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Wednesday, November 14, 1973
University Daily Kansan
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Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Impeachability
it finally happened. He was impeached.
"The United States again faces its darkest hour," droned Eric Sevareid. "Each of us respected him in our own way. He was our national leader. For more than a decade he remembers the moment when now he is gone—impeached, convicted, removed from public life."
Conviction was obtained on charges that he had deceived the American people. He had pleaded that he didn't know about the crime. But the courts ruled that ignorance of the deception was no excuse.
"Whenever he spoke to the American people," Sevareid said, "they listened with unparalleled attention. They seemed to believe him and trust in him. But now, of course, we know they were wrong."
As a final tribute to our impeached leader's past triumphs—the trip to China, the moon landing—Sevareid closed the broadcast with one of our former leader's most famous statements:
"And that's the way it is. Men, Crickle, CBS News. Good night."
Cronkite, the leader of America's effete corps, hadn't known he was wrong. He thought he was practicing good journalistic ethics. He held a job as an investigator—constantly probing and poking at the President.
But he went too far with the Watergate affair. After the President announced the firing of special prosecutor Archbald Cox, Crickman cohort sewed the American of discontent among the American people.
With an amazing lack of factual evidence, he began rumors about an impeachment crisis, a showdown between the judiciary and the government. That such a showdown did take place does not lessen the offense. It could indicate
the degree to which Cronitek's speculation prompted the crisis.
A poll taken after Cronkite the rumor-mongering weekend showed 43 per cent of the American people favored Nixon's impeachment. That was a plurality. After Nixon spoke on television almost a week later, the percentage favoring impeachment had fallen to 28, and a clear majority now supported the President.
Nixon, in response to Cronkite's actions and those of others, issued a severe reprimand to the press. Cronkite responded with the heinemence of a candy-sealing child professing his innocence.
Cronite forgot, or neglected to mention, how newsmen had used "reliable sources"—probably themselves—to support a rumor about the bombings and stages in order to take public attention away from Watergate.
Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, British foreign secretary, this week acknowledged that Russia and America had been taken to the
Of course, the impeachment of Cronkite is impossible. No one but the networks themselves are the public's guardians over television news. Anything short of total disruption would be disastrous breech of the ideals Americans have lived and died for during the past two hundred years.
But the public and commentators should realize that newsmen are occasionally fallible, despite their attempts at objectivity. While this should not against them, it nevertheless reason for criticizing them.
newmen, although they feel duty-bound to criticize the government when they see faults, remain as sensitive as many juveniles to any criticism directed at them.
Walter, you've got your job back. But try to act more mature.
—Eric Meyer
Energy Crisis to Leave Its Mark
By LEE DYE
The Los Angeles Times
Sometime the great energy crisis of the 1970s—exemplified by the President's call to "Stop the War"—
In that distant future many of the enormous energy reserves that today are only theoretically possible will have been tapped, if some of them are correct, man will be blessed with an unlimited source of cheap, clean energy.
When that day comes, how will mankind regard the way the problem was handled in the past?
Will our successors applaud us for our long-range planning, or will they curse us for seeking and finding interim solutions at the profound expense of our planet?
The energy crisis is shaped primarily by economics, and while many will suffer as a result of the crisis, we know that it
At any rate, it seems likely that they will at least think of us often. For as long as man walks on earth, monuments of today's decisions will be around to remind him of this brief period of his sojourn through history.
It will be to the advantage of some to exaggerate the crisis; others will understand it. Perhaps the greatest challenge of all will be to separate fact from fiction amid storms of verbiage, hardship and hostilities.
"The United States is the world's great squander of natural resources. With only 6 per cent of the population, this nation uses 33 per cent of this world's energy annually. Today, these figures are catching up with what is being called upon to pay for our expenses."
THE STATUTION TODAY is staggering in its complexity and shocking in what it may mean for future generations. Consider these factors:
Most of the energy sources used today aren't renewable. In a few short decades we are using what it took nature millions of years to make, and when it is gone it will be lost forever.
The current crisis is the result of decades of mismanagement and carelessness. It isn't the result of a handful of environmental extremists, although the environmental movement undoubtedly has irritated the crisis in some areas.
—Nearly everyone misjudged the seriousness of the situation. Even the oil industry erodes. The crisis is due as much to the overreferrences as it is to a shortage of petroleum.
—This country still has a great abundance of energy resources, but generally they are less available and more expensive to exploit. As a result, many countries face the environmental hazards are here.
TO ALL OF THIS must be added the fact that many of the steps we will take in the years ahead can't be reversed. And as the nights grow colder and the shortages strike hard, there are here will be a great tendency to buy time and convenience at the expense of the future.
—Restrictions on oil imports from the Arab world probably won't end entirely with the resolution of current Middle East hostilities. Leaders of the Arab world know
geothermal power may help satisfy our electrical needs, but none of those three is expected to run our cars in the near future. We have one-fourth of the energy we use is electrical.
Today's energy crisis touches every person in the United States, and to a greater or lesser extent, nearly every person on the globe.
it all really began in 1859, when a bearded drifter named Edwin Drake set up the nation's first oil derrick on a farm near Titusville, Pa. The neighbors quickly
The energy crisis of today is staggering in its complexity and shocking in what it may mean for future generations; it touches every person in the United States and to a greater or lesser extent, nearly every person on the globe; and as a worldwide competition for oil sharpens, the fight will probably stop just short of World War Three.
it is as important to them to conserve their oil as it is to sell it, and many have made it clear they would prefer to limit their market.
—Many of the raw materials that are used to produce energy are also useful for other purposes. Oil is so valuable to the petrochemical industry, for example, that future generations probably will curse us for having burned it.
Most controls that would aid in curbing the use of energy would be devastating to the poor. A one-dollar-a-gallon tax on gasoline would limit unnecessary driving, but it would probably sideline more Volkswagens than Cadillacs.
- Although many new technologies for developing energy are on the horizon, nearly all will be limited in application. Such things as nuclear, solar and
oumet it"Drake's Fully," but they stopped laughing on Aug. 27 when the "Colonei" stuck oil at a depth of a little more than 69 feet.
Drake's discovery pushed America down the road of industrialization, and oil became a major industry.
Unfortunately, the money and the power soon exceeded the oil on many fronts, although the nation already had sunk its teeth into the good life.
THAT FORMULA SET the stage for the rise to power of men like John D. Rockefeller—a generous, God-fearing man in private life, but a fierce, ruthless businessman, whose interests at one time gripped this nation in a stranglehold.
It took the U.S. Supreme Court to break up Rockefeller's monopoly on oil in this case, but Mr. Obama has not done so.
oil companies that to this day control much of the world's oil supplies.
They discovered oil in some of the poorest areas of the Earth.
Over the years it became a fiercely competitive industry in which only the fittest—or most combative—survived. The need for the energy that oil provides grew ever greater, and the search for oil moved around the world as giant firms bought and sold small countries with their petty cash funds.
COUNTRIES LIKE VENEZUELA soon found themselves courting men of great power and wealth. But Venezuela set a get-tough policy and became the first nation in the world to win contracts with oil companies calling for an equal share in the profits.
Other countries around the world took note, recognizing that in many cases oil was their only weapon, and when it was gone, there would be nothing left.
In the meantime, the United States continued on its way, using about one-third of its space to send and receive mail.
That figure outraged other developing countries, who saw the United States as a great squanderer of natural resources. And in the worldwide sophistication of today, the countries that have the oil are beginning to wield much of the power.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait own more than half of the total known world reserves of oil, and in recent months they have both acted to use that power.
Leaders of the Arab world have warned repeatedly that they recognize that conservation of their oil is essential, and many have said they would prefer to hold sales to their own country.
And as primitive nations develop an in-
dustrial competition for oil on a wilde-
world wide scale, we need
As one oil executive put it recently, the fight for oil probably will stop just short of the oil crisis.
All of that makes domestic reserves more
All of that makes domestic reserves more
Unfortunately, somewhere along the
path to your house, you find a
path.
Study Challenges Old System
'Open' Colleges Produce Thoughtful Students
special to Newsday
Bv AMITAI ETZIONI
NEW YORK—What would happen to colleges we made them free and open to them?
Opponents of the idea often contend that its main effect would be to make the colleges like high schools—to turn them into centers of mass, low quality education. But in a different way, they could be by the findings of a massive new study of alternative educational systems.
The study asked: How do the educational systems of various nations compare in quality of education, learning achievement and success? The answer is it witnesses it received indicated that "universal" or largely open, systems of higher education produce a better-learned and more thoughtful student than those by cost or entrance requirements to a relative few.
the study, headed by Professor Torsten Husen of Sweden, covered 19 countries and took seven years to complete. It examined the causes of the plague in many Western and non-Western countries.
MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE that the
many of us think of such elitist educational systems such as West Germany's as synonymous with excellence and "high culture" (By age 18, only 1 per cent of the graduation class in West Germany, men of unskilled or semi-skilled workers.)
democratic and egalitarian values fostered by universal education are purchased by lowering standards, with consequent mediocrity.
Yet the United States' higher educational system includes many young people with much poorer educational backgrounds than students in most other countries in the Husse study. American students do surprisingly well in international competitions, U.S. students rank among the best (The top American high school group ranks higher than that of any other nations). In science, America ranks seventh out of 19, quite a decent showing for a country that keeps about 75 per cent of its youngsters in the high school — much higher percentage than in any of the other countries studied.
The findings of the Husen report clearly imply that if the American system of free education were extended to include post-secondary schooling, it would be significantly simplified. This idea is especially appealing because the high schools often seem immune to reform, and post-secondary education might accomplish missions in which the high schools have
AMONG THE MOST URGENT of these missions is the promotion of open-minded, critical thinking and tolerance of divergent viewpoints in democratic democracy. One way of making such
"ibereating education" accessible to all high school graduates, without over-stretching our resources would be to offer only two, and perhaps later three, free years of college instead of trying to start with four.
Such a program of universal post-secondary education no doubt would require a sizeable chunk of tax monies. Would the investment pay off? After all, the Coleman report showed in 1965 that extra doses of education for the underprivileged are feasible.
ALTHOUGH THE HUISEN REPORT confirms that social background is more powerful in determining a pupil's achievement than the quality of schooling he receives, it also shows that schooling does have a significant positive effect. In addition, it is achieved by teaching, and in part, by the social structure the school provides.
Thus, as women's liberation advocates would have predicted, girls from coeducational schools systematically scored better on science tests than girls from all female schools, a finding akin to the Coleman data indicating that black children do better in integrated schools than in segregated ones. So it seems that to some extent women can challenge for parts in motivating a child to translate his or her inmate talents into concrete achievements—a ringing endorsement for universal education.
The Huseen report has one more message for the designers of post-secondary education. Most schools in most countries seem better geared to serving the needs of industrialism than the needs of a humane society concerned with the quality of life. They are consistently most effective in fostering the best academic comprehension after the first years and they are least effective in cultivating and furthering a knowledge of literature.
THEIR CURRICULA are designed almost solely with this question in mind: What do the students need to know in order to fill their eventual niches in the oceanography, environmental science, or systems may turn into a tiny crop of intellectual mandarins, they are best suited for producing vast numbers of TV repairmen, assembly-line workers and homemakers. By contrast, the American system provides universal public education through a school-based curriculum and recognizes the importance of uncovering and nurturing individual talents.
In practice of course, this ideal is often not achieved. A free and open post-secondary education, especially if focused on liberal arts rather than vocational, semiprofessional and professional training, could go a long way toward bringing the American educational system to serve the evolution of a quality-of-life society.
Latest Battle Is Different in White House War Against Press
(The writer is a professor of sociology at Columbia University.)
Office of Communications Deputy Director Is Experienced Press Critic
By ROBERT C. MAYNARD
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—On his desk in the old Executive Office Building, Kenneth Clawson keeps a file at the ready as ammunition for his firing line. He has dubbed the file, "The Press Firestorm." It contains what the White House contends are examples of the "outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting" of which Press Secretary complained in his Oct. 28 press conference.
while Clawson never actually shows the file to visitors, he lectures from it, and those lectures make two things perfectly clear: The Nixon administration, besieged by mounting criticism, is fighting for its very life and (2) the press again is a primary target in a determined offensive for the credibility essential to its survival.
This offensive against the press, while similar to others the administration has mounted in its five years, is also different in important respects from its predecessors.
Unlike other Presidentially appointed press critics, Clawson is a seasoned professional journalist who made quite a reputation for himself in five years as a reporter for the Washington Post and soon coming to the Washington Post in March of 1968. He worked for the Post as an editor specializing in labor and congressional coverage, went back on the street as a national correspondent covering the Justice Department during 1972 to join the Nixon administration.
THE FIRST OF THESE is Clawson himself. As deputy director of the Office of Communications, he is calling shots in the White House war against the press as a quarterback calls in a huddle. His team, which plays White House staff buzzing in and out.
most other press-baiters in the Nixon regime. Every time Spiro Agnew had a close-up interview while he was the Administration's press critic, for example, he revealed an awesome gap in his understanding of how this business works. When Jeb Magruder and Charles Colson debated the topic of their memorandum made clear that their mendancy was exceeded only by their lack of any conceptual grasp of journalism.
CLEARLY, CLAWSON IS a different matter. So, too, is the nature and style of his offensive. With Agnew, the technique was intimidation through bombastic rhetoric that the press carried to his listeners, who, in turn, denounced the press for its "left-wing" tendency. In a 2015 interview, the technique of using administration "clout" in the hope of scaring the network silly.
This background gives him an edge over
Clawson use the normal channels and the velvet touch. He 'hustles'—his word—the
Where it's at for Ken Clawson is promoting趴利 David and David Eisenhower for NBC's "Today" show and sowing plugs in the press sections of Time and Newsweek for his contention that the media are not giving another side and not giving the administration a break.
White House story among the major media.
He calls and scolds editors for their pervacious lapses. He offers up Administration spokesmen—"everybody below the Presidential level"—as if prefering hot canapes at a cocktail party.
AND WHERE ITS AT is having in reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post and unloading his version of a story about his involvement in Firestorm file" that, to Clawson, is part of
"You'll never hear any of them' let 'fewtin liberal bias' crap from me," the Clawson says with a proud smile. "That's not where it's at."
In most other respects, the Clawson offensive is strikingly similar to previous White House efforts to bend press restrictions in order to increase the press's particular problem the press is describing.
When Clawson discusses the contents of that file, the substance of the charge that the press created the "frostmort" turn into liquid was not a difficult to keep hold of for close inspection.
the new "open" approach of the Administration.
"The Press Firestorm" file is an excellent example, both in its name and its content. To hear the name is to think that it is a news story conceptually or actually a press invention.
The conversation began with a simple request. In his Oct. 26 new conference, Nixon spoke of 'outrageous, vicious, ruthless' actions that he wanted to document that charge with examples.
bv Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
THAT IS WHEN he began reading from the "firestorm" file. He began by saying the networks overplayed the call for impairment of the President by Reps. Morris Udall, D-Ariz, and Jerome Waltie, D-Cal. Chambers' and Dana Harel have'*Chambers' demanded to know.
He was asked to classify that particular media lape. Was it "outrageous," "discoius" or "distortor"? He mulled a response. He called the Wald example fit into the "distorted" category.
As for Waldie, Clawson said, the press should also have reported the fact that he is a candidate for the governorship of California, "and he is running behind." In other words, Waldie's call for the impeachment of Nixon was no more than a grab for a headline in Clawson's view and that is how it should have been reported.
Next there was the matter of George Meany charging that Nixon was losing his emotional grip. No, Clawson did not think it was wrong to have reported that in the media After all, Meany is responsible for the Western world. But, said Clawson, Paul Hall is president of the Seafarers Union and a member of the AFL-CIO executive council and he, alone, opposed that statement. That fact wasn't reported, "outrageous" "vicious" "distortion" Well, none of this did Seafarers- more a lack of "outrage."
THEN THERE WAS the fact that CBS alone among the networks carried the entire Henry Kissinger press conference live on the day of the MidEast alert. "Perspective" again, "GOD bless CBS—you can quote me on that," said Claudia.
And so it went, back to the reporting of the Christmas bombing of 1972 over North Vietnam, forward to the coverage of Archie Cox and back to Daniel Ellsberg. All the
Clapson prides himself—and was so in Newsweek last week—on his efforts to make almost anyone of consequence in the administration available to the press.
There is one last point.
while his visitor is trying to hang on to the "press firestorm" and the substance of the charge of "outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting."
But he takes pains to outline the difficulties he understands reporters have had covering this administration in the past, and his effort off the accusation of lack of professionalism.
It scarcely adds up to a "press firestorm." The Clawson case, in fact, adds up to about as much legitimate complaint about "perspective" and "balance" as the average city hall or state house reporter might expect from the mayor's flack or the governor's P.R. man. By the end, you would have little confidence in the deepest trouble of any in our history and a president who claims to be the victim of the most "outrageous, vicarious, distorted" reporting he has ever seen in 27 years of public life.
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