s~a t in Eighty years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan The ethics of a newspaper 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1971 NIGHT EDITOR: DAVE CHUDWINI t The dignity of the fast A BURST of tactical imagination by a group of faculty members, set against the inner turmoil and fledgling organi- zation of local radicals in past months, has brought a visible ray of hope to potential activists around campus. The fast in protest of military a n d classified research has grown precipi- tously, both in size and visibility, in the two weeks since the idea was first init- iated. THE MOOD of campuses this year has generally been complacent, cynical and even resigned. Nevertheless, the is- sues which held the potential to raise consciousness and effect participation have been consistently drowned under a morass of disorganization. The Radical Independent Party, for instance, brought forth a small follow- ing on the first day of the party's con- vention. In the midst of chaotic dis- agreement, emotional appeals to abandon the party and a constant failure to agree . on the semantics of many of the party's positions, the number of supporters dwindled noticeably every few hours, and has not increased much since. Nixonisms zp'E FOLLOWING, are excerpts from an interview President Nixon gave to C. L. Sulzberger, New York Times foreign af- fairs columnist: "I can assure you that my words are those of a devoted pacifist. My very hard- est job is to give out posthumous Medals of Honor. . We must not forget our alliances or our interests. Other nations must know that the United States has both the capa-' bility and the will to defend these allies and protect these interests ... I am a strong Navy man myself. I be- lieve in a strong conventional navy, which helps us to play a peace-keeping role in such areas, for example, as Latin Amer- ica.. I have more confidence in our people than in the Establishment. The people seem to see the problem in simple terms: 'By golly, we have to do the right thing'. I am certain a Gallup poll would show that the great majority of the people would want to pull out of Vietnam. But a Gallup poll would also show that a great majority of the people would want tol pull three or more divisions out of Europe. And it would also show that a great majority of the people would cut our defense budget. Polls are not the answer. You must look at the facts." -THE NEW YORK TIMES March 10 Editorial Staff The attempts to generate mass action after the Laos invasion were also a dismal failure. An ad hoc group of leaders drew up a list of six demands. Some were tan- gental to the war, one called for a 24 hour day-care center and still another asked for student control of the Course Mart program. The effort encountered difficulty because the issues were too di- verse to sustain unified support. The organizers of the fast, by limiting the scope of their demands to only war research, have increased the chance that their movement will endure. Moreover, of commitment, and as such can bring a fast involves an unquestionable degree back the dignity the movement has lost, a dignity which is essential if it is to grow. For a fast entails a tremendous loss of energy, a gnawing at the stomach and often dizzy spells. Thus, opponents can- not simply shrug, as they have at de- monstration-type tactics, and say "oh, wou're just having a good time with a bunch of friends. That's why you protest." One professor, for instance, who fav- ors the research, commented "well, over and above anything, I certainly have to have respect for their conviction." YET IT IS important not only to raise consciousness of those who are still wavering on the war or who support it, but also the many who have been mili- tantly anti-war since 1964 - and in the seven years since have mellowed, often becoming embittered and cynical. T h e guilt of sincere anti-war people who are downing roast beef sandwiches during the fast is likely to come to the fore. Per- haps it will bring them back to the ac- tivism. It is easy to rationalize not participat- ing in a march. They aren't effective, and we tick off the examples of both hands. It is easy to rationalize not participating in petition gathering. "Not effective" is the cry. Yet it isn't as easy to rationalize. not fasting. The act is visible, it is non-vio- lent, it entails sacrifice. And it is more difficult for the opposition to' discount than mass marches or building seizures, often institutionalized cliches. WHILE THE future of the fast is open to question, it is important that, at least in Ann Arbor, a nucleus for unity and effective action has been put forth. In fact, with support for President Nix- on's Vietnam policies falling sharply (ac- cording to a recent Harris poll) there is an unusual opportunity to spread the Ann Arbor tactics nationwide. With the weather turning warmer, the possibility of mobilizing large groups of people is substantially enhanced. T h e thought, for instance, that 10,000 com- mitted people would mass in Washing- ton's Lafayette Park to begin a long fast is enticing and exciting. Perhaps the gov- ernment and the public would take notice if their children were carried off in am- bulances, faint from hunger, rather than in police paddy wagons. By STEVEN JENNINGS (Reprinted with permission from the Oberlin Review.) A LTHOUGH Vice President Ag- new's vituperations last year drew considerable attention to the media and their role in America, it is a fair guess that many Amer- icans tend to take their news sources for granted. Few, if any, of the members of our predominately urban society, beset by the problems of making a living and retaining a measure of sanity in the process, have the time or energy to take an active interest, much less participate in job of giving events an intelligible public affairs or in the subtle shape fit to print on page one of the Times. Rarely, except in times of a Vice President's rage, do we call to task the quality of the news we hear or read. The front page of a major newspaper has a certain air of authority about it; if pap- ers across the country ran a ban- ner headline "Dog Bites Man," then the event becomes, in effect, the top news story of the day. The tendency to take the media, specifically newspapers, for grant- ed as final authorities for news combines with other peculiarly American attitudes in forming a rather contradictory mind set to- ward newspapers. We ; all know that newspapers are business en- terprises, yet often lose sight of the fact. Part of the reason may be that a free press is venerated in the Bill of Rights as one of the public institutions indispensible to the operation of democracy as we know it. But the press, although it is both a businessand a public institu- tion, is not comparable to "any other business or institution. It is not a business pure and simple. partly because the product is re- gularly sold below cost, but chiefly because the community applies, one ethical measure to the press and another to trade or manufac- turer. "Ethically a newspaper is judged as if it were a church or a school. But if you try to compare it with these you fail; the taxpayer pays for the public school, the private school is endowed or supported by tuition fees, there are subsidies (tax exemptions), and collections Le Figaro are entitled to run their newspaper as they see fit, which includes the right to fire (or hire) an editor-in-chief. We are living in a capitalist society are we not?" The staff replied by striking for one day - a short time which had an enormous impact on the upper class Parisian buying pub- lic. Except for the Nazi Occupa- tion, Le Figaro had not missed a day of publication for 102 years. "The time is over," one Figaro writer insisted heatedly, "when a newspaper owner can buy a paper in the same way as a nineteenth- century entrepreneur bought a boat with its consignment of slav- es." THE ATMOSPHERE in France has been singularly conducive for control of newspapers by journal- ists. All newspapers that continued publishing during the Occupation were branded as collaborationists and, were seized by the Free French government after Libera- tion. The confiscated property of such newspapers was given to non- collaborationist journalists a n d businessmen with the idea that only when free from the Influenc- es of government and private sources of capital can the press be truly free to carry out its public trust. Prouvost. for in- stance. was denied control of Le Figaro's editorial policy by both Gaullists and the left since he par- ticipated briefly in the V i c h y regime. In 1967 a French Federation of Journalists' Societies was formed to promote the press as;a cultural medium, not an instrument of commercial gain. IN WEST Germany as in Prance journalists are gaining' control over their profession. In May 1969 the staff of Der Stern struck to gain, not a share of ownership, but absolute control over the de- termination of editorial policy, edi- torial personnel, and the right to veto a change in the ownership of the enterprise. At Der Spiegel, another German news magazine, owner Rudolph Augstein granted staffers a share of ownership ris- ing to 50 per cent over the next few years, a voice in.management. In the U.S. there is at present no strong movement towards the models of Le Monde or Le Figaro as yet. We do observe, however, an increase in professional aware- ness among American journalists. Several professional critical re- views, such as the Chicago Jour- nalism Review and The Unsatis- fied Man in Colorado, have begun publication fairly recently. '4 Reproducing the product t for the church," writes Walter Lippman in his Public Opinion. ANOTHER PROBLEM inherent in the free enterprise system of capitalism under which newspap- ers are produced is that news is treated like any other commodity -it is manufactured, marketed and retailed. Generally the Amer- ican belief "that truth is not earn- ed, but inspired, revealed, supplied gratis, comes out very plainly in our economic prejudices as read- ers of newspapers. We expect thetnewspaper to serve us' with truth however un- ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ Editor -TONY ;SCHWARTZ . JAMES WECHSLER Harris Poll: Labor's ranks file leftward T IS TIME some elder statesmen of organized labor were introduced to their members. The moment has also come for certain political analysts to revise their estimate of the "conservative tide" allegedly sweeping through union halls. These remarks are suggested by a Lou Harris poll published in this newspaper yesterday. Granting a reasonable margin of error in any survey, the Harris findings clearly undermine many widely accepted stereotypes. The most dramatic phase of the Harris report concerns the attitudes of unionists toward the Vietnam war. But that is only one aspect of a generally revealing report. THROUGHOUT THE JOHNSON and Nixon years, the AFL-CIO high command has periodically assembled to ratify and even acclaim the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Very recently, at one executive council session in Miami, the same scene was reenacted (with Jerry Wurf, leader of the State, County and Municipal Employees, reportedly the only recorded dissenter). George Meany, while blasting Mr. Nixon's economic policies, once again gave him "good marks" for his foreign policy exercises. Some correspondents covering the event transmitted the word that George McGovern had been virtually blacklisted as a prospective Democratic nominee because of his antiwar stand while Sen. Henry Jackson, a dedi- cated hawk, received highly favorable comment for second if not first place on the Democratic ticket. Now comes Mr. Harris with the news that, among a cross-section of trade unionists whom he polled, the vote for total withdrawal of American forces by the end of this year-as projected by the McGovern-Hatfield amendment-was 64-27 per cent, with the remaining 9 per cent un- decided. Thus the myth of pro-war solidarity-long cultivated by both Mr. Nixon and his predecessor-has been finally and rudely shattered. The polls are also likely to induce troubled men who have remained cautiously aloof from the war issue to break their long silences. There have been, of course, some who have hitherto been willing to speak out, as Wurf did recently; Pat Gorman of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters, Jack Potofsky of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Leonard Woodcock, the new UAW leader, and Frank Fitzsimmons of the Teamsters have fre- quently identified themselves with antiwar utterances, along with such mavericks as Cesar Chavez, Victor Gotbaum, Leon Davis and David Liv- ingston and many local officers. But their voices have been largely blanketed or minimized by the predominant tendency in the loftier AFL-CIO echelons to "go along with George" or at least refrain from active disaffection. And many sophisti- cated opposition politicians have bowed to the fiction of the monolith. THE PORTRAIT of Mr. Blue-Collar Unionist as the new pillar of conservatism is sharply challenged in other areas of the Harris poll. Labor's rank-and-file has often been depicted as especially responsive to the "law-and-order" issue and extremist legislation in that field. How- ever, by 50 to 37 per cent, unionists polled were opposed to Attorney General Mitchell's "preventive detention" formula; by a margin of 53- 30 per cent they condemned "hardhat" violence against student demon- strators. And by 58-33 they affirmed their support for the Supreme Court's school desegregation decision. In another context the unionists supported -by 49-35 per cent-the imposition of price-wage controls. COINCIDENT WITH the release of Harris' survey, the Wall Street Journal published a detailed portrait of "The Young Challengers" emerg- ing in the Steelworkers Union. At the moment they are preoccupied with the forthcoming steel negotiations, but in larger terms they sound, as the Journal noted, remarkably like "today's college students fighting for profitable the truth may be." How can we expect a publisher, in a capitalist context, to publish con- sistently the unadorned mundane truth and consequently cut his own financial throat? Therein lies the dilemma. In the free enterprise model a large number of competitors vie for their share of the market by pro- ducing the best at the lowest cost. What is the "best" news is a moot question; a journalist may say that in-depth, broad, and fairly objective coverage characterizes good news, while a business man- ager, regarding news as a com- modity for sale, may say that news which sells best, and costs the least to "produce," is the best news. AN ADDITIONAL complication is that newspapers sell more than public affairs news, society gossip, fashion, Ann Landers, and comics. This leads, one to conclude that the buying public, the essential asset of any paper's financial existence, is at least interested in things oth- er than news, in its newspapers, and at worst, is interested in other things at the expense of news. At this point those who hold the view that in the American eco- nomic system a free press is the best way of keeping the enlight- ened public enlightened may be experiencing serious doubts. If so they are not alone in their doubt. From a financial point of v i e w many publishers are feeling con- straints and contradictions inher- ent in these circumstances. In the last thirty years or so the number of daily papers has dropped by about 30 per cent, a possible in- dication that the old free enter- prise model may not be operable. Also within the last year, Con- gress enacted the Newspaper Pre- servation Act which exempts newspapers from such anti-trust law violations as profit pooling and price fixing. These practices were found to be fairly widespread, throughout the country. Publishers lobbied for the Act using as their main rationale that without price- fixing and profit pooling they would not be able to continue pub- lication. IF THE above has raised enough doubts as to whether the model current in the U.S. for news- paper ownership and operation is the best for supplying the people with the information they need to make intelligent decisions w i t h regard to public affairs, then the next step is, of course, to find al- ternative models.' Several papers in W e s t e r n Europe operate under circum- stances quite different from those in the U.S. Le Monde, the pres- tigious Paris daily, has been col- lectively owned and administered since 1951. In 1968 the Corpora- tion 'of Journalists of Le Monde, which includes the entire editorial staff, increased its holdings in the paper from 28 per cent to 40 per cent, leaving 29 per cent for the executive, administrative' and general staffs, and 40 per cent for the publishers. Editorial and gen- eral policies are determined by a council representing all the above groups. At the conservative Le Figaro, the editorial staff has enjoyed the power to determine all major deci- sions affecting the paper since 1950. The journalists did not seek part, ownership, but demanded control over the areas in which their professional responsibilities lie, editorial policy, accuracy of re- porting, and an articulate pre- sentation of a right of center poli- tical position. This power was threatened in May 1969 a when publisher-owner Jean Prouvost, over the editorial staff's protests, wanted to succeed the late Henri Brisson as editor- in-chief. One Prouvost underling held that "the legal owners of t i L t r THE LESSONS for American journalists are many. One is that it is not unthinkable for journal- ists, those primarily responsible for the intellectual and profes- sional quality of a newspaper, to 'W gain real control in the area of their competence. Another is that the baggage (gossip columns, so- ciety pages, etc.) present in many American papers may not be vital to the sale of the paper. Le Monde, one of the grayest, blandest look- ing papers in the world, earned l, over three million dollars last year. Finally, we should note that if big capital is the only source for financial support (other sourc- es are possible, such as endow- ments from foundations and pub- lic-spirited citizens) then editorial policy should be placed where it belongs - in the hands of t h e journalists themseleves. One Figaro reporter summed it up when he said, "A newspaper is an enterprise of public interest, not a macaroni factory." Letters*to- The Daily 1 Recruiting policy To the Daily: ALTHOUGH THE American Civil Liberties Union has issued a very clear statement indicating the dan- gers in selective exclusion of em- ployers for campus interviewing. the defenders of the attempted O. S.S. policy have seemed to unduly minimize or completely ignore the civil liberties considerations. It seems to me this "policy" is a re- vealing example of the kind of ty- ranny that results from confusing moral principles with political opinions. In this case, the Board holds up the policy of apartheid in South Africa and then proposes to deny students the opportunity of campus interviews with employers who don't accept its political opin- ion that an economic boycott is the way to deal with this evil. Now, of course, this opinion may be correct, but many responsible people don't think so, and if one should choose to take the other side of the political argument and de- mand the banning of employers who do not operate in South Africa on the basis that they are failing to fight the evil constructively on its own ground, I wonder how gracefully the O.S.S. would accept the oppression f which they would so cheerfully visit on others? I fancy we would then be treated to a recital of the civil liberties con- siderations which were so lightly dismissed at the Regent's Hearing. I see no intrinsic difference be- tween banning employers for such political reasons and banning out- side speakers for their political views. To do so in either case is to deprive students of Their constitu- tional freedom of speech and asso- ciation. - -John G. Young, Director Engineering Placement Service Feb. 24 Hanson penlty To the Daily: RE' THE EDITORIAL by Ji m Neubacher condemning the pos- sibility of a gas chamber death penalty for Manson and "fam- ily" (Daily, Jan. 27): Would that there were a slower way. 1.. ~1I -S.L. Gaudioso, Feb. 1 Grad. - h.m _ - -1