《【演讲稿】英语演讲：Television News Coverage.docx》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【演讲稿】英语演讲：Television News Coverage.docx（21页珍藏版）》请在三一文库上搜索。
1、第 1 页 英语演讲：Television News Coverage1 特征码 VCfXESGZFRZmZOCQsxvq Spiro Theodore Agnew: Television News Coverage I think its obvious from the cameras here that I didnt e to discuss the ban on cyclamates or DDT. I have a subject which I think if of great importance to the American people. Tonight I want
2、to discuss the importance of the television news medium to the American people. No nation depends more on the intelligent judgment of its citizens. No medium has a more profound influence over public opinion. Nowhere in our system are there fewer checks on vast power. So, nowhere should there be mor
3、e conscientious responsibility exercised than by the news media. The question is, “Are we demanding enough of our television news presentations?“ “And are the men of this medium demanding enough of themselves?“ Monday night a week ago, President Nixon delivered the most important address of his Admi
4、nistration, one of the most important of our decade. His subject was 第 2 页 Vietnam. My hope, as his at that time, was to rally the American people to see the conflict through to a lasting and just peace in the Pacific. For 32 minutes, he reasoned with a nation that has suffered almost a third of a m
5、illion casualties in the longest war in its history. When the President pleted his address - an address, incidentally, that he spent weeks in the preparation of - his words and policies were subjected to instant analysis and querulous criticism. The audience of 70 million Americans gathered to hear
6、the President of the United States was inherited by a small band of network mentators and self-appointed analysts, the majority of whom expressed in one way or another their hostility to what he had to say. It was obvious that their minds were made up in advance. Those who recall the fumbling and gr
7、oping that followed President Johnsons dramatic disclosure of his intention not to seek another term have seen these men in a genuine state of nonpreparedness. This was not it. One mentator twice contradicted the Presidents st 第 3 页 tatement about the exchange of correspondence with Ho Chi Minh. Ano
8、ther challenged the Presidents abilities as a politician. A third asserted that the President was following a Pentagon line. Others, by the expressions on their faces, the tone of their questions, and the sarcasm of their responses, made clear their sharp disapproval. To guarantee in advance that th
9、e Presidents plea for national unity would be challenged, one network trotted out Averell Harriman for the occasion. Throughout the Presidents address, he waited in the wings. When the President concluded, Mr. Harriman recited perfectly. He attacked the Thieu Government as unrepresentative; he criti
10、cized the Presidents speech for various deficiencies; he twice issued a call to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to debate Vietnam once again; he stated his belief that the Vietcong or North Vietnamese did not really want military take-over of South Vietnam; and he told a little anecdote about
11、 a 第 4 页 “very, very responsible” fellow he had met in the North Vietnamese delegation. All in all, Mr. Harrison offered a broad range of gratuitous advice challenging and contradicting the policies outlined by the President of the United States. Where the President had issued a call for unity, Mr.
12、Harriman was encouraging the country not to listen to him. A word about Mr. Harriman. For 10 months he was Americas chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks - a period in which the United States swapped some of the greatest military concessions in the history of warfare for an enemy agreement on th
13、e shape of the bargaining table. Like Coleridges Ancient Mariner, Mr. Harriman seems to be under some heavy pulsion to justify his failures to anyone who will listen. And the networks have shown themselves willing to give him all the air time he desires. Now every American has a right to disagree wi
14、th the President of the United States and to express publicly that disagreement. But the President of the 第 5 页 United States has a right to municate directly with the people who elected him, and the people of this country have the right to make up their own minds and form their own opinions about a
15、 Presidential address without having a Presidents words and thoughts characterized through the prejudices of hostile critics before they can even be digested. When Winston Churchill rallied public opinion to stay the course against Hitlers Germany, he didnt have to contend with a gaggle of mentators
16、 raising doubts about whether he was reading public opinion right, or whether Britain had the stamina to see the war through. When President Kennedy rallied the nation in the Cuban missile crisis, his address to the people was not chewed over by a roundtable of critics who disparaged the course of a
17、ction hed asked America to follow. The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every Presidential 第 6 页 address, but, more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the grea
18、t issues in our nation. First, lets define that power. At least 40 million Americans every night, its estimated, watch the network news. Seven million of them view A.B.C., the remainder being divided between N.B.C. and C.B.S. According to Harris polls and other studies, for millions of Americans the
19、 networks are the sole source of national and world news. In Will Rogers observation, what you knew was what you read in the newspaper. Today for growing millions of Americans, its what they see and hear on their television sets. Now how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numberi
20、ng perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, mentators, and executive producers, settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film and mentary thats to reach the public. This selection is made from the 90 to 180 minutes that may be available. Their powers of choice are broad. 第 7 页 They decide what 40 to 50 mi
21、llion Americans will learn of the days events in the nation and in the world. We cannot measure this power and influence by the traditional democratic standards, for these men can create national issues overnight. They can make or break by their coverage and mentary a moratorium on the war. They can
22、 elevate men from obscurity to national prominence within a week. They can reward some politicians with national exposure and ignore others. For millions of Americans the network reporter who covers a continuing issue - like the ABM or civil rights - bees, in effect, the presiding judge in a nationa
23、l trial by jury. It must be recognized that the networks have made important contributions to the national knowledge - through news, documentaries, and specials. They have often used their power constructively and creatively to awaken the public conscience to critical problems. The networks made hun
24、ger and black lung disease national 第 8 页 issues overnight. The TV networks have done what no other medium could have done in terms of dramatizing the horrors of war. The networks have tackled our most difficult social problems with a directness and an immediacy thats the gift of their medium. They
25、focus the nations attention on its environmental abuses - on pollution in the Great Lakes and the threatened ecology of the Everglades. But it was also the networks that elevated Stokely Carmichael and George Lincoln Rockwell from obscurity to national prominence. Nor is their power confined to the
26、substantive. A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a Government policy. One Federal Communications Commissioner considers the powers of the netwo
27、rks equal to that of local, state, and Federal Governments all bined. Certainly it represents a concentration of power over American public opin 第 9 页 ion unknown in history. Now what do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation kn
28、ows practically nothing. Of the mentators, most Americans know little other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence seemingly well-informed on every important matter. We do know that to a man these mentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of W
29、ashington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Reston terms the most unrepresentative munity in the entire United States. Both munities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their political and social v
30、iews from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints. Do they allow their biases to influence the selection and presentation of the news? 第 10 页 David Brinkley states objectivity is impossible to normal human be
31、havior. Rather, he says, we should strive for fairness. Another anchorman on a network news show contends, and I quote: “You cant expunge all your private convictions just because you sit in a seat like this and a camera starts to stare at you. I think your program has to reflect what your basic fee
32、lings are. Ill plead guilty to that.” Less than a week before the 1968 election, this same mentator charged that President Nixons campaign mitments were no more durable than campaign balloons. He claimed that, were it not for the fear of hostile reaction, Richard Nixon would be giving into, and I qu
33、ote him exactly, “his natural instinct to smash the enemy with a club or go after him with a meat axe.” Had this slander been made by one political candidate about another, it would have been dismissed by most mentators as a partisan attack. But this attack emanated from the privileged sanctuary o 第
34、 11 页 f a network studio and therefore had the apparent dignity of an objective statement. The American people would rightly not tolerate this concentration of power in Government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny, enclosed fraternity of privileged men
35、 elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by Government? The views of the majority of this fraternity do not - and I repeat, not - represent the views of America. That is why such a great gulf existed between how the nation received the Presidents address and how the network
36、s reviewed it. Not only did the country receive the Presidents speech more warmly than the networks, but so also did the Congress of the United States. Yesterday, the President was notified that 300 individual Congressmen and 50 Senators of both parties had endorsed his efforts for peace. As with ot
37、her American institutions, perhaps it is time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the 第 12 页 nation and more responsible to the people they serve. Now I want to make myself perfectly clear. Im not asking for Government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking w
38、hether a form of censorship already exists when the news that 40 million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and is filtered through a handful of mentators who admit to their own set of biases. The question Im raising here toni
39、ght should have been raised by others long ago. They should have been raised by those Americans who have traditionally considered the preservation of freedom of speech and freedom of the press their special provinces of responsibility. They should have been raised by those Americans who share the vi
40、ew of the late Justice Learned Hand that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. Advocates 第 13 页 for the networks have claimed a First Amendment right to the same unlimited freedoms held by the great newspapers
41、 of America. But the situations are not identical. Where The New York Times reaches 800,000 people, N.B.C. reaches 20 times that number on its evening news. The average weekday circulation of the Times in October was 1,012,367; the average Sunday circulation was 1,523,558. Nor can the tremendous imp
42、act of seeing television film and hearing mentary be pared with reading the printed page. A decade ago, before the network news acquired such dominance over public opinion, Walter Lippman spoke to the issue. He said theres an essential and radical difference between television and printing. The thre
43、e or four peting television stations control virtually all that can be received over the air by ordinary television sets. But besides the mass circulation dailies, there are weeklies, monthlies, out-of-town newspapers and books. If a man doesnt like his newspaper, he can read another from out of tow
44、n or wait 第 14 页 for a weekly news magazine. Its not ideal, but its infinitely better than the situation in television. There, if a man doesnt like what the networks are showing, all he can do is turn them off and listen to a phonograph. “Networks,“ he stated “which are few in number have a virtual
45、monopoly of a whole media of munications.“ The newspaper of mass circulation have no monopoly on the medium of print. Now a virtual monopoly of a whole medium of munication is not something that democratic people should blindly ignore. And we are not going to cut off our television sets and listen t
46、o the phonograph just because the airways belong to the networks. They dont. They belong to the people. As Justice Byron wrote in his landmark opinion six months ago, “Its the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.“ Now its argued that this power p
47、resents no danger in the hands of those 第 15 页 who have used it responsibly. But as to whether or not the networks have abused the power they enjoy, let us call as our first witness, former Vice President Humphrey and the city of Chicago. According to Theodore White, televisions intercutting of the
48、film from the streets of Chicago with the “current proceedings on the floor of the convention created the most striking and false political picture of 1968 - the nomination of a man for the American Presidency by the brutality and violence of merciless police.“ If we are to believe a recent report o
49、f the House of Representative Commerce Committee, then televisions presentation of the violence in the streets worked an injustice on the reputation of the Chicago police. According to the mittee findings, one network in particular presented, and I quote, “a one-sided picture which in large measure exonerates the demonstrators and protestors.” Film of provocations of police that was available never saw the light of day, while the film of a police response which the protestors provoked was shown to millions. 第 16 页 Another network showed virt