Nicholas Johnson interview by Tommy Smothers, May 6, 1969

Nicolas Johnson: Once asked of one of your distinguished colleagues that planned to be a statesman in the House of Representatives. And the statesman is a man who's able to carve out 10% of his time to deal with lawmaking and other matters related to the public interest. And I've always looked upon you as the statesman, the public congress who do take your job seriously. And we try to open yourselves and your constituents and your colleagues about how important this is. And I say more power to you and God bless you for making the effort. And I see some staff representatives here too. Nicolas Johnson: This is like the other branches of government, I trust this is where the real power lies, whose principal task is to keep us convinced that, really, it is we who are making the decisions, and not them. Well, let me say why I'm interested in this matter and why I am not. As an FCC commissioner, I think it is very much my business to see to it that the mass media account is open for a presentation of all points of view. We have a statutory responsibility to enforce something called The Fairness Doc, which is no more sophisticated or simple than its name implies, simply the broadcasters should be fair. Nicolas Johnson: When you when you talk about controversial issues across the board, you have the same obligation to present all points of view. That also is The Equal Opportunity Doctrine, which affects you when you're running for office, an opportunity to present yourself and your point of view along with that of your opponents' campaigns, The Personal Attack Doctrine and other matters at that sort. Nicolas Johnson: I think it's my job to try to encourage diversity in the marketplace of ideas to try to encourage competition among the points of view that are trying so desperately to be heard in our country today. I think it is a part of my responsibility when the late Dr. Martin Luther King, for example, writes that Negroes having been deprived of an access to television have had to write their most persuasive essays with one pen in marching ranks. I think that is an indictment of the FCC as well as of the commercial broadcasting establishment. Nicolas Johnson: But it is not my business an FCC commissioner in my judgment to make decisions as to what shows ought to be on television, what shows ought to be off, to see to it that my ideas or yours get a better shake in the marketplace of ideas. I have been concerned increasingly in recent months with what I characterize as corporate censorship. We've heard a lot of talk from network executives about the threats upon their rights under the first amendment. And interestingly, these arguments are generally raised by them when corporate profits are threatened rather than ideas. Nicolas Johnson: And so we see on the pages of Broadcasting Magazine, a leading editorial, urging the FCC to slap down the Pacifica station WBAI in New York City who are exercising its first amendment rights, charging the WBAI is going beyond constitutional protections and the FCC ought to punish them in some way. On the same editorial page that their editorializing this to the right of the broadcaster to put on an unlimited amount of cigarette commercials unrelieved of any information giving the American people a sense of the health hazards of cigarette smoke. Nicolas Johnson: So I think it can be documented without much question that the principle interest of this industry is in profitable speech rather than free speech. And what has concerned me is the extent to which those who run the networks and those to whom they are beholden have used their power to keep from the American people information about the kinds of issues that this group and the gentleman who make it up are devoting a great deal of energy and effort in your lives. Nicolas Johnson: Recall after all, when Fred Friendly left CBS, as president of CBS television, CBS News, and he left because he wanted to put a program on that he felt was of national importance, and network management chose instead to run a fifth rerun of I Love Lucy. He left, wrote his book called, Due To Circumstances Beyond Our Control, and he began it with a quote, "What the American people don't know can kill them." The particular subject matter that he wanted to put on was in 1964 that dealt with a foreign involvement of this country known as the Vietnam War, testimony that day of George Kennan, which he presented to management as in effect an ultimatum that it was simply so important it must go on or he would resign. They chose to run a fifth rerun of I Love Lucy, and he resigned. Nicolas Johnson: Well, in that instance, I think he's right. What we haven't known about that war has killed a great many Americans, but that's not the only issue. Take the cigarette smoking controversy. That's 300,000 deaths a year. The position of the broadcasting industry and the tobacco industry is very clear on this. They've used all the financial and political power at their command to keep off the airwaves information about the health hazards of cigarette smoking. They've done this from the beginning. And now they're arguing in the Supreme Court of the United States that they have a constitutional right to do such censoring, that they can be given no obligation by the government to give the American people factual information about the health hazards of cigarette smoke. Nicolas Johnson: The auto safety issue, auto engineers say that the industry has for years had the capability to design cars that will be crash proof, an automobile in which you could be riding in a collision at 80 miles an hour and step out alive. They've not designed such an automobile. Why has that information been kept from us? Why did we not earlier learn more and faster about the whole area of auto safety? Nicolas Johnson: Food and drugs, you can go on without end. Take the issue of cyclamates, the artificial sweeteners in soft drinks. There's been so much discussion with the health hazards of cyclamates in Sweden with their open media, their government controlled television, but the people of that nation have risen up and demanded governmental prohibitions on the use of cyclamates in Sweden. I doubt if you can find one American in a thousand who knows what a cyclamate is. We haven't had much discussion on that issue. DDT is also been banned in Sweden for some time now. We're just beginning to talk about it. Nicolas Johnson: Somebody did a study the other day and discovered that some 20% of the color television sets are emitting an excess amount of x-ray radiation. How much of that story did you hear about on commercial television? And it's not just commercial products. The current commission after studying racial disorders in this country comes to the conclusion that the community, and I'm quoting them, the communications media, ironically failed to communicate. It failed to tell us what's going on. And so we sit back in bewilderment and anger and fear and watch these flames burst forth through Watts, and we don't know what's happening. Nicolas Johnson: Well, I used to think it was because the journalists themselves didn't know, and now I'm gonna have to find the story in order to make that one true because I talked to the guy who'd prepared the news story about Watts, interviews with local citizens, description of the conditions, prediction it was going to blow about six months before it happened. A reputable network newsmen submitted the story, was told it wasn't dramatic enough, it never ran. Take the whole crime problem. Crime Commission reports that the American people simply must be better informed about the implications of white collar crime. Nicolas Johnson: When did you ever hear on television that a single price fixing conspiracy robbed the American people of more dollars than they lost in all the robberies and burglaries and larcenies and the entire year in which that price fixing conspiracy took place? Why is it this information is not brought to our attention? Or take the black lung issue. There's one because the networks are proud of that, and I think it illustrates the point. Black lung is a disease that you get if you go down into coal mines and you breathe coal dust because the coal dust gets inside your lungs and your lungs disintegrate. And when they disintegrate, they get holes in them, and lungs with holes in them don't hold any air. And if you can't hold air, you ultimately kind of strangle and go through a lingering period of illness and degradation and probably die. Nicolas Johnson: You don't get any workers' compensation for this of course and you don't get any fresh air masks if you're going down in the mines. And furthermore, you don't even find out what's the matter with you because you don't hear anything about black lung disease here. And one of the reasons why is that some other television stations in coal mining States when offered professionally done documentaries about black lung disease refused to run them. And on the rare occasion where one did run one, the cable television system carrying this programming blacked it out, refused to carry it. Nicolas Johnson: Well, I commented on this in my testimony before the violence commission, and shortly thereafter I got a call from a fellow in the coal mining districts who had taken an interest in this issue. He said, "Commissioner, I don't know what's happened. Suddenly there's a tremendous interest. All these stations that used to keep me off," he said, "They're coming and asking me to come on. Arthur Godfrey show I'm supposed to be on and the networks are coming down and covering this." Nicolas Johnson: I says, "I can't imagine why that's happening." Okay, 10 days after they started covering this, 40,000 coal miners came out of the ground and organized for the first time over the protests of their unions as well as management. They had found out what black lung was and what was happening to them. They called upon the legislature and we cut the first piece of legislation out that it had ever happened, in a period of about six weeks all this information got out. Nicolas Johnson: NBC boasts proudly that but for them there would not have been the black lung legislation. I think that's probably true. And that's precisely my point. Though when they make a judgment to keep information from the American people, they are making a social judgment that is just as significant as when they put information on. It's not my business to say whether miners ought to die of black lung disease or not, but it certainly is impossible for them to make the argument they just kind of report what's news, and if it's news, they put it on, and it's not, they don't bug us about what happens. Nicolas Johnson: They are responsible and they have to confront this responsibility. Well, the things that you believe in deeply are only going to be possible to the extent that this information can be forced out and made available to the American people. Not forced upon, made available to them as a matter of choice. They are now not given that choice. And if you don't believe it, look at the prime time schedule right now, what's proposed for next year, or one three years ago. I don't know. Look at the prime time television schedule of three networks. Nicolas Johnson: Most Americans have their sets running six hours a day. Most of those hours are in the evening. That's when the audience is, that's when the people are watching television. Most people say they get most of the information and opinion that they have from television. That's when they get it, during prime time. What are they getting from those programs? They're learning something. The only question is what are they learning? But they're not learning about the issues you gentlemen care about. And when you go out to campaign in your districts, you run into a constituency that's totally oblivious in what it is you're talking about. They don't know these problems exist, and you're presented to them as some kind of raving wild man who's interested in a lot of things they've never heard anything about. Why haven't they heard anything about it? Nicolas Johnson: Look at that prime time schedule. And so that brings me to the Smothers Brothers Show and the interest that I can legitimately have in it and the interest which I do not have in it. I'm not taking sides in this controversy saying that Tommy's right and the network is wrong. That's not my business. A lot of factual disputes here as to whether or not he delivered the shows on time and whether they like to work with him, and whether or not he was censored because of his ideas and so forth. CBS does have a right to be heard on those issues and they may be heard by the FCC. Nicolas Johnson: I'm interested in it because it seems to me to be a case study of the kind of corporate censorship problems that I've been interested in. We at least have documented evidence there were skits that were taken out of the shows, not allowed to be seen. How do we know? They're on the film, you're about to see them. And we also know that there's at least allegation been made that a part of the reason the show has been canceled is because of an ideological difference. The networks say they don't want social commentary entertainment programs, and yet Bob Hope can come back from Vietnam and he can talk about the war and that doesn't seem to bother the networks. Nicolas Johnson: But when Joan Baez goes on and wants to dedicate a song to her husband, and everybody sitting out there wondering, "Why is she dedicating it to her husband?" The reason they weren't told is because she said she wanted to dedicate it to him because he was protesting the war and he was in jail in support of that protest, and that goes on tape and then the censor comes along and cuts that out. She can't say that, you see? All of which produces what Mason Williams has characterized as the doily for our minds that remains after the corporate censors has gone to work with the scissors on the videotape. Nicolas Johnson: So I'm interested in this problem. I want to know what are the forces within commercial broadcasting that are making judgments that keep some social commentary on and take other social commentary off. I think this case has something to do with it. That's why I'm interested in it. What I make clear that the Smothers Brothers have brought to you courtesy of Dick Conlin, not Nick Johnson. I'm here to watch for the same reasons you are because I find the programming entertaining, one of the few hours out of a hundred a week that ever brought me to the television set. Nicolas Johnson: And because of my general interest in the overall problem corporate censorship, which I would suggest is a problem that ought to be a very direct concern, not only in terms of whether you get elected the next time you have to run for office, but in terms of the kinds of issues that you've devoted your professional political lives to. So that's why I'm here and I thank you very much for the opportunity to be, and now look forward to whatever that Tommy may have to say and show us on this film. Thank you. [crosstalk] Speaker 3: Get that thing ready. [crosstalk 00:00:15:46]. Speaker 4: Sorry Congressman. I'm here from California. Speaker 3: Give it a check. Speaker 4: Jim Write from Texas, who was the larger state and Congressman Syverson from Missouri, and John Colbert, who's right next to me, from Iowa. I considered applying before Tommy Smothers, who came all the way to Washington only to learn that he looks a little bit like some politician. Tommy Smothers: Of course Senator, you were not there. [crosstalk 00:16:23]. Speaker 4: Well, Annalise Stevens used to say that it's a country where it's safe to be unpopular. I suppose that's part of the issue. The only thing is that after all is said and done, opposition to the Vietnam War seems pretty popular these days, and I just sort of have a feeling Tommy Smothers is very popular too. So maybe really the unpopular people are the ones who you never hear who they are, the ones who sit in the back rooms with the scissors, and the ones that the people in this country have been just given a little tiny glimpse of, such as the Smothers Brothers and those who stood up last January when it wasn't entirely popular to do so and said, "Many people were dying unnecessarily in Vietnam." They turned out to be pretty popular themselves. One of them had to be killed as a matter of fact, in order to be stopped. And so I just hope that it turns out to be a country where it's safe to be popular. And Thomas... Tommy Smothers: I have a lot of things that we're going to share with you, not as they weren't ideas that had been called over a lot of times, but Nicholas Johnson covered everything that I was concerned about. It's not just the Smothers Brothers show being off. It's the fact that out of those 90 hours of prime time programming, [buzz] as well as several minutes here, it's hard to put the edit back in once it's been taken out. Tommy Smothers: So what we have, I brought some film with some things that were taken out, particularly one of great interest, which started off this season, which reflected the democratic convention and that we received film from the CBS news department to use in this Belafonte thing. Of course, it had opinion in it. It did have maybe something people didn't want to particularly see, but it was taken out in total. My concern is that out of those 90 hour, there's two hours of program that touch anything really besides the documentaries, which are very, very rare or not seen often enough. Tommy Smothers: But Nicholas Johnson hit on this, which is my biggest concern, is really America. And I know a lot of people have dropped a lot of things they've been doing and concerns they had before the materialistic life just started risking those positions because of a real concern. My concern is that progressive Congressmen and people are elected and progressive ideas. It doesn't make any differences. You should realign actually the Democratic and the Republican parties, and let's just put them progressive and the conservatives. Tommy Smothers: That's where it's at because there's different people of the different parties, and they're not going to be elected. It's going to be difficult. Every time I talked to someone, you can't reflect or support the student problem or the young people's problem or the black problem if it's not reflected in the entertainment program in those 90 hours because you can buy the time and say, "This is what I represent," which they don't understand because they don't see it enough. So can we have this thing, get in close. Speaker 3: Yeah. The first 10 seconds or so, Tommy, it'll be focusing, but it'll clear up in about 10 seconds. Tommy Smothers: Okay. On this, tape we have the Belafonte, and I don't know which order they're in. Speaker 3: The order is Belafonte first and then Nancy Wilson. Tommy Smothers: Then Nancy Wilson, was from the show which was in such bad taste that we were supposedly fired. And on that tape was also a dedication. I mention the good work in a remembrance of Martin Luther King. Also, we have the very fine number with Nancy Wilson of black and white kind of parody of the situation as it exists, and also the censorship home that doily for your mind by Mason Williams. Speaker 3: And David's sermonette. Tommy Smothers: Oh, and the famous David Steinberg sermonette, which will offend all of you, I'm sure. [laughter] Okay, you can start it. Speaker 3: We have to get the lights back in. [crosstalk] Tommy Smothers: This runs about 15 minutes total. [crosstalk] Speaker 4: You didn't have to tell her anyway, it's too late. [crosstalk] Tommy Smothers: [crosstalk] This is me in the showroom with Nancy. Speaker 3: Can you see all right? Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm fine. Speaker 3: [crosstalk] Tommy, can you move over? [crosstalk 00:24:03]. Tommy Smothers: (singing). Celeste: (singing). Tommy Smothers: That was very good. Oh, Celeste, [inaudible 00:26:03]. I want you to be my sweetheart. Celeste: I don't even know what to say! Tommy Smothers: Let's just give them what they want. I don't care. I don't care that you know who I am. I love you. Celeste: Oh, how true. And I don't care if I don't know what this man is after because I have you. [Inaudible] Let them talk. I don't care anymore. Tommy Smothers: Celeste, it makes no different to me. [Inaudible] I know I can be a partner to you. Celeste: Oh, Tommy, what is my most concern is they may take me. Tommy Smothers: Oh, Celeste. Oh, Celeste, I keep forgetting about one of the things I shouldn't talk about. It's something that's going to try to destroy our relationship. We'll call it the inevitable downfall of us. Celeste: Tommy, what are you talking about? Tommy Smothers: The fact that I'm white and you're black. Celeste: I'm what? Tommy Smothers: I'm white and you're black. My ancestors came here, Celeste, not because they wanted to take your people into slavery and make them work picking cotton in the cotton fields. But it doesn't bother me because I love you. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter the fact that our people could have killed you. [inaudible] Why should this bother me? Because we love each other, it makes no difference that I'm white and you're black. Celeste: (singing). Tommy Smothers: You're what? [crosstalk] (singing). Celeste: (singing). Tommy Smothers: [crosstalk 00:29:27]. Speaker 8: The Smothers Brothers comedy hour has been brought to you by... Tommy Smothers: (singing).