This speech was originally two and a half hours long. Then I discovered the Reader's Digest Association was a sponsor of the WPI. So I have condensed it to about 15 minutes. Cena me appropriate to do that and because of the time and because we want to spend most of our time talking with both the alums and if time permits the audience, I am going to move right into the discussion, which is about as daunting as give been given 500 Words talk about the state of the world namely the information age that means different things to different people as they used to say and travel documentaries and we'll get a chance to cover what I don't cover in these remarks. I hope in the question period the Press is as most of you know, particularly self-conscious if not defensive institution, and it's part of our job to put fingers to the wind and look for Trends and and the latest shifts in the in the Zeitgeist. It's sort of like a character in The Woody Allen short story who said I have to get back to Italy now, the Renaissance is starting but I don't think it takes a lot of examination to realize that if we're not in some radically. New information age then the movement toward the faster and wider dissemination of information has increased geometrically in our lifetimes indeed in the last decade and a half just think of how news is done day to day but we often don't do we take it for granted a reporter in Sri Lanka goes into a phone booth with a five-pound Radioshack computer hooks it up with an acoustic coupler and dumps the story in a terminals in New York or Los Angeles or anywhere else. He happens to be feeding a Soviet official goes into a studio in Moscow and within a matter of minutes is debating Paula foreign policy live with an American official citizens. Japan Nigeria, Argentina dozens of other countries tonight are going to sit down in front of TV sets to be diverted by entertainment designed for citizens of a very different culture. And today no one knows how many people will be in front of computer terminals communicating with each other everything from chess moves to Love Letters to theories of the nature of man to recipes with a Would have lie now inexpensive device called a computer in a modem. It's sometimes asserted that the West is the Genghis Khan if you will of electronic information, we are the imperialist out remaking the world in our image yet. It's all so clear to me that we ourselves are as much victims. If you want to put it that way or objects of this information revolution as anyone else changes that we are now undergoing are changing the economy the culture the whole commercial structure of mass journalism in the United States as we meet one recent study says now that some 40% of the gross national product of this country involves the creation and distribution of knowledge and that the u.s. Deals of 50 years ago and 40 years ago going to be replaced as linchpins of the economy by concentrated knowledge Industries, the biggest success story in print journalism and years is gets USA Today a paper distributed by satellite to printing plants around the United States a newspaper without a HomeTown. A really rather remarkable notion except for specialized purposes a general interest paper with no Hometown and four years ago. It was a gleam and Alan new heart scientist a it's a second biggest paper in America the commercial networks. One of my employers are now Under Siege because the the Monopoly thanks to satellite technology. The Monopoly of words and pictures has been broken not far from here a gentleman named Stan Hubbard is out to destroy Network news or at least to replace it by a bands of local stations who with a something called a KU Band truck and go anywhere in North America mountaintops valleys, you name it and within a matter of minutes be live to any other local station in the United States with the proper receiving dish and within a matter of five years or less that's going to be a worldwide capability. And so the Network's these behemoths these these Giants of the information age May. In fact be the next victims in which case I'll be out here looking for an employment now. For industrialized nations. These changes are daunting enough, but in cultures where electricity is a fantasy in many parts where Elites have believed themselves Under Siege by the radio and teletype the impact of these devices is almost literally unfathomable, I think. Or maybe not we had two choices when we talk about this one is we can descend into the Quagmire of fiber optics and Digital Data and satcom two satellites microwaves to gigabyte computers or we can Retreat and start asking some very old very basic questions, which is certainly the wisest course for a liberal arts major from the University of Wisconsin. What kind of questions who owns information who has the right to determine its harmful if it is what is to be done about it and by whom get information be treated as a commodity subject to regulation by Public Authority much like a food or drug or product. I think all of you recognize that these are not academic questions for journalists for public officials. They can be matters literally of life and death or at least Freedom or captivity. And so I want to pose some answers to some of these questions in shorthand and I want to say here and now that some of you may find them in unsettling or impolite or evidence of cultural bias and all I can say is if I'm wrong Song I'm wrong in good faith. Or as they say in Hollywood, trust me. Now, let's start with a fundamental premise every new source of information is by definition subversive. That is in the most literal sense new sources of information subvert undermine established traditional sources of information and since knowledge is Power by definition every new source of information undermines established power go back five hundred and thirty years or so to the first printed book. What was it was the Bible the Gutenberg Bible and church leaders at the time may be forgiven for thinking that the printing press was going to enhance their established Authority didn't exactly turn out that way because the same Preston can print a Bible could print Reformation tracks atheistic propaganda radical interpretations of theology anything at all that the mind of man and woman can conceive could be put in the printed press and distribute it. So there would have been no American Revolution or French Revolution. Probably without the press to communicate share discontents. We've seen a much more recent example of this and an ironic one there probably would have been no Arabian Revolution. No Islamic Republic without the audio cassette recorder used to smuggle in the words of the Ayatollah from Exile in Paris and played to his followers. So this satanic device of modern Western industrial powers or perhaps I should add Japan to that since it was probably a Sony was the key to undermining the power of the shot. Premise to the subversive power of information is not I repeat this it is not limited to cross National impact the view that the that new sources of information. Our Western devices to dominate non Western Nations misses the point new sources of information undermine traditional Authority wherever they emerge. The coming of mass newspapers Penny Dreadful books movies radio in this country TV all shocked the more traditional elements within the United States even in the big cities new sources of preventing of presenting information unsettled and shock The Establishment in the early days of movies a group of Chicago bluebloods demanded that something be done about the Keystone cop movies. Why because they were encouraging the forces of anarchism and socialism by undermining respect for law enforcement. All of you are familiar with the battle against television launched primarily by forces of the new right and the Evangelical right essentially organizing against the teachings of the mass media secular humanism cultural relativism bringing information into the homes of people who don't want to see this kind of information anything from Phil Donahue to dr. Ruth to answer feminine hygiene products. So to see modern media as a tool for the propagation of Western cultural biases, I think misses the point media undermine everybody. Homie Point might make this a little clearer every generation feels threatened by sources of information. It didn't grow up with my grandparents were petrified by long distance telephones. They thought something would happen to the phone when you talked hundreds of miles away. And anyway who would call up if except to give bad news. My parents were frightened by the television sets. They brought into our homes you had to leave two lights on and living room or else the kids would go blind and every flip of the vertical hole was treated as a potential source of implosion. Now, of course being a modern father. I am only now getting over my computer phobia and my generation trembles in fear at our children rotting their minds at video games. Why are they at the video arcade instead of being at home where they belong watching afternoon television? If there's any evidence anywhere of established Authority welcoming new sources of information. I'm not aware of it. Why because they sense quite accurately it threatens their hegemony governmental theological parental. You name it third, I suggest the more modes of information. There are the harder it is to maintain centralized control over that information indeed. I would go father a modern Information Society within a totalitarian even authoritarian political framework is close to a contradiction in terms. Now a lot of people will disagree with me about this. They see the computers and satellites is a big brother Spectrum, you know, the chance to further dominate the minds of ordinary citizens and it's certainly true that from Nazi Germany. We saw examples of movies and radio being used to further propaganda aims and in some sense modern states with totalitarian controls over almost there people the Soviet Union South Africa are using some kinds of modern Information Technology, but they're not really modern information. Sort of states in many Eastern Bloc countries, you have to register a typewriter with the authorities mimio machines copying machines are treated as potentially subversive tools as for the idea of mass networks of personal computer uses with modems. I mean think what the Soviet establishment would think of that printing presses in the form of printers in every home that has that kind of money. No way. Let me tell you about South Africa for a minute and the Nightline experience being there in March of 1985. I was there as a Nightline correspondent and parts of our shows were shown on South African television. And it was as if we were broadcasting live pictures of people from Mars, they were uncertain done by what they saw here was pick both of the foreign minister debating with Desmond Tutu Bishop tutu. They had never done it before. Here was the head of the white miners in the head of the block miners arguing about equal pay never seen it one show we had a right-wing extremist Chief buthelezi Allen bozek and in from Zambia Oliver Tambo, his part was cut out because he's a band person in South Africa. You're not allowed to show his picture quote his words, but the journalist had gathered at the South African broadcasting silat. He's couldn't believe what they were seeing. It was something that never occurred to them to do. What I am suggesting here. Is that among a society cannot commit to a modern information system unless it is willing to recognize that it will be unable to retain control over that information. Now in this sense so-called third world Nations allow me to use the term for shorthand purposes have an option that the West didn't have it can make a choice. Because we all that's known or perhaps feared about modern media developing states can choose to close their doors Burma has succeeded in making it Society all but immune to Western baneful influence has because they forbid virtually every Westerner from going to Burma and that's one choice that a society that wants to preserve itself and protect itself can make but I suggest to you that there is a trade-off a bargain that some of you may regard as Faustian. If you choose to plunge into the modern Information Age your children will listen to music you hate people will dress in ways you find offensive language and thought will be contentious and often offensive and that is not because West versus East North versus South it is what I suggested earlier the more sources of information that the more likely it is that you or somebody will be unsettled by it because everybody's for free speech except when it offends them. now What does this tell us about the very real concerns that some Nations have about sources of information the way they're portrayed in the western, press the need they feel to develop their own voices. What does it tell us about the endless debate about the so-called New World information order? My suggestion is that if you accept my premises, there's very little Comfort to societies that think you can evolve into a modern information system within a framework of centralized Authority. I take as a given except absolutely without question that coverage of the third world is often superficial often stereotyped almost always Sensational the the focus is as we said earlier, I've choosen earthquakes that cultural biases toward coverage that Western sources of information don't value the same kinds of stories equally there's a Infamous quote from a British, press Lord that hung in a London newspaper office one. Englishman is a story. Ten Frenchman is a story a hundred Germans is a story and nothing ever happens in Chile. I suggest we're a little Beyond this now, but I think that's a fairly decent reflection of a kind of cultural bias. Let me also say that that same kind of cultural bias and ignorance is at work the other way, we heard a story today about a cab driver in Minneapolis who had no idea where Zambia was I suggest those of you from st. Paul get into a cab in Harare tell the driver you from st. Paul see whether he knows where that is. But but I also remember vividly in Africa newspaper in 1976. When Carter chose Mondale announcing in a headline that Carter had picked the first black American to run as vice president people get things wrong when they don't know the culture. But what do you do about it? What is to be done about it? You could argue that. It's no more legitimate for a western newsman to distort or plunder third world nations with bad information than it is to plunder art treasures and natural resources. But in the words of a beloved former president of the United States, you could do that, but it would be wrong because what really lies that behind that argument is not an objection to false information. But to information that true or false is damaging to a cause or a position whether it's true or false the claim to restrict such information rest the most elegant version of this is that is an increasingly popular notion of media called a social responsibility Theory which was given a very elegant gloss recently by the prime minister of Singapore. And he says I reject the authoritarian and Soviet models because they give no Credence to Human Rights individual rights, but he said I also reject a Libertarian model because it means that people can print what they want without a sense of what harm it might do or whether it's right or wrong or whether they are greater societal interests. Now, you can call it cultural bias if you want, but to me the distinction between that social responsibility model and the authoritarian model is awfully tough to figure out. Because what you're really coming down it was is this assertion by a by a very important journalist who once said advocating the kind of social responsibility theory he said news should not be merely concerned with reporting such and such an event. It must pursue a definite goal. It must serve and support the decisions relating to fundamental duties facing our society the Spokane Jeep alguna former director-general of toss. And I think the idea that information is under whatever guys controlled by the state, however, elegantly and articulately you want to put it is inseparable from the greater argument that that is the highest obligation as a citizen has to become a member of the state Hagel had a lot to say about that. You can go all the way back to Plato who argued in laws that that poets should submit their poems to magistrates and they'll decide whether the poems will uplift or harm the society. I hope Justice rehnquist hasn't read that lately because I have some concern and I suggest it is it war with the whole idea of a Freer flow of information now does this mean then that my suggestion to the developing countries is lie back and enjoy it somebody put it the West has you're interested hard just trust AP and Reuters and ABC and CBS and NBC and everything will be fine. No, but it suggests a very Jeffersonian notion that the the way to combat bad information or distorted information is With information from different sources. I had never before heard before I started looking at this program and the subject was something called the inter, press service third world news news agency the IPS operating in some 60 countries. It is supported by the UN and summation by UNESCO some westerners a cherry of it. But according to the journalism quarterly. It is a Clearinghouse of information of exactly the kind that some third world journalists have asked for process-oriented not crisis oriented developmental stories rather than just calamities and showing according to this study almost no anti-western bias, which is a fear that some of us have and it's entirely possible that IPS or the other kinds of regional news Services. Mary talked about earlier May grow into something like the ap of a century ago at a time when us newspapers were devoid of objectivity AP in this country grew because they had to write relatively objective stories because they were serving clients of radically different ideologies. So they couldn't take it any logical or they lose customers and there's no reason to think that that kind of agency can't grow and flourish particularly as the third world develops markets for newspapers and information and indeed one ought to hope that if for instance a well-known and influential editor and Zambia doesn't like the way zombie is being portrayed in America, he may take more care not to just report stories of India that have to do with Cyclones and Bo Paul's now it any event. That's a lot more pleasing a prospect than to respond to bad information by shutting off or controlling information. Let me just also suggest I don't think it's pollyannaish to think this can happen you heard earlier in the panel that the coverage of foreign news an American papers has gotten better. And one of the reasons is a very bread-and-butter reason the sigma Delta Chi Foundation recently did a study called Main Street America and the third world and they discovered I think to their surprise that smaller not the Wall Street journal's in Chicago Tribune's a New York Times and ABCs but smaller local papers what getting much more sophisticated about foreign news because their economies they discovered were linked to these things in Keene New Hampshire a lot of attention about Malaysia's consumer protection laws, not an obvious story. Is it because big printing plants in Keene thought they could export printing devices to Malaysian companies that they need to reprint their food labels in Murdock. The Hampshire Farmers wanted to know about third world pollution. Why because they get jeans for high yields yield seeds from a lot of that third world agricultural products. They cared about this Arcane subject because their bread and butter was at stake at a semi weekly newspaper the Holton reporter in Kansas. Not a media giant started covering. Attempts to build links to China on the part of Farm Bureau officials why you can guess why a potential Market of a billion more people Snohomish county in the state of Washington discovered half its jobs were directly linked to exports many to third world countries. They are starting those local papers are starting to cover third world economy's not who's in earthquakes because it matters they think these stories are in the American. Jargon, sexy. Because they're about life and death bread-and-butter issues. There are all kinds of other issues about this information age that I hope we get to in the questions. How do you provide perspective and context in an environment of instant access? What does it mean that we have this capability to go live instantly anywhere in the world and I hope to get them but I want to end perhaps him politely because this is a celebration of 25 years of an important and terrific outfit with a somber note. It is an article of faith that better Communications leads to better atmosphere in the world. The WPI statement of its goal says it is cross-cultural understanding that removes the barriers between nations. Maybe it's creepy middle-aged, but I wonder. I sometimes think that the more we learn about the world the more we learn about Mankind's capacity for evil and not just good the more we learn about other systems the more we see that what seems at times to be a majority of systems of States exist to glorify the state and subjugate the individual human being. So to hold to the faith that communication increases understanding and Goodwill is almost a labor worthy of Sisyphus. It's rolling that stone up the mountain with every expectation that that Stones going to come crashing down again. With all the tools of the information age to inform us and maybe to misinform us what it means really more than ever is it the most important tool we have to rely on is the oldest one of all and that is the human brain leavened by a sense of fairness and accuracy and above all a very heady dose of humility. Thank you. In a blatant attack of favoritism. We are going to take questions first from the WPI alumni. I think that's only fair. We urge you please for the sake of the transcript which future Generations will study at night to use the microphones when you ask or comment. I'd like to get your views on the yeah. I just wanna see if you go to the mic will do it this. Yes, please I'd like to get your views on the extent to which you feel that the technique of the new technology might obscure a number of fundamental. So if I could cite an example of the time of the Philippine Revolution Ted Koppel set off for the Manila and didn't get there and so we he was delayed in Hong Kong. So we had what to me seemed to be the very strange image of Ted Koppel. Sitting in Hong Kong interviewing someone in Manila and the same time conducting interviewing with someone else in New York, which he could just as easily have done from New York true relying on cars funds are periodically Dan Rather will go off and spend the week reporting from Los Angeles, which is doing now, right? Yeah, the other side of that is that often events get ignored because the big news media chiefly television can't get their resources in there, you know say like Chile as was we're talking about. I think it's quite a dilemma that often we lose sight of the essentials because we're so obsessed by the means of delivering the message. Excellent point. That's one of the points. I was hoping somebody would raise because I have a hope concise notion about this. I think that the biggest the best setting sin of modern Electronic media. I mean the Network's the TV networks is this substitution of what we can do with technology for what we ought to be doing part of this is this running around I mean, The best one was when Dan Rather was in Iowa and Peter Jennings was in Moscow and the lead story was the revolution in Manila. You try reporting the Philippine Revolution from a corn field outside of Cedar Rapids. You can see what the problem is. But there is this temptation to use the toys part of it is economic. You've bought it you might as well amortize it the there are two quick examples one trivial in one I think serious. The trivial one is it with live television capability electronic news Gathering local news stations all around the country began to send reporters out to report back live on the 11 o'clock news often about stories that had happened hours ago. So the word comes up on the TV screen live and there's the reporter saying Chuck it's quiet here now, but eight hours ago, there was a helicopter crash and we roll the tape which they could just as easily have done. Anyway, the more serious one is this I referred earlier to this revolution in Satellite News Gathering the so-called Cuban trucks and you're not going to get a lecture for me about what that is Trust. It's a different thing now. It used to be that a reporter would go and shoot video tape and then the tape would be brought back and edit it and you'd have maybe five or six hours to find out what happened, you know interview people. Look up facts. Now the reporter goes with the Ku band truck and in 45 seconds at some time. You can be on the air live. Now the pictures are great. What's the reporter doing there? What does it mean when a reporter has a forty five-second head start on the audience? I mean, I have no false modesty and not much real modesty. But you give me 45 seconds to find out what's going on. I'm going to do a lousy job. And so I think they're I think for a lot of Journalism that's going to be one of the biggest problems, you know, ask Mary Frances in about the days when you ship tape film back to the States and had a day or so then to write to the story. It's real. It really means analysis and context are going to be in trouble media. In other parts of the world have been dominated by American News agencies. And I think the New York Times is picking up more and more customers around the world now with the new TV technology. It will the American presence in our living living rooms will increase because small countries not only in the third world in the in the developing world, but also in Other parts of the world don't have the financial resources of employing all these satellite technology. So what basically we are getting for instance is coming Europe now we get the CNN news, which is basic basic American News material is being beamed to Europe and it's being used by by local television networks. So we have Larry speaks performing in our living rooms in Helsinki Finland as well as in Lagos Nigeria, and I think that don't you would you care to comment this puts more responsibility on American Media think it does that and it's no I don't I don't doubt for a minute that the economics of distribution have tended to make Western in this case American Outlets much more attractive now somebody here who can correct me if I'm wrong distribution by Satellite he's and is getting progressively much less expensive than the older forms of transmitting words and pictures one of the reasons why local stations can do what they're doing now is in the pre satellite era to get pictures from say Miami to Oshkosh would cost a fortune. I mean direct feeds because you had to create telephone links and telephone Loops that were Telephone Company Loops that were incredibly expensive. It may well be that if the if the pace of cost deceleration continues that was a terrible wouldn't put it that you're going to find relatively small-scale operations in the developing nations being able to afford their own at least occasionally their own satellite based coverage of events in the west. It may be that what this new technology will do in an optimistic sense is what most technology ones have doing which isn't concentrating the sources of information, but but scattering it And so I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't think we can judge the next 10 years by what we see now. It may be that they will be a pan-african news service television service Distributing satellite TV coverage from a Washington Bureau to television back home. That's at least a possibility sir. Is there any difference between TV network either owned by the state or by the General Electric? Is there a difference between a TV network owned by the state or owned by General Electric? Yeah, big difference the GE thing. We're going to have to see how that plays out because this is one very I think interesting small technical not-so-small point. If you sued ABC for libel say in Manila and one what you could attach was three cameras and some typewriters in the ABC Bureau at the Manila at the hotel manila manila hotel if you shoot NDC for libel right now and want you could attach several tens of millions of dollars worth of GE plants. I don't know what that's going to do to foreign coverage in states were libel laws or tough. However, I I think this is this notion that big Corporation power equals big government power in the sense of news operations is so far in the United States largely mythological and it's one that I must say that I tended to believe more before I started writing about the media then when and After and that is because there are so many other institutional factors one. Let me give you one example right now Tom Brokaw and NBC News is they're on a roll. They're doing very well much better than they've done in years. That's more money for the network. That's more money for GE. Now. Let's say some GE executive doesn't like the way NBC is covering the tax reform package because G is going to get hurt through some change in the law. All right. Now the scenario is GE just like a commissar somewhere calls up and says dump that story or go easy on that story. You know what happens? What do you think Tom Brokaw does? You think I work as a yes, you bet. No. No, he doesn't he not only doesn't do it. But he may take a hike you might find resignations. You might find it incredibly embarrassing publicity. And if you don't think that news divisions of big corporations can embarrass their bosses. I I cite you what happened to CBS also a week ago the news division help bring down the chairman of the board of directors the difference between a government with the power with the police power to come in and shut down an institution and the and the Dynamics of corporate power are the difference. I think Mark Twain once said between the lightning and the lightning bug there is reason to be concerned about corporate concentration. I don't gain say that and we're going to have to see what happens with GE in some of these areas what not so much in intrusion, but in whether the their vulnerability begins to affect news coverage, but I think you're forgetting the incredible institutional loyalty that news people have and their power Within a corporation to say no way we all I can say is I've worked for CBS and ABC to large corporations with lots of interests, you know, lots of sponsors for seven years and their instructions to me. Were you are to avoid obscenity and you are to remain clothed which I think is wise seems to be wise policy. We got time for a couple more, please. Yeah. I just want to ask the question which has been ongoing for a number of years now on objectivity in news reporting. How possibly is this can this be done? I'm thinking about a country like South Africa where some of the reporters have had their families brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers brutalized by The Police murdered raped with impunity. Now, is it possible for the those who are disseminating news to remain objective when the cover these events or should we rather emphasize truthfulness in reporting instead of objectivity in reporting because many people are perceive objectivity as a as an abstract concept now, I want to know if Are those people who are victims of brutality while the serve as as reporters can maintain that principle of objectivity? Well, you know this this discussion is not new to journalists and I suppose you can go back to Immanuel Kant and the theory that we never know real objective knowledge because it's always filtered through the let's see if I remember my philosophy of the phenomenological self. Is that right? Any philosophy major sir? However, I think that the example you give is is particularly special. I think if my family have been brutalized by the police. And my city editor or producer could do what he would not have me cover that story. But the broader question is can journalist be objective in the end. If you mean detached the answer is probably no I am not objective in the sense of strict bloodless neutrality about a free versus a totalitarian Society. I do not regard them as morally equal. I can't and you want to call it cultural bias fine. I happen to think as Speaker said earlier that it is a it is human beings Birthright to be born free. So I am not objective in that sense. However, a reporter covering the United States Soviet Union arms debate can be objective and saying this is the position the Soviet Union has put forward sources because you go to non-governmental. So to say it would it's a departure from past Soviet policies. The United States does not seem willing to negotiate within that framework. You can be objective still. Believing deep down that the Soviet Union is a totalitarian state that what do you think? I was objective when I went to South Africa about the issue of whether the black majority should be suppressed by a white minority. I can't pretend to be objective in that sense. What I can do is fairly present the arguments when we met some afrikaners. They were we gave them a chance to be heard saying what they said. Now, my personal view is that their arguments are nonsense, but I think in that sense you can detach what you want to happen from coverage of a story and speaking as a political person who came into Political journalism from political activism. I you know, I'd report on Ronald Reagan in 1980 and people said, I didn't know you were for Reagan. Not for Reagan. I think he's going to win. I think that measure of objectivity can be done and most important. You've got to eliminate the hidden agendas from your reporting. You know, if you're out there to grind the max you shouldn't that's where the bad faith comes in. We've got time for about two more. So let's take these two Jerry and then okay, I'm sorry look was talked about freedom of press here in this country. And it seems that you have also a private dictator here which called commercial advertising which violates the truth sometimes in its own way. I mean the point that you have to sell sometimes is more important than the need to tell the truth suppose that ate French skiers were killed in a horrible accident in Europe that's value of front page in the New York Times while on the same time. There are 1500 Indians that were flooded to death in India and they cannot sell because they are just Indians so they won't get the Front page. I've been a ghastly Nightline in my major media experience and I think your your program is the best interview program in the states while I was still disappointing once seeing Ted Koppel interviewing one who had a hunger strike for 40 days because the Pentagon confiscated eight million dollars from the homeless budget and in the middle of this sincere interview, this man is going to die then came the said offering a crunchy melting new product that will melt straight in there. And any true in the whole story from my standpoint. Let me stop you because the time I see the point I there is a distinction in my view between vulgar ization. Which happens all the time because of the commercial intrusion and and the private dictator which based on my experience and television is almost law is almost completely and in my experience completely mythological is an interesting reason for that people assume that because of the commercial aspects that commercial news broadcasts are less free than some other source of funding the fact is as long as you're successful, you're more free, you know, why because let's say tomorrow night line would have run a story that Ford Motor Company didn't like okay don't make a hypothetical some years ago. 60 Minutes did a piece about the pinto the Ford Pinto had a small problem when it backed up and hit something it blew up. Now 60 Minutes is the most popular new show in the history of television and the most profitable. So let's say Ford Motor Company says, I'll show Mike Wallace. We're dumping our ads, you know, what happens the 50 sponsors? Or lined around the block trying to buy that time and the point is when you have a diversity of funding sources because capitalist America is not monolithic, you know yourself you were Ford's Chrysler and GM like that the as long as there are enough other people who want to advertise. You're free. And the fact is that advertisers have not run the network schedule since the quiz show scandals of 1959 they used to but they haven't for a quarter of a century. That is vulgar ization. And that is a different situation and let me just point out to you. One other thing. I think you were going to see the network news is beginning to take some lessons from the quality, press in America the print press some of the most popular and profitable newspapers in the country. The ones that are surviving and flourishing are not the net just the National Enquirer. He's you know, mother gives birth to a lien biggest selling paper. The United States is the Wall Street Journal which is not only by the way a terrific paper, but whose front page constantly contradicts the editorial page you read The Wall Street Journal. I hope you do hope you all do editorial page supply-side economics to success. Let the poor float front page million starve. Well if you get rich, it's unbelievable one last question. Okay, Jeff. I wanted to get back to your view of the future of this new information age. I'm afraid that at this stage of the game. I don't have is optimistic view as you do the reason for this I think goes back to your explanation talking about the Bible and saying that as an example of well news new sources of information are subversive and going on from there. I think there was a blurring of the difference between news sources and and distribution networks. And I think that's the problem we're looking at when we talk about satellite in the whole macro World situation because you're absolutely right that satellite broadcasting is going to bring the cost of communication bring the cost of communication very cheaply and we can talk directly with people anywhere in the Right. Now you can buy time is anywhere continental United States for less than $15, but that does not mean that it's necessarily going to happen. And the reason for that is for instance in the international agreements right now the United States Japan and the Soviet Union are lined up as a very strong group to try to control as much as they can control. Maybe that's not the right word to push the concept that the sooner you get satellites up the better and the country's many of which don't know about this technology and four years could not afford to put up their own satellites are seeing the spaces around the world many times satellites going right over their country being filled up by these. Okay, there's a limit as to how many you can put up and there's a real question as whether the latecomers are going to have an opportunity to be And the news just and here's my optimistic conclusion. I think that when that when the demand exists somebody's going to find a way to put more satellites up or maybe different kinds of satellites, or maybe they'll be something I'll make satellite technology. Obsolete. Somebody once said predictions are very risky, especially about the future and I mean and none of us sitting in here in 1960 would have structured what we see too. Well, except Arthur Clark maybe with his geosynchronous satellite predictions would have would have had a clue as to this and on that note speaking of logistics the cab awaits the plane awaits. I genuinely regret not being able to spend more time because I think this group is a first-rate in terrific thing and thanks for listening to me.