The hearings will emphasize the role that might be played by television in any attempt to increase congressional influence of the American people and their opinions.

At Wednesday's hearings, for example, the committee will hear the presidents of the Columbia Broadcasting System, American Broadcasting Co., Mutual Broadcasting System and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as a panel on broadcast coverage of Congress, consisting of four network Washington bureau chiefs.

There are several reasons for this TV emphasis. A recent congressional study, reinforced by national polls, showed that more people depend on television for their news than any other source.

Furthermore, congressional envy of a president's easy access to the TV screenand the eyes and ears of the nation-is of long standing. The first bill to open Congress to broadcasters was introduced in 1944 by Sen. Claude Pepper, D-Fla., now a member of the House.

Indeed, the whole question of how Congress is to communicate better with the people-and, presumably, provide a greater public awareness of the wisdom of House and Senate members-has been around for a while.

At 1965 hearings by the old Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, Rep. Robert Ellsworth, R-Kan., said that in comparison with a president, Congress was not making the national impression that its "importance and power justified."

Other hearings, before other committees, in 1969, 1970 and 1972-73, were considerably concerned about TV coverage.

After the last hearings, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., the Democratic whip, introduced a resolution which would have authorized a study of the feasibility of opening the Senate chamber to TV coverage and of installing a closed-circuit TV system between the chamber and the two Senate office buildings. The resolution still is locked in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

Rep. O'Hara has a long record of attempting to open Congress to greater public scrutiny. Included in that record was his successful effort to reduce the number of secret, or at least nonpublic, committee meetings on Capitol Hill.

He also recently co-sponsored a resolution which would open to television coverage the forthcoming House debate over whether to impeach President Nixon.

There are, of course, major obstacles to the broadcasting of Congress' activities. If the broadcasts are to be selective, who selects? If they are to be full time, what about those interminable quorum calls, and periods of desultory action when only a handful of members are in either chamber?

Said an aide to O'Hara, "The congressman feels the (Senate) Watergate hearings show how Congress operates-from moments of high drama to those of great boredom."

EDWIN DIAMOND COMMENTARY, WTOP-CHANNEL 9, WASHINGTON,

FEBRUARY 19, 1974

Washington-Listen: that creaking and groaning noise in Washington these days is the Congress of the United States getting ready to enter the 20th Century. This week, the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations headed by Montana's Senator Lee Metcalf and Texas' Representative Jack Brooks, begins public hearings on how the Congress can "improve its capability of communication with the American people." English translation: the Committee will consider using such new-fangled inventions as radio and television to carry the proceedings of the House and the Senate.

Radio, of course, has only been around for 60 years and TV for 30 years; while the Senate has allowed its committee hearings to be broadcast-producing such memorable dramas as Army-McCarthy, the Kefauver crime hearings and Watergate the House doesn't even permit that. And both radio and TV have been effectively prevented by the fossilized congressional leadership from carrying the regular sessions of the Congress. (The still camera, for that matter, is over 100 years old, but no photographs have been allowed on the floor of the Congress except for one formal portrait back in 1947.)

It took a considerable amount of tugging to produce the new hearings since Congress clings to its old ways like a baby to a security blanket. But congressmen fear defeat, at the polls and in the give and take of politics, as much as change. A new committee report laying the groundwork for the hearings sets out the reasons behind Congress' concern for communication. First of all, the Harris and Gallup

polls have charted the plummeting ratings of Congress on the public confidence scales. Other surveys have revealed how little many Americans understand about what goes on in the legislative branch, that is, how laws are actually made. Finally, the congressional leadership has awakened to the tremendous communications power that the Executive branch commands. This power ranges from its small army of public relations officers-by one estimate, there are some 6,000 PR flacks helping the Executive Branch spend over $165 million annually on "information”to the President's easy access to prime time network television. Mr. Nixon made no fewer than 35 speeches and performar ces in the heavy viewing evening hours during his first four years.

The Joint Committee now believes that, Post-Watergate, the public would welcome some countervailing communications power in the hands of the Congress. The Committee report makes four good suggestions for using electronics including televised coverage of the closing portion of major debates, say the final thirty minutes, coverage of important roll calls, selective evening sessions of the Congress when key matters are pending, and simple gavel-to-gavel coverage, perhaps by the public broadcasting service.

The congressional report also urges a more professional approach to electronic coverage of the Congress: better facilities, a White House style briefing room and some competent people to run things (instead of the political hangers on and old retainers who doze around the Capitol).

None of this would be easy: there are dangers of news manipulation; the last thing needed are more bland-faced briefers, in black wing tipped shoes, who will Ziegler-zag on questions. Some congressmen, to be sure, may try to showboat for the camera; but with a little carpentry, the TV coverage can be arranged so that no one knows when the camera is on-and, in any case, the networks could shift away from the floor during dead spots, just as they do at the political conventions.

Certainly, something ought to be done to close Congress' "information gap." Most congressmen are TV sports fans; they know how the camera has opened up such sports as pro football and basketball in the last ten years and made them both better games and enormously popular. With some help the camera could do the same for the Congress.

Edwin Diamond, a visiting lecturer in MIT's Department of
Political Science, is a commentator for the Post-Newsweek Stations,
Inc., Washington, D.C.

[Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 19, 1974]

CONGRESS EYES EQUAL SHARE OF MEDIA TIME

Washington. Does the presidency command more ready access to the mass media because it has become more powerful than Congress? Or is intensive media coverage of the executive branch largely responsible for the President's expanded powers?

The Joint Committee on Congressional Ooperations will deal with these questions when it opens hearings later this month.

President Nixon's recent State of the Union message was carried live on U.S. nationwide television and analyzed exhaustively in the following day's newspapers. Two days later Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana delivered a rebuttal on behalf of the Democratic majority in Congress. This address also was telecast live, but the press devoted few column-inches to it.

Mr. Mansfield could not have been surprised. He had previously asserted that, "It is time for Congress to determine who really should decide what is a fair input by a co-equal branch of government into the perceptions of the American elecWith the revolution of communications in this country, the whole notion of the separation of powers has been significantly diminished by the inordinate input that the executive branch, through the president and the Cabinet officers, has on television."

torate.

Public opinion surveys taken by the Louis Harris and Gallup organizations over the years indicate a majority of Americans believes Congress is doing a mediocre job. Some Americans are not entirely sure what Congress is. Twenty percent of respondents to a recent Harris survey said they thought that the national legislature consisted of the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.

Many of Congress's communications problems are beyond its control. The president and vice-president are the only two federal officials elected by nationwide popular vote.

On the other hand, senators represent single states, and congressmen individual districts within a given state. Furthermore, Congress is divided along party lines. Who, then, can speak for Congress?

The legislative branch needs to burnish its image. Televising the Watergate hearings may have helped. It has been proposed that certain proceedings on the House and Senate floors be televised. The problem is that congressional debates and floor votes rarely provide any drama.

Other proposals envision a congressional information service in the Library of Congress, instructional films to improve the quality of teaching about Congress, and establishment of a Congressional Broadcasting System.

[United Press, February 1974]

A PLEA TO PUT CONGRESS ON TV

Washington. Television and radio network executives suggested yesterday that Congress may be able to improve its sagging public image by broadcasting House and Senate floor debate.

But at least one House member said he thought most Americans would find televised floor debate "dull" and sleep-inducing.

CBS president Arthur R. Taylor and ABC president Elton H. Rule told the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations that broadcast journalists should have the same access to congressional proceedings as that accorded the print media.

But they stressed that broadcasters, and not Congress, should have sole authority over what is aired to the public.

Representative Jack Brooks (Dem-Tex), vice chairman of the committee, said, however, "gavel-to-gavel coverage would be basically dull. You couldn't make people listen. You'd have to chain them and prop their eyeballs up.”

The committee is holding hearings on possible ways to better inform the public about Congress and to bolsters its image through broader use of the media.

[Corpus Christi Times (Tex.), Feb. 20, 1974]

SENATOR WARNS CONGRESS

(By Jim Luther)

Washington (AP)—A Congress unable to get the public ear will be unable to safeguard liberties or check a president's power, the chairman of a Senate-House committee said today.

The president has virtually unlimited access to the news media, while Congress seems unable to make its voice heard, Sen. Lee Metcalf said in openin; hearings on Congress and mass communications.

That disparity must be narrowed "if we are to maintain the balance of powers that is so close to the heart of our democratic system," Metcalf, D-Mont., said in an opening statement.

"A Congress unable to project its voice much beyond the banks of the Potomacto be heard and understood only dimly outside Washington, D.C.-can be neither · representative nor responsive," Metcalf told his Joint Committee on Congressional Operations.

With faith in congressional effectiveness-and government in general-at a low point, "it is time for us to do everything possible to let the people know what Congress is doing-and why it acts as it does in their behalf," Metcalf said.

The Library of Congress has studied the problem and proposed a live television coverage of the House and Senate be permitted.

Metcalf has promised that proposal will be considered, along with another suggestion, that Congress set up an information service to keep journalists up to date on what is going on on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, D-Maine, the first witness at today's hearing, said in his prepared testimony that relations between officials and the press "are the key to restoring public contact and, ultimately, public confidence."

Muskie based his testimony on a Senate-financed Louis Harris poll last year that showed Americans have little confidence in their governments, in the news media

29-801 0-74-App.- 34

and in establishment institutions. The survey also found the average American knows little about the workings of government.

MUSKIE SUGGESTS CONGRESS GO ON TV; SOME SAY IT WOULD BORE THE PUBLIC

Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine) suggested yesterday that Congress should televise its floor sessions to bolster public confidence in lawmakers.

Some other congressmen said the public would find such broadcasts confusing and boring.

Muskie told the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations that televised coverage of Congress "at the point of confrontation. . . at the point of decisionmaking" might lift public confidence in Congress, which polls have showed is at its lowest point in decades.

Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), the committee vice chairman, said, "I question whether this would increase the public's understanding. I suggest rather that such coverage for the most part would be confusing and of no interest at all.”

Rep. Robert Giaimo (D-Conn.) questioned if it would be possible to use television "effectively to inform the people and not bore them to death."

Muskie said if Congress is to compete with the automatic media exposure given to the President, "our only proper course is to invite more publicity, not less, by exposing ourselves more to the public than ever." Broadcast industry representatives are to testify today.

[TV Guide, Feb. 23, 1974]

CONGRESS ON TELEVISION?

NEW HEARINGS ON CAPITOL HILL MAY CLEAR THE WAY

(By Richard K. Doan)

Anyone might think, to see the way United States senators and representatives assiduously bar the doors of their august assemblages to radio and television, that politicians had something against being in the public eye.

Perish the thought-naturally.

Still, a belief has held sway for years among a majority of the people's top elected representatives that the presence of live radio microphones and lighted TV cameras at their deliberations somehow would detract from the dignity, if not the intellectual freedom, of the proceedings; might encourage "grandstanding" by some lawmakers, and-worst fate of all-turn the land's highest legislative bodies into a grand TV side show.

Why, the cameras some nervous souls have cautioned) might even pan around and ind Senator Thistleweight doring! Or, worse yet, not even present! And what would his constituents, watching at home, think?

The result, as CBS Ine, president Arthur R. Taylor put it recently, is a "highly incongruous" situation: ". while a handful of citizens may view the actions of their Congress from a visitor's gallery, and representatives of the press-including representatives of the broadcast press-may watch from the press gallery, the television camera is barred from virtually all otherwise-public Congressional.

functions.

But signs are emerging now that a historic lowering of the bars to radio and TV would be in the missing.

A Joint Comm

mmittee on Congressonal Operations, chaired by Sen. Lee Metcalf D-Mont), was scheduled to open publie hearings last week to air the pros and cons of giving radio and TV access to the House and Senate chambers. Witnesses will molude netwerk drass and spokesmen from the United Nations and state legislators that open their door to the electronic media. Video tapes of Statehouse lawmakers in session procacy w be screened for the Congressional panel

in the hope of con

PV mosie'r bead
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moing is members that pursuing the people's business on live

fools mira the obs miers has never den entusy considered before. the question of admitting broadcasting's working bu 1947, whoa 21 am and sit of a few thousand receiving sets where Cigna jam trad do togy sing of an evening session, and leading legislaa le as a gond, müdker. Thai was the last look-in TV has had, save for

momentous occasions such as when a joint session is addressed by the President, a foreign dignitary or a national hero. These occur in the House chamber. Senate committee inquiries (such as the Watergate hearings) can be televised, and House probes were opened to broadcasters in 1970. But as far as TV coverage during regular sessions is concerned, both House and Senate chambers remain sacrosanct. Lately, though, Members of Congress have grown acutely aware of their poor record in utilizing television to get across their views, whereas the executive branch, represented by the White House, has for years made commanding use of the medium.

Too, the lawmakers have become sensitive to polls showing a low public estimate of Congressional performance and even a shocking ignorance of what Congress is and does. (A Harris poll found that 20 per cent of those questioned thought Congress consisted of the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court.) Further, it is not lost on the congressmen that TV is today's biggest single source of news for most Americans.

"Congress,' a study cites, "tends to be seen in a highly negative light, as often as not as an obstructionist to the initiatives of the President, rather than as a co-equal branch of government, exercising its unique Constitutional duties." What galls those on Capitol Hill is that, as the same study points out, "the President enjoys the advantage of access to the broadcast media upon request" whereas "a body of public law and administrative regulations severely restrict the acess that is available to anyone else, including spokesmen for Congress.' Indeed, one suggestion is that if Congress does open its floor proceedings to TV and radio, it might extract a quid pro quo from these media in the form of "greater direct access, especially for opposition response to Administration views. That, of course, gets into matters of "fairness doctrine," making it unlikely the networks would accept such a condition. Generally speaking, TV newsmen insist they must have unlimited entry, with freedom to cover anything they see fit, "when and if we want it," as an NBC vice president phrased it.

An idea one Senate aide thinks would be "salable" to certain lawmakers would be radio-TV access limited to summing-up speeches and roll calls on major issues. A CBS News official, when told of this, scoffed: "That's trying to produce the news and it won't work! We've got to have total access-the way we do, say, at the UN."

The same newsman noted that the UN's open-door policy hasn't exactly burdened the international body with TV overexposure. "I think the complaint irom Congress," he added, "will be that we don't cover them enough."

The realities of TV life (in which business-as-usual gets priority) do indeed guarantee that even with an open sesame from Congress, the networks won't be scrubbing lucrative daytime serials and game shows to put Congress on the air unless a headline-making scrap is in progress.

As for oft-cited Congressional worries that TV cameras might light on napping solons or their unoccupied desks, one networker snorted, "That's silly! We don't have time on our evening news to go panning around to see if some Senator is properly dressed!"

Some proponents of TV access are suggesting the best way around such fears might be to create a Congressional Broadcasting System (CBS!), possibly operated by the Library of Congress, which would man cameras and supply the media with gavel-to-gavel live or taped pickups, the way the UN does. The networks probably would go along with that, provided each was allowed-again as with the UNto have "a unilateral" camera for use when the network wanted to put its correspondent on camera or desired unduplicated shots of the proceedings.

John Stewart, a political scientist hired by the Congressional Research Service (a department of the Library of Congress) last year to explore all aspects of Congressional relations with the media, firmly believes admission of radio and TV would quickly result in the American people being "pleasantly surprised to observe the intelligence of the proceedings." Certainly, "the normal scene isn't as bad as many people may think," he observes, and in a short while both Congress and the public would "come to view the coverage as quite routine."

That seems to be the case in the 25 states that have welcomed the broadcast media to their legislative halls. In most places, primary coverage falls to public TV stations with air time available for this role.

Paul Taff, general manager of Connecticut's four-station PTV network, reports: "In debates on major issues such as income taxes and no-fault insurance, we've aired as much as 50 to 75 per cent of the proceedings." Sometimes a TV feed is provided for the commercial stations.