Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Author:David Halberstam [Halberstam, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8609-8
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-11-28T19:39:00+00:00

14

CBS

CHARLES DE GAULLE, LIVING in a society that had one state-controlled television network, spoke for all chief executives: he used to say that all print reporters were against him, but that television, television belonged to him. It was the classic statement of a politician about journalism. Print can be too querulous, can do too much analyzing of motive, too much spreading of doubt, but broadcasting, particularly as used by the chief executivthee of the country, had none of those drawbacks; it was powerful and direct. Print responded primarily to the questions of readers; broadcast was always conscious primarily of the power and station of the public official. Which is certainly the way Jack Kennedy looked at it. If Republican politicians believed that all reporters were Democrats and thus hostile, Jack Kennedy, like most Democratic politicians—including Franklin Roosevelt—believed all publishers were conservative and thus Republican, and thus stacked against him. Kennedy cited as evidence how few papers were Democratic, how few had supported him. Television, he decided, was the balancing weapon and he told the men he appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (an area in which he had little basic interest) that the only advice he could give them was to keep the networks and the stations fair. Nor did he find very much opposition among the networks; whereas a few months ago they had withheld their favors and their courtesies, now they were eager to please. Was there a feeling at CBS that they had somewhat isolated themselves by tilting a little to Johnson? Well, they would quickly change that. Blair Clark, who had only a few years earlier been an assistant to David Schoenbrun in the CBS Paris bureau and who was a very close college friend of Jack Kennedy’s, was almost overnight made general manager of CBS News. No, Clark was assured by his superiors, this had nothing to do with his very close association with Kennedy, the job was in the works anyway. Be that as it may, right after the assassination he was moved out of it.

In truth, however, the Kennedy candidacy and presidency created a whole new balance of power. Not only was the influence of the opposition party diminished but in a far more basic way the whole balance of government was changed, with the presidency growing in power at the expense of other branches of government. It was no longer Democratic President against Republican opposition, but Presidents against all else, with partisan differences muted. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon found themselves more tied to the office than to their parties, and above all bound together by the commonality of their institutional opposition. Television, given all that potential institutional opposition, became a crucial weapon. An unwritten electronic amendment to the Constitution, one former public official called it. All this really began in the Kennedy years. It was a combination of many things: Kennedy’s own style and looks and confidence; the coming of television sets to so many homes; the vastly improving technology that

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