Brinkley Meets the (Teenage) Press

Every once in a while, a TV network does something that makes you believe again in its enormous potential for enlightenment. NBC's First Annual Broadcast News Conference was such an occasion; I was so impressed by it that I thought you might like a first-hand report.

David Brinkley, of the Huntley Brinkley news team, took the toughest quiz of his scholastic life Friday, February 20, at WRCA-TV's day-long seminar for some 800 student journalists in the New Jersey-New York-Connecticut area. Four shrewd and knowledgeable high school editors fired amazingly mature questions at Brinkley in Washington over closed circuit from NBC's cavernous Studio 8-H. And for the first time on TV the ordinarily unruffleable Brinkley looked and sounded worried! Brinkley confessed from the start that he was facing his betters: he had been only a lowly "exchange" editor on his own high school paper, the man who clips tired jokes and stale stories from other papers.

Ann Levenson of Seward Park High School wanted to know why there were no more muckrakers like Lincoln Steffens in journalism today. Brinkley replied lamely that the two biggest issues--Communism and corruption--left little room for controversy because everyone already knew about them and agreed they were evil. To which this audacious young lady retorted that journalists shouldn't let these evils "stay in a stagnant state" but should rile up the people to get rid of them. When Brinkley asked for some evils to work on, she suggested juvenile delinquency and segregation. With the clock running out, Brinkley-obviously relieved and with his usual self-assured wryness returning said that it was probably up to the juveniles to stop that kind of delinquency!

The NBC newsmen were as frank as their teenage interrogators. Asked what he thought Eisenhower's place in history would be, Brinkley admitted that in his opinion it would be less than great. Another scholastic editor, making a learned allusion to U. S. Grant, wondered how long it would be before the American electorate would fall for another general; Brinkley ployed by hoping we would never have another war big enough to create a hero.

Frank McGhee, describing the way the White House press conference works, noted that Mr. Eisenhower cued the correspondents by saying, "I am ready for questions"--a statement the press usually found hard to believe. And, jibing at the President's immunity from the laws of logic and syntax, McGhee noted that the stenotypers took down the press conference verbatim--grammatical errors and all.

Morgann Beatty urged the assembled students not to forget radio's importance as a news medium; he claimed that the old "Chinese" proverb about the relative power of pictures over words was actually a plot of a Printer's Ink space salesman. Leon Pearson covered the cultural beat by giving a capsule lecture on moral abnormality and perversion on the American stage.

Chet Huntley, his own ears still ringing from his imprudent NAACP broadcast, made a good case nonetheless for the right of a commentator to give his own clearly identifiable opinions on the air. For, Huntley argued, "if the news broadcaster has no opinion on anything, I would wonder about his value." He contended that a thoughtful commentator was "forced to come to a conclusion on at least a few occasions. It is all right to leave tough issues up in the air and conclude they are only more dilemmas. But to expect a man to be a consistent dealer in dilemmas is asking a little too much and is casting him in a most unnatural light."

Another highlight of the all-day session (9:45 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.) was the announcement by Robert W. Sarnoff of an NBC News Working Fellowship Award to be given to one of the delegates for the best report of the conference in his student newspaper. A committee headed by Dean Edward Barrett of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism will select the winner. First prize includes a portable typewriter and the chance to work for eight weeks in the NBC newsroom at $75 a week.

The all-day-seminar was a stimulating and demanding educational experience. President Robert Kintner himself gave the opening talk on the place of youth in electronic journalism. Then Dave Garroway gave his personal philosophy of reporting; Chet Huntley narrated a special film for the occasion, "First, Fastest, Finest: Inside NBC News"; Pauline Frederick related her own experiences as a woman covering the U.N.; Merrill Mueller counseled his audience to take tough subjects in high school and college if they wanted to follow him into foreign correspondence; John K. M. McCaffery narrated "Playback of History"-a documentary on the key events in modern history as covered by radio and TV reporters.

What this day meant to me was that if the networks put as much conviction and energy into enlightening the nation as they do into singing it teenage lullabies, our educational crisis would diminish dramatically. For our educational malaise is essentially a paralysis of motive. The rock-and-rolling teenage subculture entertains our young people into intellectual limbo.

Strike at the root of the anti-intellectualism that pervades our society and people will begin to educate themselves in the humanities; it is only the will they are lacking now. I hope the next year's seminar is broadcast via closed circuit to all major cities in the United States. Students in the other forty-eight states need the opportunity; and NBC's six-gunned prestige needs some refurbishing.

Source: The English Journal, Vol. 48, No. 5 (May, 1959), pp. 279-291 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English