Michael Socolow: Agnew speeches sparked move toward soft news
[Michael Socolow is an assistant professor in the department of communication and journalism at the University of Maine.]
It remains the most influential indictment of American journalism ever made. Forty years ago today, this famous figure began railing against the corporate media. “A broader spectrum of national opinion should be represented among the commentators of the network news,” he argued, explaining that “men who can articulate other points of view should be brought forward, and the American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.”
American democracy's perilous dependence on the corporate, capitalist media had previously been detailed. Critics such as Upton Sinclair and artists like Orson Welles had warned of the dangers posed by concentrated media power. But this critic was a national politician, and his prominence insured the wide distribution of his populist critique. This spokesman for democratic media reform was none other than the Republican vice president of the United States, Spiro Agnew.
The attacks on the media perfectly encapsulate the cynical brilliance of the Nixon administration. Scripted by Pat Buchanan and Bill Safire, and vetted by President Richard Nixon, Agnew’s speeches (there were several) began in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 13, 1969. They proved remarkably successful. Agnew appeared on the cover of Time and Life magazines, special features on his criticism aired on all three national broadcast networks, and invitations to speak to civic and community organizations flooded his office...
... The New York Times responded by implementing the OpEd page after years of internal debate. John B. Oakes, the editorial page editor of the Times who conceived the idea of the OpEd page (basing it upon a commentary page in the old New York World called the Page Op), had tried to launch the innovation for more than a decade. The publisher agreed only after the White House's criticism could no longer be ignored. Oakes later described Agnew as typical of the oppositional voices he wanted represented in the Times. The first edition of the OpEd page featured both a critical assessment of Agnew's speeches and an unflattering caricature of the vice president...
Read entire article at Bangor Daily News
It remains the most influential indictment of American journalism ever made. Forty years ago today, this famous figure began railing against the corporate media. “A broader spectrum of national opinion should be represented among the commentators of the network news,” he argued, explaining that “men who can articulate other points of view should be brought forward, and the American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.”
American democracy's perilous dependence on the corporate, capitalist media had previously been detailed. Critics such as Upton Sinclair and artists like Orson Welles had warned of the dangers posed by concentrated media power. But this critic was a national politician, and his prominence insured the wide distribution of his populist critique. This spokesman for democratic media reform was none other than the Republican vice president of the United States, Spiro Agnew.
The attacks on the media perfectly encapsulate the cynical brilliance of the Nixon administration. Scripted by Pat Buchanan and Bill Safire, and vetted by President Richard Nixon, Agnew’s speeches (there were several) began in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 13, 1969. They proved remarkably successful. Agnew appeared on the cover of Time and Life magazines, special features on his criticism aired on all three national broadcast networks, and invitations to speak to civic and community organizations flooded his office...
... The New York Times responded by implementing the OpEd page after years of internal debate. John B. Oakes, the editorial page editor of the Times who conceived the idea of the OpEd page (basing it upon a commentary page in the old New York World called the Page Op), had tried to launch the innovation for more than a decade. The publisher agreed only after the White House's criticism could no longer be ignored. Oakes later described Agnew as typical of the oppositional voices he wanted represented in the Times. The first edition of the OpEd page featured both a critical assessment of Agnew's speeches and an unflattering caricature of the vice president...