The purpose of government was expressed in the first few words of the preamble of the Constitution, domestic tranquility, to establish justice, to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. You can read the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Magna Carta, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, and that is a pretty good sampling of political literature, and you will never find the word "efficiency."

You will find the words, "justice," "love," "sharing," "brotherhood," "service."

You will find all of those. Efficiency is but a tool to accomplish the greater things that we seek to do.

What I want to make sure is that when we reform, that whatever reforms we make, help us to do a better job for our people, to assure more justice, to see that people get a better deal.

That is what it is all about. That is why we are here. That is what these hearings are about.

Communication helps to do that.

When the public becomes disenchanted with congressional government-and, by the way, the recent poll was an indication of how the Congress as an institution is held low in public esteem-but when the public becomes disenchanted with the congressional institution as such, that is a serious danger to what we call free government, representative government. Individual Congressmen and Senators are popular and strong at home in their constituencies. But we as an institution, or Congress as an institution, are held in very little respect today. And we who are the Members of this Congress have a duty and an obligation to try to do everything we can to lift it, to lift it by our own personal conduct, by our work as Members of Congress, by the structural organizations, and by being willing to give us the tools to do the job, which, by the way, Mr. Chairman, you have been in the forefront of doing.

Chairman METCALF. Senator Humphrey, I think that one of the rewards of serving in Congress is to hear an eloquent statement about Government such as you have just made. I am delighted that these hearings are being broadcast over the radio to listeners throughout the United States.

Senator HUMPHREY. What radio is broadcasting these?

Chairman METCALF. National Public Radio, and the microphone in front of you is a live microphone.

Senator HUMPHREY. I was wondering whether it is CBS, or ABC, or NBC.

Chairman METCALF. No, we will have witnesses testifying for the networks. Maybe when their representatives are here, they will be broadcasting those sessions.

Senator HUMPHREY. I want to say, with all due respect to those great networks, that they operate under a public license. They go to great efforts to cover public activities of the Congress of the United States, and we are indebted to them. But I think they too could be helpful to us in projecting better knowledge.

Chairman METCALF. We are looking for ways to help the media to be more helpful to us so that they can convey a greater understanding of Congress as an institution. Congress is one part of the Government that belongs essentially to the people, and we must find some way to restore their faith in their elected representatives and, thus, in constitutional government. I think your very eloquent statement is most important and most helpful in this regard.

Thank you very much for taking the time to assist in our inquiry. We have run a little late this morning, so we will recess until 2 p.m. [Whereupon, the committee was recessed at 1:15 p.m.]

AFTER RECESS

Chairman METCALF. The Joint Committee will be in order.

This is a continuation of the hearing on Congress and Mass Communications, and we are pleased to have with us one of the most distinguished Members of the House of Representatives, John B. Anderson, who has exercised a good deal of leadership in this area.

It is a real privilege to have you here, Congressman Anderson. You may proceed with your statement.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. ANDERSON, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

Representative ANDERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for that most

generous introduction.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee:

I am grateful for this opportunity to testify on the subject of Congress and Mass Communications. I especially wish to commend the Joint Committee on opening this most useful and informative dialog on the role and image of Congress as perceived by the public through the mass media, and what might be done to improve public perception of our role and activities.

I must confess that when I originally received notice of your hearings in late January, I gave the matter very little thought. But when the Harris survey published on February 12 revealed that only 21 percent of the American people gave Congress a positive performance approval rating, I entertained second thoughts on the subject and decided to accept your invitation to testify. It's little consolation that Congress has only dropped 17 percentage points over the last year while the President has dropped 40. On the contrary, this is all the more distressing when you realize that the American people have practically lost all faith in all levels and branches of Government.

On a more personal level, we should be particularly pained by the fact that the public apparently holds garbage collectors and used car salesmen in higher esteem than Members of Congress; and that 41 percent of the American people cannot name one U.S. Senator from their State and 54 percent cannot name the House Member from their district. All of this gives us ample cause for reflection and introspection.

The central questions posed by this inquiry, as I understand them, are: How can the role of Congress be more fully and accurately cov

ered by the news media? How can spokesmen for Congress gain direct access more readily to the broadcast media to present congressional viewpoints on major questions? And what additional facilities, staff and other supporting services, if any, are required to provide Congress with a more adequate institutional capability in the area of mass

communications?

The central premises advanced in the study prepared for these hearings are that there is a direct correlation between power and media coverage, that the executive branch controls a disproportionate share of both vis-a-vis Congress, and therefore, if Congress is to truly function as a coequal branch of Government, as intended by the Constitution, it has a right to coequal coverage by the media. Based on these premises, the study proceeds to explore ways in which the Congress, as an institution, can increase its coverage by the media.

In my testimony today, I would like to take some qualified exceptions to these premises. Let me qualify my remarks by stating that, in my opinion, media coverage of Congress has been inadequate and superficial and must be improved; and that Congress can and should pave the way for greater media access to the entire legislative process. To this extent, the various alternatives explored by the Joint Committee study are most useful.

Having thus qualified my testimony, allow me to proceed to elaborate on the exceptions I take to these basic premises. It seems to me that we are engaged here in something of a chicken-egg-type debate. The central question seems to be, does the executive branch enjoy more power than the legislative branch because it is more adept at commandeering media coverage; or, does it command greater media attention because it is more powerful than the Congress?

I would like to suggest that this question is not so difficult to resolve as the chicken-egg controversy since in the present instance we can turn to the historical record of the past 40 years or so. And that record documents the growth of executive powers and the relative decline of legislative powers, and attributes this mainly to the new economic and world roles of our Government in the New Deal and World War II era, and the new realities of our complex urban, scientific and technological age in the postwar period. And it should be noted that this trend has resulted as much from congressional acquiescence as from executive usurpation.

To the extent that the mass communications media have chronicled this trend, I suppose they could stand acccused of being accomplices after the fact even of aiding and abetting the growth of Presidential power. But I would submit that the role of the media in actually contributing to the increased growth of Presidential powers has been minimal at best. That is not to say that the media, in reporting Presidential activities, have not reinforced and legitimatized the exercise of these powers in the public mind. It must be conceded that the media have played a role in this respect. But we must be careful, Mr. Chairman, not to attribute disproportionate weight to the media factor in the present imbalance-of crediting the messenger for the imbalance, as it were. It is my contention that the indirect role of the media in reinforcing and legitimatizing Presidential powers has been a very limited factor in the actual enlargement of those powers over the years,

especially when considered alongside all the other factors which have contributed to the present imbalance.

I think it is most important to keep this perspective in approaching the subject under discussion in these hearings, for if we do not, it seems to me there is a real danger of expecting too much of any reforms. we might undertake. If we attribute too much power and potential to the media in the power struggle between the branches, we will be falling prey to mistaking the media for the message. And, if we fall prey to that mistake, the inevitable result will be a tendency to shape the message, in this case the legislative process, to fit the media. I would suggest that we very carefully consider the full implications this might have on the responsible fulfillment of our legislative role.

Lest I be misunderstood, at this point, let me explain that I am not building a case for barring the electronic media coverage from either committee hearings or floor sessions. I happen to favor both. In the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, the House for the first time. recognized the right of its committees to permit television coverage; and the Senate has allowed this for some 20 years now. In this Congress, the House passed a new "open committee" rule which insures greater public and media access to committee deliberations. I think it's healthy for our democracy to let the sunshine in; and I don't think it would hurt us one bit to let the kleig lights in. I can understand the concern of some that this would only encourage grandstanding, but I think the experience of numerous State legislatures and that of national legislatures in other countries demonstrates that the novelty soon wears off and the legislators and the people benefit from the coverage. I think more committees of Congress should promote televised hearings and that the House and Senate should proceed to establish a system to televise important floor sessions on an experimental basis, with all due regard to maintaining the dignity and decorum of the respective Chambers.

But, to return to my note of caution, we must be careful to distinguish between permitting full media access to the legislative process and reforming the legislative process in order to gain access to the media.

Journalist Douglass Cater, in his book. The Fourth Branch of Government, published way back in 1959, perhaps best explains the problems and dangers which I am attempting to convey. Cater addresses himself specifically to the celebrated congressional investigations of the fifties, but I think his words are just as timely today. In his words, "Amid the publicity drives of Congress, the investigative committee exerts the most powerful thrust." He goes on to say that its net effect "has been to divert the public's attention from the underlying ills in government which need legislative attention. Amid the aimless airing of charges, the quest reduces itself to a confused chase after individual villains rather than a purposeful inquiry to get at the root causes and to devise lasting solutions."

To quote Cater further:

The proliferation of publicity-inspired investigations has taken us in the direction of what might be called the mass media mandate. Decisions tend to be taken not in an orderly, procedural way but on the basis of what is instantly explainable through the mass media to the public. The trouble is that a great many complex issues of our time are not susceptible to this kind of explanation. To

attempt to do so only serves to distract government from its more important tasks and to burden the public with choices it is not equipped to make. It opens the way for the demagogue who it prepared to oversimplify the grave issues of our time and to regard publicity as an end rather than a means in the drive for power.

Mr. Chairman, my warning is quite simple. In our frustration over inadequate and inaccurate coverage, in our distress over low recognition and understanding, in our quest for a better image through improved communication with the public, let us avoid the "media mandate" trap and its potential for disfiguring and destroying the legitimate and responsible legislative process. Let us recognize that the legislative process in our democracy is, by its very nature, plodding and ponderous, and not necessarily susceptible to easy explanation by the electronic media. Marshall McLuhan might describe us as a linear process or "hot medium," not particularly suited for the "cool medium” of television.

To illustrate this, think for a moment, if you will, about what segments of televised hearings the networks choose to air on their nightly newscasts. I think you will agree that more often than not these consist of either short, sensational statements or heated exchanges. This is good television. But does it really convey to the public what the legislative process or the constitutional role of Congress is all about? I make these observations to underscore what I consider the very limited potential for either explaining the legislative process or redressing the balance, just as it was my contention that the media have played a very limited role in tipping the balance in favor of the executive branch.

I do not want to leave this committee on the note of pessimism and despair. I am not of the opinion that the Congress cannot recapture its rightful role as a coequal branch. While permitting greater media access to the Congress can reinforce and legitimatize this restoration of congressional powers, the media is not the message nor the answer.

When Professor Alexander Bickel of Yale testified on war powers some years back, he quoted Senator John Sherman of Ohio who said, shortly after the Civil War, that the way to resume specie payments was to resume. Paraphrasing Sherman, Bickel said, "The way for Congress to resume control over the foreign and war policy of the United States is to resume. The way to redress the balance is to redress it-by action."

If I might further paraphrase Bickel, the way for the Congress to make the news is to make news. The way to redress the balance is to redress it by action.

I think this Congress has done more and is doing more than any previous Congress in which I have served in redressing the balance by action. And I think there has been a corresponding increase in media attention to the Congress because of this.

I further think it would be a grave mistake on our part to legislate a "media mandate" because we are frustrated, impatient and "Harrised" by the polls. I see no need to emulate the massive public relations apparati of the executive branch; if anything we should be trimming some of that bureaucratic fat and insuring that neither branch becomes actively engaged in the "news management" business.