Services, the law business practices the trades Services labor I regretted most of all about journalism. And I admit that this is personal. What medicine and Jefferson had to say about the vital importance of Journalism made an enormous impact on me when I was very young. And put the years in journalism has only reinforced that few. It was out of this deep concern about the Press. And it's crucial role. Did the national news Council was born? I wish it didn't have to exist. But it becomes absolutely necessary. And it's work. The news council is trying to urge. cajole persuade and convince the nation's Communications Network to recognize that accuracy and fairness and responsibilities are the building stones that will restore the public faith and trust in journalism. What we're after in one brief wrap-up is to try to make work the dreams of medicine in Jefferson. vote for America and express Thank you very much.