policy - The Black Vault

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1 51. Ibid.
date, but it was postponed to give Mr. Nixon a chance to make his case
without the unwelcome intrusion of reporters' questions. The time
requested by the White House was nine p.m., which--on a Monday evening--
allowed the president to fall heir to the large nationwide audience of
the "Laugh-In" show.
The audience, which may have amounted to fifty million, responded to
the president's brief, hedviiy political speech and to the dramatic
flourish with which ha signed thQ veto message right there on camqra.
According to Semple, "a private survey conducted by the White House
staff istimated that 55,000 telegrams arrived on Capitol Hill after
th,! spedch, largely supporting the president. The survey also estimated
that Congressional mail, which had been running ten to one
against the president's position, soon started running five to one in
his favor." The veto, of course, was sustained.
50. "Spiro Rips Unelected Elite", Pacific Stars and Stripes, Nov. 16,
1968.
52. "Annals of Television: Shaking the Tree," New Yorker, March 17, 1975.
This article describes the October 17, 1969 memorandum, "The Shot-Gun
Versus the Rifle" sent by special assistant to the president Jeb Stuart
Magruder to Nixon's chief of staff H. R. Haldeman. Magruder's recommendations
for countering media criticism of the president included,
(1) establishing an official monitoring system through the FCC,
(2) using the antitrust division to investigate (coerce) the media,
and (3) using the Internal Revenue Service to look into target media
organizations.
53. This "silent majority" political initiative will be discussed in detail
in Chapter 5. A memor-idum of Patrick Buchanan in another area noted
the objective of Nixon's directives to "several of us to give thougnt
to how to combat the institutionalized power of the left concentrated
in the foundations that succor the Democratic Party" Ibid., p. 46.
54. Joseph Kraft, in Hodgson, p. 375.
Are we merely neutral observers, seekers after truth in the
public interest? Or do we, as the supporters of Mayor Richard
Daley and his Chicago police have charged, have a prejvlice of
our own?
The answer, I think, is that Mayor Daley and his supp•,,ters have
a point. Most of us in what is called the communications field
are not rooted in the great mass of ordinary Americans--in Middle
America. And the result shows up not merely in occasional
episodes such as the Chicago violence but more importantly in the
systematic bias towards young people, minority groups, and the
kind of presidential candidates who appeal to them.
The most important organs of press and television are, beyond
-. .much doubt, dominated by the outlook of the upper-income
whites.
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