The time now is four minutes past nine o'clock. You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio during this hour, you'll hear the complete statements of Governor Bill Clinton and his choice for vice president Senator Al Gore and you'll also hear an extended excerpt of the late Eric severide's farewell address to the National Press Club recorded in 1977. Long time CBS newsman Eric sevareid died this morning at the age of 79 Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton announced his selection of Tennessee. Senator, Al Gore for his vice presidential running mate at noon today in front of the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas national public radio's Linda wertheimer and Brian Naylor were there and you'll hear their analysis at the conclusion of the formal statements by Governor Clinton and Senator Gore First, Arkansas, governor Bill Clinton several weeks ago.When I named Warren Christopher Madeleine kunin and Vernon Jordan to head a team to recommend a vice presidential running mate. I asked them to look for a candidate who met three tests. I said I wanted a vice president who really understood what had happened to ordinary Americans in the last 12 years. Someone who was committed to making government work again for average hard-working American families. I said, I wanted a vice president who would compliment me and my own experiences and bring other experiences knowledge and understanding to our common Endeavor and above all I said, I wanted a vice president who would be ready should something happen to me to immediately assume the office of President of the United States. Over the last several weeks. We have conducted a deliberative vice presidential search. We've considered many find qualified candidates who have much to offer our country and this campaign. I want to express my thanks to all the outstanding men and women whom he considered and to tell you how deeply moved I was by the love and concern that each of them have for this great nation. The running mate I have chosen is a leader of great strength integrity and stature a father who like me loves his children and shares my Hunger to turn this economy around to change our country and to do it so that we don't raise the first generation of children to do worse than their parents. A man standing beside me today has what it takes to lead this nation from the day. We take office Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. Throughout his public life. Al Gore has done what I've tried to do here in Arkansas. He's put government back on the side of ordinary men and women time. And again, he stood up to powerful interests to put people first. He's fought for healthcare and consumer protection. He is perhaps America's leading proponent of the development of new technologies like fiber optics and biotechnology to create the high wage jobs America needs to move into the 21st century. Like me, he's a longtime supporter of helping the Working Poor and as important as anything else. He has demonstrated a consistent commitment to the Children of America among other things with our common idea to ask the wealthy in our country to pay their fair share so we can give a break to middle-class families who are trying to raise their kids and dignity and strength. Today he is perhaps better known than anything else or his willingness and Readiness his commitment and his ability to do something that George Bush is not willing to do to be a leader in protecting the world's environment. Al Gore has spent the last decade working on the Global Environmental challenges. We desperately need to address global warming ozone depletion energy conservation. He has written a magnificent book on his thoughts and recommendations. He has asked me to join in his commitment to preserve not only the environment of America but to preserve the environment of our globe for future generations and together. We will finally give the United States a real environmental presidency. Al Gore is a leading expert in foreign policy National Security and arms control. He supported the use of American Force to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. And when the Gulf War was over Al Gore did himself even more credit by being the one who took George Bush to task for abandoning the Kurds and shaming the Republicans for trying to use patriotism as a political issue. Together Al Gore and I will see that America once again has a foreign policy based on American values of freedom and Independence and human rights and global economic growth. I have admired Al Gore for many years. I've admired his family their generations of commitment to civil rights and equal opportunity to education and economic advancement for the people of our region. I know he's as proud as I am that both of us are married to two of the most devoted children's Advocates and the United States of America. for in the end Al Gore and I understand what this election is really all about. The end of years of drift and Division and denial the beginning of an honest attempt to rebuild and reunite and to renew this great nation, not just for ourselves, but for our children and for our children's children and this election Al Gore and I won't just be sharing a spot on the Democratic ticket will be sharing the values. We learned in Hope Arkansas and Carthage Tennessee individual responsibility hard work Faith and family and the idea that people who work hard and play by the rules should be rewarded with the American dream. We want to fight against all the odds to create jobs and raise incomes in this country again to value our families by strengthening them and their efforts to work and to raise their children to make government work for people again, we share a common philosophy that it's time to move beyond the old ideas of something for nothing on the one hand and every person for himself on the other and most of all we're ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work to move things forward in this nation. 12 years is long enough for a nation to have no economic strategy. No, unifying Vision. No common purpose. Our people are hurting in our country is slipping behind. We can't afford four more years of an Administration without a plan to turn the country around with the president and a vice president not strong enough and determined enough to make it happen. We have the best plan. And now we have the best ticket. I am proud to say to all of you here and to the United States. This is the next Vice President of the United States of America Senator, Al Gore of Tennessee. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Governor. ladies and gentlemen Thank you very much for that warm. Welcome. Dipper and I flew over this morning with our children Kristen and Sarah and Albert. Our oldest Corona is going to be joining us in another day. She's in Costa Rica right now and is on her way back. I can tell you truthfully. I didn't seek this. And up until very recently when I began to get an inkling that I would get the call that came late last night. I didn't expect it. But I'm here for one simple reason. I love my country. And I believe in my heart. that this ticket gives our country the best chance for the change. We so desperately need to move forward again. I'm proud to stand here with Bill Clinton. At the beginning of a long hard fight in behalf of the hard-working people of the United States of America. We have watched for 12 long years. as the Republican Administration still in power has driven this country into the ditch. The time has come for all Americans to get off the sidelines to get involved in the process to be a part of the healing. This country needs to bring us together not divide us one from another to get to work on the changes for the average working people of this country. The time has come throughout American history. Each generation has passed on leadership to the next. That time has come again the time for a new generation of leadership for the United States of America. I believe very deeply. That this nation simply cannot afford another four years of the kind of leadership that we have. Now. They've run out of ideas. They've run out of energy. They've run out of the ability to inspire our people One of my greatest hopes as I joined this ticket is to help Bill Clinton. In his dramatic effort to lift the public dialogue so that we can make this campaign a national conversation about America's future so that we can present to the American people ideas choices a sensible plan for getting our country moving in the right direction. Again, Bill Clinton has for his entire career stood for that kind of responsible change to improve the lives of the average people in Arkansas. And in this country, I want to be a part of that effort. I know from conversations that the two of us have had that Bill Clinton is speaking from his heart when he says here as he did just a few minutes ago. that together we can make all the difference. In determining whether or not the United States of America will offer the leadership. Our world needs to save the Earth's environment. We're in a Race Against Time that leadership is critical and it can't wait for years or eight years. It can't wait any longer than November. We're going to make that change for the Earth's environment and for the people of this country the Republicans. The Republican Administration has been trying to divide us for too long. They claim to be Pro family. but when we pass legislation for the people of this country Which gives mothers and fathers? A chance to have a little time off from work when a child is seriously injured or when a child is first born the bush-quayle administration vetoes it because they're afraid that it's going to cost money to the wealthy and Powerful in this country. That's not pro-family. The clinton-gore ticket is the pro-family administer ticket in this race and will be the pro-family administration. When the Democratic Congress passes an idea that Bill Clinton Advanced to give a tax credit for working families with children to make it possible for families to stay together for families to be able to give their children the kind of upbringing that they need the bush-quayle administration vetoes that legislation and still tries to describe itself as pro-family we're going to lay out the plan that Bill Clinton has put forward. We're going to present choices to the American people. We're going to ask all Americans regardless of what party you're in whether you are an independent whether you have been tempted to give up on the whole political process or not. We want you to join our team. We want you to join this common effort to bring our country together to get it moving in the right direction again I come from I come from Carthage, Tennessee. I've never been to Hope, Arkansas. But I'm told that it's just like Carthage. In one respect it's a place where people know about it when you're born and care about it when you die. That's the America Bill Clinton and I grew up in and when we elect Bill Clinton president, that's the kind of nation. We will once again become. Thank you, and thank you governor. Into your listening to live coverage of an announcement by Bill Clinton and Senator Al Gore from National Public Radio. The two men are standing outside the governor's mansion in Little Rock Governor Clinton has just announced Albert Gore to be his running ladies and gentlemen, your Senator Cory again. I'd like to I mentioned them at the outset of my remarks, but I would like to formally introduce my wife Tipper Gore. And my second oldest daughter Kristin Gore. and and Sarah Gore and Albert Gore the Third. Thanks. Let me say as we close this wonderful event out. How honored Hillary and Chelsea and I are to have all the Gores here minus one who will be home soon. How proud and honored we are to be involved in this great Crusade for our country with them. We're going to be in today and fight between now and November. Hillary and temper are going over to the children's hospital today to visit an institution that all of you know from Arkansas is very very important to both of us and especially to Hillary and we're going to give this country a campaign. The American people can be proud of can relate to can support we're going to change this country. Thanks to Al Gore and all the Americans are going to work with us. Thank you and good. Bye. Have a good day. Once again, you're listening to live coverage of an announcement by Governor Bill Clinton and Senator Al Gore from National Public Radio. I'm Brian Naylor along with Linda wertheimer here at NPR in Washington. The two are standing side-by-side waving to supporters and photographers who are gathered in Little Rock for the announcement. No surprise Linda no, no surprise. But but but it is a it is a surprising kind of ticket given the given the sorts of candidates we've had in the last few years among other things just because they are so young Clinton is will be 46 in August 19th. Al Gore is 40 was 44 in March of this year. They are ivy league Harvard was a Gore's undergraduate degree. And Yale for Yale for clinton-gore then went on to to law school at Vanderbilt and has has a military background which Clinton does not have he's a Vietnam veteran that that gaggle of On children that we saw up there on the stage I think is something that will be a real campaign asset that Gore brings to the ticket. The clintons have the one daughter Chelsea. The little baby boy is the reason why Albert Gore did not run for president this time young Al Gore who is named a for for his grandfather's who was also the senator from Tennessee Albert Gore was in a terrible automobile accident. He was run over and dragged by a car as he darted out in the parking lot at the Orioles the old the old Oriole Stadium in Baltimore after a baseball game and he was in terrible shape. It was a it was a really not clear that he would live. It was a an awful accident and the Gores went through a great deal of a great deal with that boy and his Rehabilitation and so on he's fine now, but but mr. Gore said in the beginning that he didn't want to try another run because he felt that they needed to be Near his family. So obviously a three-month campaign is very different from a two-year campaign and Senator brought that up in a sense peripherally talking about the support to the lack of support in the administration for family leave policy for parents to attend to their children, you know looking at the two of them on the stage together. They are so similar. I mean as I said before they could exchange suits they look the same size. Is that is that going to be something that Americans are will have a problem with when they when they see first of all on President Bush who is some 20 years or so older than vice president Quayle. Is there as their a by not selecting an older man, do you think did the governor Clinton or woman make a mistake? I don't think so. I think that I think that there's there's a strong sense that This is the generation to whom the torch has been passed. I mean that's that I think is the idea of this ticket and I think it's a perfectly reasonable approach the you know, if you cast your mind not too far back you find to 43 year old men running against each other for President John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were both very young when they ran and younger than these two are just younger than these two are so I think that I think that the given the the emphasis on change and so on. I think that's what they're trying to do gor. I think we should also mention they were emphasizing it in the end both of them in their in their talks today would be the green vice presidential choice. He's a very strong advocate of the environment and believes very strongly that lots of things have to have to change have to be done differently. He was the Rio conference he He has advocated is very concerned about global warming and he's at he's a strong advocate for the environment in the United States Senate. So he brings that as a kind of an extra attraction and one ticket when guess is that the admitted that the that the Democratic leaders that the Clinton campaign feels that that's an important issue to bring to the ticket that environmental candidate is something that that can help them be very tough to to claim that you would be a more environmental president. If you had Al Gore looking at you from across the from across the aisle and it's it also strikes a contrast between the kind of the deregulation that that vice president Quayle has been advocating in the course of his competitive Council work for this Administration and Al Gore's very different approach to the environment on his side in the Senate so that sets up attention and it sets up the possibility of debate. And I think Al Gore would be very good at at a debate at debating. He would be a very good sort of counterfoil and can puncher often in vice presidential choice is you look for somebody who can you know who can kind of went a sharp speech is called for can stand up and say a few things at the presidential candidate wants to remain presidential doesn't say, I think that that he would probably be pretty good at that. I think it's a very interesting choice. It's a most interesting to me because of the regional aspect because of the youth and because of the environmental interest and I think I think Albert Gore brings quite a bit to this ticket not the least of what he brings to the ticket is his own personal energy, which is considerable. Yeah and his and his ability to get really to get really into the idea of campaigning. What about their differences just briefly here. We've talked so much about the similarities between the two And I guess the biggest difference between Clinton and Gore is Vietnam Clinton didn't go go and go or did but to some extent there is a similarity there too in that Albert Gore the son of a senator has anticipated a political career for years and he made the decision and it was a was a decision that he'd really didn't have to make to go to Vietnam just because he felt that if he ever wanted to do anything in politics, he would have to have that on his record. And so he made the decision despite some personal doubts about the war to go and and therefore there it sits on his record what he did there. He was a he was a journalist and Military journalist there. So he was not he was he was at the war but not exactly in the war in quite the same way that some other people are who served in any other major difference is that you've been able to glean their records on most issues? Pretty I think their records are their records are pretty close the Senate precent. It permits a more of an activist position on things like the environment then then bang governor of a small Southern state does so I think Gore has Gore has a somewhat more interesting and varied range of ideas than what we know about Clinton so far. I think he's going to be I think it would be a little be an asset. It'll be an interesting now that I guess the race is really under way. I guess we have to wait for mr. Perot to decide. What's what's up well in this and this does bring up something that is very interesting about about the the problems that a candidate like Ross Perot has today is a day when Bill Clinton leads the news. He makes the choice of Albert Gore. He leads the news there lots of stories about Gore these pictures these two Attractive people then he goes to his convention and and there are a whole series of democratic Perform in people making Democratic leaders making speeches Albert Gore has presented again. The candidate makes a speech. We have several days of major news in which the Democratic party institutionally sets itself up as an important factor in American politics, and then the Republicans do the same thing and Ross Perot doesn't have any of that institutional support. So he's going to have some trouble remaining in the in sort of in the front front of people's minds as we go into the convention season. Thanks Linda that brings us to the conclusion of this special event an announcement by Governor Bill Clinton stating that Tennessee. Senator. Al Gore is his vice presidential running mate. Thanks to C-SPAN and KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas for help with this broadcast. The engineers were Leslie Gaston and Rich rarey John ago. Nick is the producer. Thanks again to NPR's Linda wertheimer. I'm Brian Taylor. And I'm Susan. Oh Randy in st. Paul the remarks of Governor Bill Clinton and Senator. Al Gore were recorded at noon today National Public radio's Nina totenberg prepared this background profile of Senator. Al Gore like Bill Clinton Albert Gore comes from the center of the democratic party from a border state like Bill Clinton. He's a baby boomer having been born just after World War II like Clinton, he was fervently opposed to the war in Vietnam and anguished over what to do about the draft according to his friends young or at one point even considered moving to Canada to evade the draft but much like Bill Clinton. He decided that if he wanted to have a future in American politics, he could not shirk his country's call unlike Clinton. However Gore ended up going to Vietnam and in the state's afterwards Gore and in the state's afterwards Gore briefly flirted with being a reporter then at age 28 won election to the House of Representatives where he served four terms before being elected to the It 1984 as a politician he moved considerably to the right of his previous Nam War days last year. He voted for military action against Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf. It is said that the sanctions could stop him. I wish that were so. It may be so. But it doesn't feel plausible to me Gore is of course, no stranger to National politics. He ran unsuccessfully for the presidential nomination in 1988 doing extremely well in much of the South but faltering in New York since then however Gore has made no secret of his desire to run again many had thought he would be in The Fray again this primary season, but he demurred citing family considerations some have less flattering accounts. Noting that Gore bowed out at just the time President Bush was riding high in the polls. But Gore says he didn't run because of one shattering event three years ago his six-year-old son and namesake Albert was struck by a car. The child was thrown 30 feet in the air as Gore would later write in his book. I ran to his side and held him and called his name but he was motionless limp and still without breath or pulse his eyes were open with the nothingness stare of death. And we prayed the two of us there in the gutter with my voice. The boy lived but his recuperation took years requiring painful and extensive surgery to restore the use of his right arm. And the senator said he decided this was not the year to leave his family for a long primary and general election campaign. Now though, he is accepted the Baton to run this final lap in the second place lat knowing that win or lose. It will put him in position to run for the number one slot again, eventually over the years Gore's main issues have involved the environment consumer affairs and more recently Arms Control. He's a passionate exponent of environmentalism arguing forcefully that the developed world must help the undeveloped World take the necessary steps to decrease the hole in the ozone and global warning. He admits now that in his 1988 presidential campaign. He stopped talking about these issues because the Press didn't write about them when he did and his failure to talk about the issues. He says now robbed his campaign of much of its real meaning he talked about that. Campaign in an interview with Robert Siegel earlier this year on all things considered I would not do it the same way again. I think you have to keep plugging away until people get the message and I think that's beginning to to take place. I think there's a profound shift in the politics of this country in my home state of Tennessee in the majority of counties the single hottest local political issue is where to put the new landfill or the new incinerator and it's because people feel like their backyards or threatened when people make the connection emotionally not just intellectually between the devastation of the global ecological system and their own backyards, then you'll see the same kind of intensity brought to these issues as you find at the local level on the sighting of any landfill in a book entitled Earth in the balance which made the bestseller list gor outlined what he sees as the Earth's environmental problems and the Marshall Plan needed to address them. It's By Far and Away the most serious crisis that we face but it is all too easy to put our heads in the sand and pretend. It doesn't exist. Dire Straits has a line in one of its songs that my friend Carl Sagan is fond of quoting denial ain't just a river in Egypt. It's a psychological strategy an addict denies that he's addicted and sees drunk driving accidents as random unconnected events in the same way. We are in a sense in our civilization addicted to a pattern of unsustainable consumption and exploitation of the Earth's resources on a scale now which threatens the Integrity of the ecological balance worldwide Gore who headed the US delegation to the Earth Summit has received kudos for his understanding of environmental issues, but criticism to for what some see as zealotry Irwin celt Stelzer the of the Mark, an Enterprise Institute. See these Gore's record on the environment as much less realistic than Clinton's. I think you're going to see if Clinton is elected much Greener policy than you would have had if Clinton had taken someone other than Gore. I think it will be very costly. It will be less balance that will be less market-oriented and it will be less in America's interest and more in the direction of the International Community that Gore find so congenial Republicans today immediately began attacking Gore as a tax-and-spend liberal but Democrats seem pleased at Clinton's Choice, especially in comparison with their view of Dan Quayle said Michael Dukakis is 1988 campaign manager Susan a stretch Gore proves. You can be good-looking and smart at the same time. I'm Nina totenberg in, Washington. You know their news today long time CBS newsman Eric sevareid died today in Washington sevareid was born in North Dakota and during the 1920s his family moved to Minneapolis where he graduated from the University of Minnesota his first job as a reporter was at the old Minneapolis Journal when he was only 18 years old. He also worked for the Paris Herald and the United press on his first assignment for CBS News in 1940. He got the scoop that France was about to surrender to the Germans sevareid worked with legendary CBS newsman Edward r-- Murrow and served as the Network's Chief correspondent. He retired from CBS in 1977 on the eve of his retirement Eric sevareid was honored at the national Press Club in Washington here is an extended excerpt of his farewell address to the National Press Club on November 16. 1977 the time now is 20 minutes before ten o'clock. We'll have that for you in just a moment. Here is an extended excerpt of Eric's uh Brides farewell address to the National Press Club on November 16 1977. I've learned that one thing about American people there is a real sense of indigenous sense of fairness among them. And I've discovered that. No matter how often how many people may strongly disagree with what? If they think you're honest if they think you're trying to be fair, they will sustain you. They're great problems and dealing with a mass audience. Every Walk of Life a great fellow Ray Clapper some of you remember died in the war wrote a column. He always had a rule of thumb. He said that beware of under estimating the intelligence of your readers And beware of overestimating their information, I think that's about what it comes down through. I've been after the news business one way or another since I was a high school kid trying to think back on some of this. It's not for me here to recite the all these episodes of my working life. I was impressed with the very fortuitous and constructive role played in my career by by ignorance and lying and cheating and bad luck when I was 17. I went off with another crazy kid on a canoe trip great distance. That we survived it. We're actually ignorant of what we're getting into that. Got me enough local notoriety and then the apis so I got a job in a paper. Sometime back and after college, I got fired off same paper. I went to Europe there were no jobs whatever food America is people manager, but I walked into the lobby the Paris Harold. Out of curiosity as much as I think and I'm felony. Tommy Wilson, some of you probably know him came out to see me in the lobby. And he said listen, we are so overworked here. We're going crazy. We got to get him some help. He said now you give me a quick fill in on you and I'll go tell the boss that you're an old cow. You're the best reporter. I ever knew you miss a great opportunity doesn't hire he was in Allied Eric Hawkins, and that's how I got that job a couple years later Ed Murrow want to hire me and 26 years old. You still don't have to lie, New York won't buy that. I'll tell him you're 29 the straightened out later, which he did if he hadn't have been retired. Three years ago bad luck was important. I'm going to China and 43 and we had a very bad airplane had to leave that airplane in midair and I had a very soft landing on a hillside in Burma in it and a hard landing at every front page in America. This was done out of sheer scrambling panic and we came out Heroes somehow that helped my career in a great deal cheating was important and 44 we're going to go from Italy to invade South France at 7th Army operation. And there's only going to be one or two places for broadcasters on LST. And I know I was just dead if I didn't get on it and they're going to draw your names from slips, babe from hat. The drawing was to be done by a close friend of mine Dan Lang the New Yorker. Who? Stuffing with my predicament and he had he was very tactical. He could fingers tell a difference between straight slip of paper in a crumpled piece of paper and I got on that it changed. Other times I think I've was smart. I walking through the bar in this place once many years ago. Radio days, and I remember to newspaper men arguing loud voice and one was saying that talking about Walter lippman once said said, yeah, but he really is a great reporter because he you get see the intellectual scoop the think scooped you might say well thinking I haven't thought about that. But then I thought I'd try my hand at it and they kept me at and I've been pretending to do that ever since it's much easier on the legs. It's come a long way this business a broadcast journalism. A lot of people think it's bad now, but I remember what it was like kid the twenties early thirties all the screamers on the radio. The father Coughlin is the Winchell's arrest we wouldn't have that today. It was difficult to get it going as an organized news Operation. And 39 War started as a CPS. I had a terrible time getting credentials in the French army and take radio seriously journalism had to do with those papers magazines. That time Admiral couldn't get membership in the American Press Club in London later. He was president of it. We had to do a lot ourselves we didn't. We were part of the fortifying tradition of printed press. We were just hanging out there loose we've had my only one generation of this press has had about three centuries. We've had more or less sort of create not only our own techniques because our own people learn who did it. Well who didn't but in a way sort of invent our own Traditions, I think it's all much much better than it used to be radio far better than those very early days television far better than those so-called Golden Days of Television 5000 to look at it now. It's pretty Dreadful. I still have I guess a certain Nostalgia but for radio because it's even radio the word carry the whole burden it did it all. And have any pictures we had two writers and words had a preciousness about them picture of marvelous things, but it also reduces everything to literalness. I remember once listening to a lot of types of radio reports in Dallas on local stations that they of the Kennedy assassination. No pictures, believe me the infinitely more spine-chilling exciting than what came over the tube. This is a dangerous business people in it particular TV as the danger of confusing celebrity with Fame. Celebrity of course is simply being down because your known. We have to contend with a lot of criticism and miss one is that we all getting frightfully rich in this business. Well, I can take an awful lot of newspaper column has got a lot richer and I did they're not written about. This is not a priesthood any form of Journalism by any means. but I think it will be bad if sort of pecking order a hierarchy based on. Income develops the business and I can sense that now. I don't want to see that see people evaluated in. judgment basis of a dollar sign hanging around their neck We have become in this business an extraordinary degree subjects in the news. until it's almost impossible now for any network news Operation or big local station to run its own Internal Affairs without directly incessant monitoring from the newspapers colonists mother's it's creating a rather unhealthy self-consciousness, which I don't like There's always been the sort of love-hate relationship between printed press and broadcasting journalism. I think sometimes they don't quite know what to make of this. And their treatment of us frequently baffles lots of us. You were constantly written about now, but we're also constantly criticized as being over publicized overrated character. The Press is following the ratings business. Frantic announcer the horse race every turn and yet that works are always criticized for being too preoccupied with ratings. I read one day that TV reporters are A dreadfully Brash and uppity and arrogant people always trusting microphones in the face of some poor innocent creature and I read the next day that we're all timid and shy but quite as bold as buckaroos in a city Rumba newspaper. Of course all this business of the sort of creeping narcissism in the media. goes with an age of peace and Central prosperity those periods of always brought a certain amount of boredom with them and attention turns inevitably to gossiped personalities as people politically turn them where they turn to autonomous movements here and they're all kinds of local causes and Cults that just goes with that kind of period I've always thought the printed press and broadcasting press word are competitive but more complementary really than competitive. And we on the electronic side of it have to live with the unique handicap. We're the only business and I can think of that has its Chief competitor as its Chief critic. This makes it tough. Broadcasting of course self started not the way most newspapers started most people's were begun by journalists who started them to they want to say something usually were political nature broadcasting stations were begun by businessmen. What are the business and in time the force of events? They found themselves? A lot of them didn't like it. They found themselves co-trustees the first amendment that now goes with the business and those that don't want to face that often to be in it. We live with a lot of buildings in limitations. It's legal restrictions constitutional restrictions restrictions of time to only 24 hours in a day. We can't add any minutes newspapers can add pages They always difficult something very awkward relationship between networks and Affiliates. Cumbres NE snuff conversation us of the technology cover the news especially television. And of course that basic fact that the viewer of the news of the snare broadcasters cannot be his own editor as he is Reading in his people read a paper and the skip around and pick out what he wants to read and what he believed what he doesn't want to be. It must suffer through it all if he wants the news. when he listens reviews We kid brought in a new kind of thing live reporting of events as the audience you're talking to also sees it. Or reporting about an instantly afterwards. This is a kind of a Quantum jump the news business. It's dangerous. We are I think really the only truly Mass medium. Oranges are not really selective as they are for most Publications. This is a wholly different problem. Got a lot of faults. I don't want to see new ones added like any sense of elitism and comes from publicity or money. This makes one self-conscious enough, but I think really a bottom. Printed press broadcasting all media of the press have the same. Aim, and the same problem. American writer whose name I've misplaced Who said this? Not man's innate depravity not over at criminal acts not Wicked attempt to subvert American institutions, but rather plain old-fashioned ignorance is the Real Enemy of that huge giant the public who is still a fumbling physician of our social ills, that's what we've all here been working at all our lives and I think we just continue to thank you so much for your kind love. You've been listening to Eric severide's farewell address to the National Press Club given on the eve of his retirement from CBS News in 1977. Eric sevareid died today at the age of 79. He began his journalistic career in Minneapolis during the 1930s while he was a student at the University of Minnesota sevareid, established friendships, which continued for many years old friends in Minnesota. Remember him as a man very much like the earnest intellectual whose commentary was seen and heard by millions of Television viewers, Minnesota public radio's Tom fudge reports when he was a student at the University of Minnesota Eric sevareid mounted a failed attempt to become the editor of the University's paper the Minnesota daily one of his greatest supporters in that failed campaign was Mitch Charlie, who was then a young Professor at the you Mitch Charlie along with his wife. Jean was a friend of Eric sevareid until Mitch died about a year ago. Gene says she remembers very All the man who was known as Arnie sevareid before Edward r-- Murrow coaxed him away from newspaper work and into broadcasting Road described him as a door Norwegian. So he always looked sort of Psalm and worried. He was profoundly ethical he was I think a left-wing liberal he he didn't go in for light Happy Talk he viewed the world with concerns as well one might Charlie says she and her husband were in France during the late 30s when sevareid was a Paris newspaper correspondent at that time sevareid had just gotten an offer from Moreau to come to work for CBS. She recalls the conversation she and her husband had with sevareid is he was thinking about taking the job and Eric said to Mitch. Damn. I'm a rich Word man. I don't know how to be a spoken word man. I think I better say no and Mitch and he talked for hours in a bistro in Paris one night and then we left for home. And our first stop was in Chicago. We were in a hotel room and we turned on the radio and it said, this is Eric sevareid speaking to you from Paris. And that was right when World War II was breaking out sevareid was known as Arnie by the people who knew him in Minnesota. Charlie says sevareid decided to use the name Eric when he went into broadcasting at the time. She says severide's wife Lois teased her husband saying that if he did that people would start calling him Eric the Red she was referring to his political views as a university student during the 1930s sevareid was a member of a fraternity called the Jacobin Club again, Gene Charlie and these were A group of vigorous brilliant intellectual militant kids it was a combination of people some of them certainly were campus radicals, but not all of whom were st. Paul resident Warner Shippy was a member of the Jacobin Club at the same time as sevareid. He says the Jacobins were mostly law and journalism students who tended to be anti-war anti fraternity and definitely to the left of center. He says severide's politics were typical of the group and he was known for his editorials against compulsory military drill training at the University but chippy says sevareid unlike some members of the group had a journalist impulse to see both sides of an issue. Eric was probably one of the more Why you think of it now? It's balanced people and took his journalism. Seriously, all of severide's Old Friends remember him above all as an intellectual they say his talents are of the kind that are missing from the television news of today. Sometime back and after college, I got fired off same paper away. Eric sevareid is dead at the age of 79. This is Tom fudge, Minnesota Public Radio. This program was produced by Sarah Mayer. I'm Susan. Oh Randy. This is a news and information service of Minnesota Public Radio.