Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (17 page)

For further enlightenment I checked the
NBC Code of Radio and Television Broadcast Standards and Practices
(in which, needless to say, the word “censorship” nowhere occurs). Broadcasting, the booklet says, “brings a vivid world of fact and fancy into the privacy of scores of millions of individual homes. To this unique opportunity is linked unique responsibility.” The codified standards “are intended to serve not as a strait-jacket but as a set of guidelines and principles which need never hinder genuine creativity.” In the section on entertainment programs, it is affirmed that “the proper application of these standards should not preclude the presentation of programs of genuine artistic or literary merit dealing with valid moral and social issues even though they may be challenging or controversial, or present realities which some people might wish did not exist.” So far so good. These ringing declarations about responsibility, valid moral and social issues, could indeed have been written to order as specifications for just such a drama as Mr. Neuman’s two-part play.

The gray area in which the program foundered would appear to be defined in this thought-provoking clause: “The criterion used in reviewing programs is whether they would be regarded as acceptable in subject matter and treatment by a normal viewer under normal circumstances.” The mind boggles at the thought of applying such a criterion. Is the normal viewer a Midwest businessman, a Southern farmer, a New York mechanic? Or is it a girl—a Mormon housewife, a black teacher, a Catholic beauty operator? Is he unemployed, is she on strike? Is he in debt, is she in analysis? Is he getting on well with the boss, is she getting on badly with the children? There are no given data; therefore the additional burden of deciding whether a program “would be regarded as acceptable in subject matter and treatment” by the normal viewer under normal circumstances would be enough to unstring the best of minds. Little wonder that, as Mr. Kasmire said, “Our judgment was on the side of caution.”

Emerging from the gray area into the sunlit world of actual people, I went on a brief and unsuccessful search for a normal person under normal circumstances who would object to the subject of venereal disease being brought to the attention of teenagers. I started at a large and homogeneous California public school, Oakland Technical High. Mr. Jack Borum, the principal, told me that a Kansas State Health Department film called “The Innocent Party” is regularly shown to mixed classes of students and is followed by questions and discussion. The film is a fictionalized episode about a high-school boy who becomes infected with syphilis—very much like “The Rich Who Are Poor.” Before the film is shown, notes are sent home to the parents explaining the subject matter and making it clear that attendance is optional. Never, ever, in all his years as principal, said Mr. Borum, has any parent objected or asked that his child be excused from seeing the film. Never, ever has any student objected. In fact the Parent-Teachers Association, both nationally and locally, is pressing for more extensive education in venereal disease.

In nearby Berkeley, California, state health educators who work year in and year out with the schools on V.D. education were also hard put to it to recall a case of protest against this type of instruction. Dr. Warren Ketterer, head of the venereal disease section, did remember that a couple of years ago in Marin County one P.-T.A. lady seemed to think it is a pity to reveal that venereal disease can easily be cured, as this may encourage promiscuity; but he did not consider her viewpoint either representative or particularly “normal.” Mr. James Lovegren, health education consultant, described a number of educational talks given by his colleagues over local television stations. He said these stations have received many commendations and
no
protests. In his own travels he has run into school administrators who are reluctant to show the V.D. films for fear there may be some complaints; but, like Mr. Borum, he could cite no actual instance of parental objection. He even offered to telephone down to his colleagues in Los Angeles (a city regarded by all loyal Northern Californians as a reservoir of nuttiness) in the hopes of there uncovering a live and kicking objecting parent, but the Los Angeles health workers were also unable to furnish examples. Interestingly enough, Mr. Lovegren said that while there is a vocal minority of parents who strongly oppose sex education in schools, even this group has not expressed opposition to V.D. education. “Apparently they feel sex education as such belongs in the family, but that it’s all right for the schools to teach the objective facts about a disease,” he said.

Six months after Neuman’s plays were banned, American Broadcasting Company (perhaps reacting to public indignation over NBC’s action) presented a half-hour documentary called “VD Epidemic!” over ABC-SCOPE, a network program. The documentary contains far stronger stuff than Mr. Neuman’s script, and it is prefaced with an appeal to parents to let their children watch because “the hugest rise of V.D. is among teen-agers.” Actual V.D. patients tell their stories on the screen: an attractive woman graduate student who picked up V.D. in Italy (“I would have absolutely no idea how to say ‘syphilis’ in Italian”) and who defends her own free-and-easy sexual mores, a married man who has infected his wife, a high-school student who started having sexual intercourse with girls at the age of eight. The even trickier point is then made that V.D. among homosexuals has risen to undreamt-of proportions, that their treatment is further hampered by ignorance, taboos, prejudice. I asked the producer of this documentary, Mr. Gordon Thomas, how it had been received and whether there had been much adverse reaction. He said that to his astonishment the program, which is not on prime time, attracted seven and a half million viewers, compared to an average two and a half million who generally watch ABC-SCOPE. Newspaper comment and letters to the network were uniformly laudatory, he said; and not a single complaint was received: “Our publicity people have so far been unable to turn up any evidence of moral—or should I say immoral—indignation.”

If the primary goal of broadcasting is to avoid giving offense, it seems reasonably certain that the NBC policymakers misread the signs and portents in the case of “The Rich Who Are Poor.” The plays, far from offending anybody, would more likely have been warmly welcomed as an important contribution to the public welfare.

But according to the M-G-M producers in Hollywood, the sad fate of Neuman’s plays is typical of the panicky response of the networks to current widespread criticism of television. The networks feel threatened on all sides: by legislative investigating committees and above all by the viewers whose likes and dislikes are supposedly reflected in the Nielsen ratings.

Neuman recalled that a few years ago the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission lambasted television as a wasteland of sex and violence. “This got all the broadcasters very nervous. In stupid panic a ‘no violence’ command went out from the Programming Departments to all writers and producers. It’s ridiculous to ban violence per se—that’s why we have this watered-down situation. Violence occurs in all drama and all literature from Shakespeare to Hemingway.” Of the Nielsen ratings he said, “They are a lobotomy on the American public. The rating system is inaccurate, but it’s a folly adhered to by all. Excellent shows like
The Defenders
are being replaced by ridiculous and imitative comedy and drama.”

The easiest path for writer and producer, said Leonard Freeman, is simply to avoid any subject that might conceivably stir up fears in the network management. “The gray area leads to mental paralysis. For instance, according to the code, suicide is
verboten
if the intent is to show suicide as a solution to problems. It’s easier for the man who above all wants to avoid trouble to turn down any reference to suicide in his productions on the ground it’s against the code. A loose interpretation of the code can keep a subject matter locked up indefinitely. Gray area? It’s more of a miasma.” He said that the point of view of the creative workers who write and produce the programs and that of the network’s Programming Department don’t seem to match, they have different objectives: “Let’s face it, commercial television is designed to sell products. It’s a fact of life. No salesman wants to make the prospect angry. In the case of “The Rich Who Are Poor’ it was evidently felt that someone, somewhere, might not like it, might not be too receptive at the commercial break.” However, he added, “We all go into this game with the rules afore spelled out, knowing that the final say-so of programming is in the hands of the network. Those are the Marquis of Queensberry rules of this particular game.”

The type of programming that results from the gingerly approach of the networks to the television audience is best summed up in the gloomy words of Paul A. Porter, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Speaking this year at the annual Peabody Television Awards luncheon, he said, “Some of the Peabody judges were tempted to take a sabbatical and not make any awards this year. A dreary sameness and deadly conformity seem to dominate the airwaves.” A sentiment which, notwithstanding the corporate omniscience of NBC, will doubtless be echoed by many a normal viewer under normal circumstances.

COMMENT

The idea for this article was proposed by Vivian Cadden, an editor at
McCall’s
, who wrote: “I don’t know whether you happened to notice the stories about the ‘Mr. Novak’ and ‘Dr. Kildare’ programs on venereal disease that were planned, researched, written—and then suddenly canceled by the NBC network. The enclosed news clippings summarize the whole business. We’d like to have a story on how it all happened—from beginning to end, in the hope of illuminating some of the paradoxes, complexity and I think humor of the situation....”

At first I was somewhat reluctant to take it on because the story had been covered in great detail, and the principals quoted at length, in newspapers and news weeklies, many of which had also run editorials blasting the network for its chicken-hearted about-face—so what was left for me to do? The editor had mentioned “paradoxes, complexity, humor.” When I spotted in one of the news clippings that Robert D. Kasmire, spokesman for NBC, went by the Orwellesque title of “Vice-President of Corporate Information,” I decided to have a try.

By the time I went to work on this article, I had already learned a fair amount about interviewing, and had developed certain techniques in the course of preparing
The American Way of Death
, published two years earlier. Accordingly, I plotted the sequence of my interviews with care: starting with the Friendly Witnesses, I set out to learn all I could about the program’s origins and the circumstances of its cancellation before tackling my main target, the Veep of Corporate Info., who I hoped would furnish the icing on the cake.

From the news clippings I compiled a list of Friendlies—the Surgeon General, public health educators, school principals—to whom I wrote, and who eagerly plied me with more facts about symptoms and incidence of syphilis than I wanted to know. Needless to say, friendliest of all were the television writers who had spent close to a year researching their subject and developing their scripts, and who were ripe for sweet revenge against their network bosses.

Having acquired from the Friendlies an impressive stockpile of ammunition, I was ready to confront Mr. Kasmire. His Corporate Information was all I had hoped for, a steady stream of meaningless verbiage delivered in a studiedly obliging manner—he was at my service, he seemed to say, only too anxious to clarify the whole incident to my satisfaction. He was, I thought, about perfect for his job: master of the evasive answer, of the diplomatic lapse of memory as to who among his superiors had said what (if anything), of Corporate phrases such as “gray area” which I particularly liked. His reluctant yet long-winded comments were, as I had suspected they would be, the high point of the article.

The investigative reporter will often come up against some variant of Mr. Kasmire—the corporate spokesman, no matter what his title, who is there to act as a buffer between his bosses and the press. The role of such a person is to doggedly sidetrack the conversation, the role of the reporter to ever more doggedly stick to the points he wishes to develop. Thus the interview becomes an exercise in thrust and parry, requiring a degree of nerve and determination on both sides. In this case, who won? I think Mr. Kasmire scored at least one important point: my failure to press for the names of the other four network executives who participated in the decision to ban the program. Even if they had refused to talk to me and divulge their reasons, it would have been nice to list them in the piece and thus to publicize their pusillanimous role.

My one effort to go over Mr. Kasmire’s head was firmly rebuffed. I wrote to Mr. Walter D. Scott, whose even weightier title was Executive Vice-President in Charge of the Television Network, asking for elaboration of the reasons given by Mr. Kasmire for cancellation of the program; predictably, his secretary answered that Mr. Scott was “out of the country on an extended trip.” Very sensible of him, I thought; with Mr. Kasmire as a mouthpiece, who would want to compete?

Looking at the piece as a whole, I see it gets off to a rather slow start, probably because I was trying to lure
McCall’s
readers gently into a subject that they (no less than the NBC network) might find unpalatable, through the device of quoting the views of Eminent Respectables like Dr. Parran and General Hugh S. Johnson.

I had some difficulty coping with the script of “The Rich Who Are Poor,” which I thought atrociously sophomoric. I could not bring myself to endorse it as an example of good playwriting. Not wishing to give offense to the authors—or to detract from their undeniably sincere, crusading efforts—I compromised by characterizing it as “innocuous in the extreme, relying as it does on the tried-and-true formulas of this sort of television play.”

As in the case of “ ‘Something to Offend Everyone,’ ” some of the best copy in the piece was mined from the confidential inter-office memorandum from the Broadcast Standards Department slipped to me by the vengeful scriptwriters. I sometimes dream of compiling a whole book of such memoranda, if one could only get access to them. Who knows to what extent these deplorable Standards people have succeeded in watering down and emasculating the movies and TV programs that we, the audience, pay to see? What manner of people are they—dirty old men? Clean-cut young women? Or some combination? What do they do for recreation—jogging? Group sex? Transcendental meditation? I should love to know, and if somebody out there should decide to write a book about them I would be first in line to buy it.