CBS President Talks To Students

CBS News President Andrew Heyward ’72 credited the explosion of cable news and the Internet with the “iPod-ization of American media”—in which viewers can actively choose what news they consume—at an intimate gathering of students and faculty in Kirkland House Monday evening.

About 30 students, along with House Masters Tom and Verena Conley, attended the speech in the Kirkland Senior Common Room, in which Heyward described the changes that had taken place in the television industry since the “heyday of network news” in the 1960s and ’70s.

“Changes in our business have really been seismic in the 25 years since then...driven by technology, the proliferation of choices in news, and frankly, the changing habits of generations, particularly your generation,” Heyward said.

He characterized the America of his college days as much more of a “common, single culture,” in which television anchors not only dictated to Americans their news, but also served as cultural icons, “knitting the country together” through turbulent times.

“Anchormen were iconic, incredibly influential characters,” Heyward said.

But during the 1980s and ’90s, he said, new sources of competition threatened the networks’ dominance in the market. He said the rise of cable has given people more choice in what they consume, “literally putting control in the hands of the viewer,” and the Internet has merely continued that revolution.

Heyward called young people today the “most empowered generation” concerning what they watch. He said that news content is “manipulated to reflect [their] needs and interests” and made available online in short clips, to be used much like an iPod playlist.

He said the challenge for news organizations like CBS is to convey the news to increasingly partisan viewers while themselves remaining ideologically neutral.

The son of a Tasmanian apple farmer, Heyward started at a local CBS station in what was meant to be a year-long stint, then gradually rose up through the network’s ranks to become president of CBS News in 1996. He is the network’s second-longest serving president.

A question from Tom Conley regarding the relationship between advertising and the news drew repeated follow-up questions from students.

Heyward acknowledged that television news is fundamentally a “profit-making business,” but maintained that advertisers themselves do not influence story selection.

“You’re not going to see an anchor swigging a Diet Coke,” he joked, drawing laughter from the audience.

At the same time, he acknowledged, there are many less “sexy” topics which are regularly under-reported, most notably education, and racial and economic disparities. Political coverage, too, is diluted by the dominance of “horserace” over “issue” coverage, he said.

He also defended network news against accusations of liberal bias. Any bias, he said, results from self-selection in the field, and journalists’ tendency to “question authority.” To counter perceptions of bias, he said news agencies need to be “overtly aggressive in seeking multiple points of view.”

Wesley J. Oliver ’08 said afterward he thought Heyward’s openness and inside knowledge was “incredibly refreshing.”

“He covered it all pretty well, and really spoke to the audience,” Oliver said.

Heyward’s daughter, Sarah G. Heyward ’06, who was in attendance, said afterward that while her father’s position does not have much effect on her daily life, it was “fun to call during major news events and get the inside scoop.”

Following his speech, Heyward told The Crimson that the most valuable skill he learned at Harvard was writing. Good writing is invaluable to critical thinking and “making thoughts coherent,” he said.