Word: almost
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Still, some of Agnew's criticisms were entirely sensible. He asked a great many questions that have troubled others about the nature and source of TV's power, its influence on America, its effects for good or ill. The speech was more professional and better drafted than almost any he has delivered -thanks to fitting in the White House speech shop. There were, for example, no such gems as "an effete corps of impudent snobs." If the prose was somewhat more finished than in some other recent Agnew performances, the tone was still truculent, occasionally intemperate and bullying...
...could be further from effete snobbery than Chet Huntley. Deeply -almost lyrically-affected by his childhood in Montana, he is quite simply puzzled and troubled about America. When he was a child in the West, he says, "Our idealisms were be kind to your neighbor. You respected your father and your mother, you exercised thrift and you saved-you saved for a rainy day." Today, "we really don't know ourselves. We haven't had time in the past 60 years to stop and get acquainted with ourselves. Our youngsters have idealisms which are somewhat grander in proportion...
Agnew's most dangerous point is that newscasters ought to reflect majority opinion, rather than their own best judgment, and that this somehow would make them objective. Almost to a man, broadcasters reject objectivity as a goal and insist that they are fair. An objective man, says David Brinkley, "would have to be put away in an institution because he's some sort of vegetable." ABC Anchor Man Frank Reynolds was quoted by Agnew as saying, "You can't expunge all your private convictions," and during the 1968 campaign charged Richard Nixon with a suppressed "natural instinct...
...ordered out on the likeliest stories. Each morning Executive Producer Wallace Westfeldt attends a meeting with the NBC news brass, including President Reuven Frank. "But no one," says Westfeldt, "ever tells us what to run or what not to run." But, of course, certain prevailing assumptions, a certain atmosphere, almost unconsciously dictate decisions. Through the day, film arriving from all over the world is run off and edited. Late breaking footage can be put on the line from one of the affiliated stations...
Despite the militant words, the mood of the crowd was almost uniformly cheerful. Eugene McCarthy had spoken at the assembly point, telling the marchers that their mission was "to light and lift the moral burdens which rest upon every American." Ahead, at the monument, were other heroes, including Rock and Folk Performers Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and some performers from Hair. There, it appeared that Police Chief Jerry Wilson's crowd estimate of 250,000 might be low. A solid, bundled carpet of humanity covered the cold, hard ground. Even at Wilson's figure, it was the biggest turnout...