TV News Alters Public Policy

National Public Radio's Daniel Schorr told a crowded Forum last night that television journalism was dramatically altering the making of public policy in America.

Schorr, a senior news analyst, was delivering the prestigious Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center at the Kennedy School of Government.

The veteran journalist criticized how television images--which he said often fail to tell the whole story--have come to shape public opinion, which in turn affects policy decisions.

"Having said that the press uses politicians and politicians use the press in a largely symbiotic way," Schorr said, "we come to a new stage--the stage in which TV itself as technology takes control out of the hands of press and policy makers alike."

Former President George Bush's dispatching of additional U.S. troops to Somalia last November and President Clinton's sending of humanitarian aid to Bosnia are examples of television shaping politicians' opinions, Schorr said.

Schorr was also critical of the increasingly friendly relationship between his fellow journalists and public officials.

"Are we courageous scourges of the establishment or have we grown into the establishment ourselves?" Schorr asked. "Is one establishment in bed with the other?"

In 1957, Schorr interviewed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The interview was heralded at the time as ground-breaking; it was the first American television appearance by a Soviet leader.

But Schorr did not seek the interview: one of Khrushchev's representatives called him, and his appearance paved the way for the premier's historic visit to the U.S. two years later.

"Our scoop, his coup," Schorr said.

Today's politicians continue such manipulation of the national press, Schorr said.

"President Clinton has effectively hijacked television from journalists by talking over their heads--and don't think we don't get mad about it," Schorr said.

Describing television's replacement of radio and newspapers as the country's most influential journalistic medium, Schorr paraphrased essayist E.B. White.

"White spoke of the race between the things that are and the things that seem to be," Schorr said. "Today, the things that seem to be are running far ahead. I just hope that a younger generation of journalists will run hard to reclaim the things that are."