Word: halberstam
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...Halberstam says that television plus a handful of newspapers and magazines have become powerful opinion shapers in the past 20 years. TV in particular has strengthened the presidency, he feels, because it has provided Presidents with instant access to millions of citizens. Congress, created to serve as a check on presidential power, gets little air time for its views and therefore, says Halberstam, has become weaker...
Like John Kennedy, Johnson and Richard Nixon understood the might of television and tried to use it. They ultimately failed, according to Halberstam, because the one-eyed beast was just too potent. Johnson considered Walter Cronkite's call for an end to the Viet Nam War in 1968 such a setback, says Halberstam, that it solidified his resolve not to run for reelection. Nixon Subordinate John Ehrlichman, angered by CBS's abrasive White House correspondent Dan Rather, tried to have him transferred, but CBS News stood firm...
...television, Halberstam contends, is a reluctant adversary of Presidents. He has studied CBS, which he considers "the best"-and concludes that profits, more than public interest, govern programming decisions. When CBS pre-empted its regular shows to televise the 1966 Senate hearings on the Viet Nam War, the loss to the network, says Halberstam, ran to $175,000 in advertising revenue for the first day. Then CBS News Chief Fred Friendly was told by a superior that housewives had no interest in the hearings; the coverage was abruptly curtailed, and Friendly quit...
According to Halberstam, the man most interested in the bottom line is CBS Inc. Chairman William S. Paley. In the early days of TV, Paley gave his news team free rein and approved a plan to expand the evening news. But as television audiences-and the cost of advertising-grew, the inevitable drive to improve profits led Paley to increase the number of popular entertainment shows. The distinguished weekly documentary See It Now with Edward R. Murrow, for example, was often shunted from one time slot to another and finally canceled. Paley, says Halberstam, found it too controversial...
...Quarts. The Atlantic excerpts are vintage Halberstam, rich in anecdotes and exhaustively detailed. There is CBS Star Jack Benny's wife Mary Livingstone bullying a Paris correspondent to produce for her, during a holiday weekend, two quarts of the perfume that Paley's wife favored. Then there is Paley himself, coldly dismissing a close associate of 40 years who had angered him, saying, "We were never friends. You were my lawyer...