[Johnson's] speech on the role of new electronic media in American life and politics, ... significantly pointed to broadcasting as an instrument of political activism, an interpretation not previously shared by most Americans who considered the medium essentially as an entertainment.(Tip of the Cowboy hat to David Axelrod whose recent requests prompted me to look back at more
Heffner's Documentary provides truncated versions of almost all of the documents. The full text of Johnson's remarks to the National Association of Broadcasters is here. And it is from that site I've cobbled together what, to me, are the most telling passages.
But the real problem of informing the people is still with us. ...
How does a public leader find just the right word or the right way to say no more or no less than he means to say--bearing in mind that anything he says may topple governments and may involve the lives of innocent men?
How does that leader speak the right phrase, in the right way, under the right conditions, to suit the accuracies and contingencies of the moment when he is discussing questions of policy, so that he does not stir a thousand misinterpretations and leave the wrong connotation or impression?
How does he reach the immediate audience and how does he communicate with the millions of others who are out there listening from afar?
The President, who must call his people and summon them to meet their responsibilities as citizens in a hard and an enduring war, often ponders these questions and searches for the right course.
You men and women who are masters of the broadcast media surely must know what I am talking about. It was a long time ago when a President once said, "The printing press is the most powerful weapon with which man has ever armed himself." In our age, the electronic media have added immeasurably to man's power. You have within your hands the means to make our Nation as intimate and as informed as a New England town meeting.
Yet the use of broadcasting has not cleared away all of the problems that we still have of communications. In some ways, I think, sometimes it has complicated them, because it tends to put the leader in a time capsule. It requires him often to abbreviate what he has to say. Too often, it may catch a random phrase from his rather lengthy discourse and project it as the whole story.
How many men, I wonder, Mayor Daley, in public life have watched themselves on a TV newscast and then been tempted to exclaim, "Can that really be me?"
Well, there is no denying it: You of the broadcast industry have enormous power in your hands.
