4
Thursday, October 7,1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page reflect the view of only the writer.
News quality hurt
Freedom of the press goes hand in hand with the obligation of the press to present news objectively and thoroughly. Although broadcasters aren't quite as free as the press, they have the same obligation. The power of the airwaves, especially television, is great indeed.
The press sometimes fails in its duties, but not so frequently as television does. Television news is, for the most part, rather shallow. Videos are obviously not, sometimes try to make the news more exciting for the viewers.
THIS CAN lead to making some events seem more out of the ordinary than they really are, or to playing up exciting stories that really aren't as important as events that are less exciting.
Half an hour is usually devoted to national news and another half hour goes to state and local news. About a third of this time goes to commercials, a necessary evil if broadcasting is to be free from government funding and the control that inevitably goes with it. Obviously, time is of the essence.
Time is a big part of the problem, because you can afford to show only so much news
OR PERHAPS it isn't so obvious. Our local newcasters all seem to think it much more important to trade a few jokes with the weather and sports commentators than to present more news.
It was bad enough when state and local news was sacrificed for such trivia. For the most part, national newcasters avoided such baloney.
John Chancellor plays it pretty close to the vest, Walter Cronkite's "and that's the way it is" takes up little time. Howard K. Smith has an editorial spot, but his comments are concise and rather informative.
UNFORTUNATELY, ABC, third among the nation's nightly news shows, has decided to go with a splashy new show called The Catfish Hunter, of television news.
Along with Harry Reasoner, Walters started this week to anchor a show that is relaxed, gimmicky and in many ways hilarious. But it isn't news. We get Harry and Barbara on a new set, backed by two new producers who bring the producers, nine new correspondents, two new senior producers and a new executive producer.
It is too bad that, at least after a couple of nights, there is no improvement in the news. We get Harry and Barbara trading opinions on a few stories from the news interviews of newsmakers, who are beamed to her side on a little screen.
THERE ISN'T time for her to deciently interview anyone, and the interviews and other unrehearsed severely cut the news that can be presented.
Perhaps ABC will get the rating points and advertising dollars they are seeking. But the people won't get the most news possible, and the inherent flaws of television news will be aggravated. It is good that one can change channels or, better yet, pick up a good newspaper.
By Greg Hack Contributing Writer
Ever since the venerable country doctors began disappearing from the rural towns and hamlets of America, the citizens of those towns have been faced with a problem. How can they cope with this practice in places most of them considered dull and provisional?
Many towns that could provide good incomes for doctors, including several in rural local medical services for too long and the residents of the towns and some state representatives are now asking hospitals to should state taxes support medical schools and bear the brunt of the cost of educating medical students when many people benefit from the investment?
Future M.D.s bleed taxpayers
THAT QUESTION gives rise to a broader one. With few exceptions, graduates of American medical schools traditionally have been assured of a secure and respected job in society. They are doled out and highly technical education also entitle them to generally lucrative incomes. Many graduates move into $25,000 to $40,000 yearly incomes during their first year of practice. The question then, is why shouldn't medical students pay most of the cost of their training in college for payers, who then have to turn around and pay costly doctors' fees?
During the Republican Convention in Kansas City this summer a former business consultant to physicians and dentists in Kansas City, Al Tikwart, proposed a plan to the human resources subcommittee of the committee. Although his plan was lost in the hubbub of the convention, it did receive some
Tikwart said his plan would provide more doctors at less public expense and also direct patients where they were sorely needed.
news coverage because it was a proposal that would generate great controversy in medical and educational circles.
HE CITED a 1973 study of medical schools that indicated
John Fuller Contributing Writer
that it costs from $61,100 to $104,000 to educate a medical student. Medical students paid $30,200 for services and fees. The taxpayer paid the rest of the tab. A medical education is clearly a good investment.
Tikwart proposed that the students' tuition be raised to $20,000 a year, which would be advanced to students as an
interest-free loan from a state-managed endowment fund. After having taken advantage of up to four years or $80,000, you should graduate could have one of several ways to repay the loan.
The graduate could just reply the loan in full, practice anywhere he pleased and the payments could be returned to the endowment fund. Or he could practice in one of the towns in western Kansas that a doctor so badly that they had worms was mad on streets advertising the fact. In return for a few year's service, the loan would be recognized as paid.
IF THE graduate chose to practice in an area of less acute need, but still one that needed doctors, then the time of service will the loan be charged off if extended, to perhaps 10 years.
endorsing this proposal, but I do think it has some merit and should be studied. Missouri Gov. Christopher Bond recently announced a program of his own that resembles Thwart's幼儿诊所. He says doctors leave rural Missouri every year, Bond proposed that the state provide loans in the form of scholarships that can be repaid by graduates by service in medically underserved areas. He also repay the loan in cash, freeing himself from the service.
I am not wholeheartedly
indenture themselves in some Siberia-like place of exile until their debts were paid. Some would charge that raising them would make the medical profession even more elitist than it is now.
Opponents of Tikwar's proposal could rightly say that if medical school tuition was $20,000 or even $10,000 could scare many prospective students away. The students with wealth backgrounds would be in a better position to receive the benefits of the poorer students would perhaps feel more pressure to
HOW WOULD the citizens of the towns that need doctors feel about getting a fresh, young and healthy patient? Five years or five years. Perhaps they would rather drive 40 or 50 miles to a town that had a doctor they liked.
There is no simple solution to this problem. Yet there must be a more equitable way to pay for medical education. And there should be a way to provide America's rural citizens with adequate local medical care. The family will bless them in the boondocks and produce the nation's food, there'll be no more exciting, fast-paced cities—their inhabitants will starve.
Political labels are myths
By PAUL ADDISON
Guest Writer
Several myths have run rampant through the recent history of American presidential sections that are more interested in the ambiguity and vagaries of the political scene.
A conservative is, by Webster's definition, opposed to change and falls into that other nebulous class, moderate.
Cosmic course misunderstood
To the Editor:
I would like to thank Dr. Stephen Shawl's letter of October 4 entitled "Cosmic Confusion" for positing out the cosmological principles in course Fundamentals of Cosmology. Although he misunderstood some of the facts, he did mention that the course was based on the state and big bang hypotheses in light of the laws of thermodynamics. He also mentioned correctly that the course was based on the supernatural creation as the only consistent conclusion.
Another misunderstanding, which resulted from his not being at the class last Thursday, gave him a course titled "catalog cosmology isn't about cosmology." In fact, our entire first class session was a historical review of cosmology. The class will now consider the cosmologies in explaining the cosmologies in explaining the origin of the universe and which
The misuse of Valium (Kansan, Sept. 28) stems from a long line of varied social drug abuses in which drugs were used for other than "strictly medical purposes." The problem isn't a new one, just an old one in a new form.
If Dr. Shawl had seen one of the posters advertising the class, or had accepted my personal interest in his letter, would have been quite different. The poster left no question as to the sponsor (KU Creationists Club) or the purpose of the class. It clearly stated that the course was a nontechnical examination of the laws of science as applied to the steady state theory, big bang hypothesis, and special relativity, along with consideration of cosmogony would be a part of the course.
answers to these questions are simple and easy. Drug misuse and abuse is clearly everybody's problem and requires the extensive attention of enforcement agencies, health professionals and law drug information groups like Headquarters.
Users careless To the Editor:
The excessive practice of
Readers Respond
But aside from the hypocrisy of society and in reference to John Fuller's editorial, the
The class was hardly a captive audience; it would more correctly be called a discussion group. I'm sure the remaining three class sessions will be no different.
is the most consistent extrapolation from known science.
In writing these things, I don't question Dr. Shawl's concern for what is taught in the field of nursing, just his information.
New medical drugs introduced today undergo extensive and rigid testing. Certain requirements must be met to insure the effectiveness and detect possible toxicities. These tests, which Valium itself causes, are used in the Food and Drug Administration and take about seven years to complete.
Thus, the validity of such a statement as "a basically
nonchallent attempt to relate the drug action to minor tranquilizers to that of manna tends to be confusing.
Daniel P. Goering Fundamentals of Cosmology, Instructor
prescribing Valium has long concerned physicians in this country. In an attempt to analyze such a complex and indept phenomena, shouldn't we look a bit further than the doctor who prescribes the drug for 'nonspecific aliments?'
harmless drug like marijuana" is questionable. It shouldn't be left up to the unqualified to determine
John Preble Coffeyville senior
Society as a whole has gotten into the habit of "taking a pill or something" to feel better. We see that individuals seek relief from "depression or anxiety and the symptoms that accompany the illness." Both conditions needed for development of character* The
More disruption To the Editor:
How funny it is that the University Events Committee would prohibit the playing of a lone guitarist, and then refuse to let the band march down Joyhawk Boulevard for the comedy show. This justifies their reasons by claiming that it will "disrupt classes." Well if the University Events Committee is so concerned with the disruption of classes, then why don't they teach in our campus? And they campus. Perhaps they should sit on in my English class in Marvin Hall. Or perhaps they should try to hear an instructor's lecture above the vacuuming in Wescoe Hall. If that isn't a disruption of classes, then I can't use idiots like these that will deprive us of our basic liberties and civil rights.
Mike Nelv
Lawrence sophomore
A LIBERAL, on the other hand, favors progress and reform in social institutions and in a free liberty of individual action.
All too often, however, a liberal is labeled a Democrat and a conservative is called a Republican. And all too often, the cap doesn't fit the person who wears it.
Painting ideological and political party affiliations frequently becomes merely an exercise in semantic artistry which makes one with no more than a vague idea of a person's beliefs.
RADICALS and reactionaries, reformers and revolutionaries, liberals and libertarians, conservatives and liberals, definitions go on and on and we become embedded in a sea of words, submerged beneath a morass of meaningless media terms that we all too frequently rarely stop to think about.
Ford calls Carter a liberal.
Carter calls Ford a conservative. Ford declares himself a moderate Republican. Carter says he's a moderate Democrat.
Ne'er the twain shall meet?
One never knows.
BENEATH the cool exterior of the two political opportunists endeavoring to grab the richest American politician whose logical differences are less distinct than we have been led to believe. The Republican and Democratic parties have never been far apart, but support from liberals and conservatives might have
been expected to vote for the opposing party.
Think back to 1964, when Barry Goldwater became the Republican presidential nominee. Some classified him as a right-wing conservative, others a reactionary. Goldwater proceeded to court the support of working people, long considered Democrats, leaving Johnson to gain the confidence of his party. A percentage of the middle and upper classes, long considered moderately conservative Republicans.
In the following two elections, each candidate acquired an identity tag by which persons judged his character. Eugene Wallsley received a "ultra-liberal," George Wallace the "southern conservative," Richard Nixon the "moderate conservative," and Hubert Humbert and George McGowen the "moderate liberals."
THIS YEAR the media and the politicians again have played the labeling game and left us in confusion about the reasons behind their decision. Remember Sen. Richard Schweiker, Ronald Reagan's Achilles' heel? Schweker is a fan of Republican leanings who won a place on Nixon's enemies list and voted to break up the big oil companies. However, he took responsibility for abortion, and gun control. Can Schweker justifiably be pinned down as a liberal or a conservative? It seems hardly fair to put Schweker ahead approach to different issues.
all these elections. Placing certain labels on politicians can win or lose them a lot of support, whatever their opinion regarding the issues. Carter can win with some concerns, one a liberal by others, and still believe in the same things. George Will, the national columnist can counter his conservatives. The values he cherishes and repeatedly invokes—pietry, family, industriousness, discipline—the soul of conservative Americans OTHERS SEE his proposals to reform the tax system, cut the number of government agencies and opt for change in other spheres as unmistakably
There is clearly a paradox in
In essence, the difference between Carter, advocating liberal measures, and Ford, advocating conservatism is simply one of degree. The terms in this case come to symbolize little more than minor polarities that don't two widely divergent meanings.
In the final analysis, Carter and Ford, whose philosophies suggest cautious change, agree on many issues and don't fit the stereotypes they represent. They don't busing for integration. Both personally abuse abortion but differ on the present ruling. Both see the need for at least matching Soviet defense spending and both believe in a balanced budget. Both say they will simplify the tax system and make it easier to home ownership programs.
(Paul Addison is a graduate student from Lymm, Cheshire, in Great Britain.)
An explanation has just come providently to hand. The telltale smell was'tmouthwash; it was whitewash. A reader in Minneapolis supplies a revealing letter of amplification.
THE COMMISSION's report was based in substantial part upon a series of public hearings about the country. The report goes to some pains to describe these hearings and the "evidence" obtained at them. The purpose was to gather data from those who idea was to cover "the entire spectrum of views and experiences concerning school desegregation."
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights delivered itself a few weeks ago of a full-blown report on desegregation of the nation's public schools. The report had a curiously antisemitic smell, as if the authors had just gurgledrassacasassas that impression was that desegregation is being achieved without offending anyone.
As part of this elaborate search for "accurate information" four state advisory meetings were held in Minneapolis April 22-24.
"AS YOU know," Roberts began, "the United States Commission on Civil Rights is essentially a fact-finding or research agency." With disarming candor, Roberts
How whitewash is made
The session was as rigged as a clipper ship. Feb. 11, Clark Roberts, regional director of the Commission on Civil Rights, sent a letter to Minneapolis School Superintendent Donald Weihee we wanted to explain the national school desegregation study.
James J. Kilpatrick (c) 1976 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Roberts wrote, "to demonstrate to the nation that school desegregation can be effectively accomplished."
went on to explain precisely what kind of facts the commission wanted to find, and to understand the purpose of the commission's search.
"The commission has undertaken this major effort."
Let us pause to hail the finding of facts. Let us give praise to honest research.
ROBERTS requested the superintendent's cooperation in this admirable undertaking. It appeared that Robert Williams, a member of the school and "indicated concern about open forum." Roberts undertook to dispel that concern.
"The study is not designed," he said, "to increase the visibility of antidisegregation forces. We are not attempting to meaning that would have a negative impact on the school system."
Roberts was full of reassurances. "This is not a forum for the appearance of individuals permitted to speak at the open meeting would first be interviewed by the commission
staff Roberts identified the "types of individuals" he was interested in hearing. He wanted one pro-desegregation school board member, one antidesegregation board member whose any board views he had seen desegregation had become more favorable since implementation of desegregation.
Probably this whitewash job is harmless, for the commission had little credibility to begin with, but the report recalls a 1968 incident in which it published in Savannah about 187. It was entitled, if memory serves, "An Impartial, Nonpartisan and Unblessed Account of the recent War Between the United States and Confederate Point of View."
ONCE A token "and!" had been provided for, Roberts wanted, in effect, a halluilel chorus. He wanted a minority administrator, a representative of the teachers' union, two teachers and one white and one principal from schools "where problems are greatest, or where problems were expected but did not occur, and at schools where desegregation is most successful, white and minority religious leaders. He wanted "officials of NAACP or other major civil rights organization."