good evening walking very very much a conversation i'm happy to welcome to the program once again for the second time during the course of the series john or rick macarthur and i recall geyser is the publisher of harper's magazine and among other publishing of harper's and your concern with publishing interests and communication interest broadly that must take a great deal of your time but at the same time you have a very wide ranging interest in terms of world affairs and national and metropolitan affairs that goes back i guess from the beginning of when you became an adult thinking citizen right you've been interested in world and political affairs for a good deal of your life and yes and i my father was a very political man i was a businessman but got me interested in politics as a kid and and that's what got me into journalism i was a newspaper reporter for about five years before i became publisher of harper's and so i still keep my hand and i still write about a wanted to he decried the waste of office space right in the world he said that people ought to live where they work and because he thought might have been think of all the energy we're wasting true fact people going back and forth between work but i don't think he took into account the human need to separate oneself from one's office now that might be good it was an interesting it seemed like a very dynamic idea at the time but he did present a kind of a positive as you of the human condition he was optimistic yes like the difficult he presented this broad philosophical comprehensive overview though in many ways might be able to be seen almost one hundred eighty degrees terms from the time in which we find ourselves not there might be overdrawing it but things have changed national consciousness has change this lesson just as these things go in pendulum swings and so forth but as we look at things now the conservative view the conservative view of economics politics and put sociological questions seems to be very much in the saddle these yes no i don't think it ever certainly things were different during vietnam you know there's there's no question that vietnam politicized a whole segment of the population that had no interest in politics up to that point you know willing to just go along pretty much now for example with the panama invasion i organized an advertisement that ran in the new york times last wild january tenth yes in the form of an open letter to president bush protesting the invasion very straightforward legal listed grounds we also deplore the loss of life and believe me it's very difficult to get people to sign it obviously ten fifteen years ago would have been that hard to do or even five years ago it would have been quite as hard to do and but today you find yourself in a political environment where people pretty much keep their heads down you know and nobody wants to take a risk a tide of approval for that act that in a certain sense may be assuaged our sense of impotence or something all wrong it's hard to understand why the american people support that in this case it's i think the media is in a strange alliance with the government will they always are the mainstream media generally isn't in a in an alliance with the government but i always say about these polls that it depends on how the question is asked if you were to ask the american people if they supported a war or an invasion that was unconstitutional and a violation of ten different treaties and sets of international law i think the invasion would have had a much lower approval rating if you simply asked them do you approve getting rid of noriega the fog certainly people are going to say yes we approve of that and the noriega the thug who's causing all the trouble with the drugs and rice iraq and rice you find is what differently you know i'm no fan of noriega hard harper's ran two very tough pieces about noriega in first in november eighty seven in fact december eighty seven in fact we were the first magazine really to expose noriega in an x any extensive way was a piece by a panamanian exiled journalist named sanchez bore bone on who is now returned to panama and is is back at his newspaper and he detailed the through the use of people in high governmental positions supporting the running of guns as it were there and bringing back into this country of drugs under under under the cover of people within the government official sanction people within the government which is really  you know pretty pretty amazing stuff that it's been able to just go on if that's the case and not ever be really brought to light where there could be an effect there's some hope now that john hall the host rican ranch or costa rican american rancher has been in effect indicted for murder in costa rica for the bombing of the press conference where the journalists were killed and you know he ain't there i forget where a link or something result in it was that was it american view of international law the coast rican government could invade the united states and seize john hall yes to bring him back to justice yes or or to recant because he has a cost he's both an american an equestrian citizen back they would have even more justification noriega was not an american citizen i know it's really a panamanian seagate is it it's always like alice going through the looking glass on a certain sense it seems like that because it means that anybody government could go in there are certain sense just go and say well we've decided in our courts or national courts right out of this indictment or and go and serve it and bring them out by force and yeah it really does make a mockery of it territorial integrity sure i mean and of course something we wouldn't stand for  someone came decided take mr bush right and say that he is you know responsible for some sort of a heinous crime that they found in their national forest when he could be it's obvious and yet at the same time he gets tremendous approval ratings based largely on the fact that he's been able to do this pressure flex the frustration felt among so many people in the society when they look at the plague of the drugs and they connect the drugs with the people who've been drug bringing drugs in mr noriega's been involved in this kind of thing without looking at the people responsible for a society that create the market yeah for this kind of thing which ultimately is the question that we have a very elite at least an indication of an alienated society where there's a great deal of social social unrest when though we seem to be doing well but even if even if you don't buy the liberal argument which i make and which you might make then unemployment in alienation lead to greater consumption of drugs both among employed and unemployed people  there's the market argument that milton friedman is making moves obviously if you want to control drugs you have to face the fact that there's a market for drugs right and simply making it illegal drives the price up  which puts more people in the business because they can make more money out of people trying harder and harder to sell drugs because there's more more money to be there right so even with the risks of prosecution being what they are the profits regulate cigarettes and alcohol yeah well that would be a position that a lot of people were taken as more and more coming on the guy understanding of biochemistry is a lot of people understand neurotransmitters the way the mind works and there are some things that could lead to where a society might be better organized they do that precedes a big step away from the status quo means of exerting social and political economic control by a group perhaps it's seen that way by a group of people who are doing very well who are in control largely of the way our society general concentration of wealth in ownership in the united states one percent now owns something like thirty seven percent of all the assets to present my controlled fifty percent heavy concentration of ownership and ultimate than networks and so forth and people generally tend to be sycophantic perhaps maybe consciously or unconsciously to those who have this tremendous control so the control of the operation of our society rather than tending toward pluralism or towards a variety of conspiracy theorist but there's no question that the cost fraction of ownership in the media discourages competition and competition tends to encourage pluralism and the more magazines and newspapers are independent magazine competing magazines and newspapers are the better but what we're seeing in addition to the concentration of ownership which is dangerous and i agree it's not good that five newspaper chains control i don't know seventy percent of the newspapers in the country something like house net knight ridder and a couple of other large ones but there's also an increasing tendency and i'm not sure what's driving this in my business and the magazine business is to put out magazines for the benefit of advertisers first and readers second you know that magazine is now perceived by its owners and as publishers  principally a delivery vehicle for advertising except that you're delivering a market to the advertiser made on all five market to the advertiser so your editorial philosophy is essentially designed around the masquerades editorial it's you know you'll see these in magazines these special advertising sections with sort of phony editorial copy in them where it which tell you how to for example if the advertorial says is about eating well and then you'll tend to attract food advertisers you've created a nutritional editorial supplement that's designed to attract advertisers of course it's all very bland and uncontroversial in order to provide a happy and comfortable and comforting environment for the average sized room and that theoretically is supposed to give more credibility to the advertising you did thirty thirty years i was told the thirteen thirty corporation and all these publications were given away free to specific targeted markets so advertisers at first love this because these were magazines created with no other purpose in mind and to carry advertising and to see and to find good customers  for the advertisers that was specifically is that you are yeah i was in charge i was in briefly traditionally many magazines are were edited and created first for the readers and then you turn around and you sold the audience that you developed to the advertisers yes well that's the way that's the way we do it at harvard and that's the way we do it the new yorker traditionally did it and the belief there was that if the audience believed in the editorial strongly enough the advertising would have more added credibility now the assumption is that the audience needs to be sold harder and needs to be convince you know is not is not is too skeptical you advertising so they turn editorial into advertising you know he was a pioneer yeah there's a line you're going to full tilt on that but sometimes it's sometimes it's labeled advertorial is labeled and sometimes it's not labeled for example when vanity fair runs profile in order to get the advertising in most cases even if the atlantic which is one of our competitors creates a monthly food column you can assume that they are trying perhaps on one on the one hand to broaden their audience but they're also trying to make the magazine more attractive to advertise you know and writing about consumption creates a more comfortable environment for advertisers and this is real news it's drama you know but it's accelerating fantastically in the magazine business now little has moved beyond his original single sponsor magazine approach and he's now a pioneer in some other areas for example he's created this program called channel one we find is that attempt to put commercial television in the public schools he wants to deliver a captive audiences of schoolchildren to advertisers the the centerpiece of the program is that he offers free television sets and v c r s to schools in exchange for running a twelve minute news program with four thirty second advertising in books now he sends the books for free to wander in fifty thousand people and he gets an advertiser to sponsor the book on its own it's not much of a book it's really a long magazine article between hard covers and you flip through it and there  practitioners of very high class advertorial these days it's a magazine full of how to dress how to drink how to get rich how to stay fit yeah it's a very tauriel and whether it's labeled advertising section or not doesn't matter it's still advertorial and still designed to attract a certain kind of advertiser obviously they think a liquor advertiser would rather be next to the column about what to drink yes right then they efficient down to pleased to satisfy what they perceive to be the market and publishers are going to extraordinary lengths to create new and more exciting versions of advert forms of advertorial i'm going in a sense in the opposite direction yeah with harper's and i'm saying to advertisers look the whole world of publishing is advertorial now and you won't soon you won't be able to make distinctions between any magazines known harbors will be  we try to excite the readers about what they're reading and then we tell the advertiser that the readers are excited about harper's known for their advertising is going to get looked at you do it the old fashioned way old fashioned way well good luck you know students six million students and i don't know i can't figure my mind doesn't figure that well but it must be quite an investment on his part yes but time satellite dish is going to be found and he's going to put it into the individuals classrooms of the school yes they'll be televisions in many classrooms as can see the kids rebelling against that but i mean it's really an amazing development that in this going to be with commercial advertising going into the schools to a captive audience yes there are been there and run any competitive commercial broadcasting on  d as i say in my piece in the observer that ted turner's interest in education the way richard nixon is interested in campaign ethics you know he's just a promoter he's just a hustler and  or should be beamed into schools to help educate kids i find absurd and c n n was as bad as any of the networks on panama they showed absolutely no alternative what about went as far as i know back again to the fact that we live in a world where alternatives really truly oh i don't abuse seem not to be able to find a view way at all either of you know because these things become so expensive for whatever reason but an alternative view and if you say we have a two party system many people see it or a two party political system many people see it as an overall establishment or an overall system of understanding how we're going to run the society but outside of that alternative view and that alternative view that is helped by many people  than nothing but when push comes to shove ted turner's network runs with the pack it doesn't provide an alternative essence of education in my opinion his is or of being an educated person is to have critical faculties the ability to analyze question be skeptical that's what makes a good american citizen not the ability to go along with the crowd or the or the the tendency to go on the crowd maybe the ability posit new major premises yes i mean if you posit a certain major premise and all kinds of things follow but if you posit a major premise you have to accept it you need alternate major premises too sure many of the major policy issues like t i'd be happy i'd be happy if people would just be more skeptical of what our government does and says and i'll give you an example the panama ad that i organized you know life with my friends was denounced by david broder theoretically a liberal columnist in some sense or a day or a congress on the sympathetic to the democratic party david broder call us all a bunch of left wingers and this is absurd  i'm not a left winger i believe in the american constitution i believe that america should be a country of laws not men and that's our great virtue and our great tradition and i'm offended when the president shows contempt for the law and for our constitution is that a left wing position well you do sound a little bit like you know you know i'm willing to accept legitimate authority here and you know you probably you probably bring some sort of exception to the declaration of independence right but  signals the end of history right the american or western model as in a sense one right if this is the case we don't have our traditional enemy that we can posit against and so it's going to play it's going to really call into question a lot of things maybe that drug situation might become an enemy or other other aspects would become the enemy against which we stood still you know sure of my society with a drug for an enemy the drug war is a perfect substitute for the cold war and it's a perfect excuse to violate people's civil libert you have an unprecedented rollback on fourth amendment rights in this country against unreasonable search and seizure with these roadblocks on the highways and these searches of people's homes and apartments which by the way i think is crazy from this from a police tactical point of view for the police policeman get killed in the absolute by breaking into people's houses or showing up without a proper search warrant or surprising people particularly if they're drug dealers all you guns you know all the name is already name of the drug war and it gets people killed yeah right the last time we had so many cops getting killed was prohibition because the bootleggers were killing people and killing cops too to protect their market and that's what drug dealers do you know which is why they ought to be legalized they could one of the reasons they ought to be legalizing drugs or drug addiction should be treated as an illness as an illness as it is or even even just addiction sounds it diction should be treated as an element might also be able to be accompanied by some changes that put our sure in some sort of elemental economic policy that would bring about an elemental just economic system i don't think we have a system well a philosophical system that allows us to resonate to the needs of the underclass people of our own nation we have a sustained growth in our  market two thousand points over the last decade and we walk over increasingly the bodies of the homes people actually lease and we don't have one that allows us to resonate to the needs of the poor people of the world right and it may be that their moral level or some have a philosophical system that allows us to resonate to the whole of humanity collectively and we're going to be maybe looking for that kind of groups to our own society that might be the reason we don't have you know there's so much helium nation at a certain level that we don't have a vision that allows us to exert some sort of moral leadership was the right term in the world as a practical matter we probably need a third political party jesse jackson terrified the democratic party by bringing so many poor blacks into the system and poor whites also unemployed whites and that is his great contribution to american democracy but i'm afraid that jesse jackson is now starting to sound like a traditional democratic politician and he's talking about coalitions and consensus building and so on and so forth within the party and i liked him better as a as a guy always to some extent on the outside forcing the party to be more honest a more seen them to accommodate forcing him to accommodate itself to another viewpoint i hope that he maintains that sense of themself i hope he doesn't become too mainstream as some very articulate columnists like les payne of already said to jackson has basically made his deal with the democratic party but if anybody displays any moral leadership in the country of the sort that the third world campaign i mean he really did it a good country a great service whether we need a third that is able to talk about human rights usually able to talk about jackson was very articulate on the panama they invade he was very much opposed to the panama invasion people listen down yes right right you know whether when no other political leader would come out against it you know we were only able to get three congressmen to sign our letter to president bush congressman  particularly the electronic media and the studies that people's consciousness increasingly is being shaped by electronic media they receive their sense of the world through electronic media increasingly in this country and around the world and i was just afflicted oh you have that in your piece was in your people it's an instrument but if there was if there was a role for the media in a certain sense that has an influence or let's say an alternative national media that had an influence on consciousness with perhaps not the onerous weight of responsibility for the historically inherited institutions the white house the congress people who have a sense of responsibility it might be that that critiquing role do you see as a third party it might be that an effect of alternative media would be something that could be done you don't see mr whittle doing them put it just occurred to me that in effect of alternative media might be a way of affecting  consciousness one wonders why we haven't been able to establish such in this country or if we could you know if you understand what i'm yeah well it is that there again you get it you get away i think you have to get away from ideology and into marketing which is the probably the eighty's were the decade of marketing now remember the for the french became fascinated fascinated with what they refer to as a look back at things they were coming over here to study what we were doing and  is it's america's always been a country of sale and hucksters and i wouldn't want any other way quite frankly i mean i think it's it's one of the great strengths of this country is its unfair printer areal spirit but there's no question that you know in the twentieth century most of the twentieth century there was an increasing desire to regulate business and to control some of the excesses of the entrepreneurial spirit in the eighty's it was reverse because that is literally what little is doing he's saying it doesn't matter what the editorial is or whether there's a distinction made between editorial and advertising all that matters is the commercial the combination of whatever you put privately he says it doesn't matter it's all comers troll talk no i mean it's all marketing you know let me ask another question that's good news is anyway and to some extent from a cynical point of view he's absolutely right dan rather over there is this is a vehicle for the as he's not really giving he's giving some news but more and more he's driven by the needs of the market and what c b s perceives to be the needs of the marketplace heidi how does he get his ratings up using his ratings up he thinks or his producers think by giving straight news or by giving critical analysis of what the government says he gets better ratings by wearing a sweater by packaging the news differently by telling people what they are by cheerleading the panama invasion clearly the american media went along wholeheartedly with the invasion tom brokaw was referring to the government in the media as we kept talking about the american army as we as if the press was part of the army and i'm sure the vast majority of reporters worse at least on the surface sympathetic to the invasion but i think they think that sells newspapers and that sells that helps ratings you think there might be something other than i think it's i think you're wrong by the way i think that if somebody of c b s for some reason had suddenly begun running all kinds if they put on  out of fascination out of interest my god what are they saying the government is saying one thing and these are these critics are saying quite another they're saying this is unconstitutional what about the concept i think people would have switched to c v s in droves there might have been schools there's something about that that is appealing in a way that you go into the schools and there in chaos in new york city in many cases television can engage the consciousness of many of the young people coming along if one looks at public television now their sons there are many many documentaries that are being that are incredibly fascinating and interesting sure vehicles with enhanced computer graphics and so forth the skills of the creation of video could with mr wood case that's going to go for twelve minutes can that now he's that cannot system be used by other educational systems other than that twelve minutes get liver educational programming into long as it's done commercially is not commercial and is that not something that might be is that something we would collectively want to perhaps encourage increased access to television fare to our young people and in the name of education well i'm not sure but i think if the decision is going to be made to turn television new into a primary educational vehicle this is a governance is a decision that should be made by the people by the government as a matter of education policy that is what i would say it shouldn't be made by market huckst or a marketer or salesman who's goes around pretending that this is that he's somehow trying to educate the public while he's making money or educate school children by making money because he's leading maybe the education i was thinking before you were talking about the market  of commercial television the educational interest in the nation and this notion of alternative television avenues beyond commercial and so forth there might be a role for commercial for the distribution of programming sure via satellite  kids getting fish gunned down in tiananmen square of people getting killed in the by american bombs in panama city that's not what the mcdonald's corporation or reebok wants their ads going with i mean all you have to do is look at publications where they could put on and write and they run they run absurd happy talk magazine putting these crazy men happy talk magazines with cover lines like a perfect world and they describe what a perfect world country to film oliver stone film which is an anti vietnam you have now whether we're not going to get to where they would be putting programming that would be alternative where the kids could ever get a handle on that technology in a window onto another way of getting information and so forth it is another issue i guess goes back maybe to this idea of the media perhaps having a role in terms of providing some sort of alternative vision to the to the students only limb is going to be able to use these things during the twenty five twenty three hours a day that his program is not there they can push to work on what has been the response of the educational establishment well the p t a as opposed to it but the p t a as i say in my piece as undercut its moral authority by encouraging schools to consider the ted turner alternative i think they've undercut their argument some of the p t a is hostile to it the state of california has banned woodell from the channel one from its money from the sister from the  n california of california and new york he hasn't been able to sell anybody in new york yet but i'm trying very hard i think the odds are with them because i think in this country as i say my piece salesmanship equals communication anyways i want to say is that the whole notion of civic responsibility has been turned inside out in the eighty's the whole notion that there is such a thing as a public good and private good has been completely distorted because now the reagan philosophy is that all civic functions all public functions can be made profitable partnerships can  be created between private and public interests to to to do the public good and that's simply not true the motives of x y z corporation are quite different from the motives of the school board of scarsdale new york they have different interests presumably we hope the scarsdale school system wants to turn out educated and intelligent american citizens  against that but their primary interest and it isn't should be the selling of x y z corporation products no also you can't create a comfortable partnership i don't think where the profit motive is the basic social services there's a public good the government has public responsibilities that's what they're what they raise taxes for theoretically the same the same are you can't privatized the army let me take a right wing or a right winger's approach to this question i as a good american i would not like to see the army privatized because by definition the army is supposed to be inefficient it's not run on the profit principle that the army is pretty is paid and is there system or the health care system we shouldn't be for profit we be should be running it to take care of sick people and to educate children well it's a it is going to mixing and little is merely a taking advantage of this of the reagan revolution in this in this area the of the change in thinking if this had been done i would be a big minded if it had been done by let's say the n e a or some established educational force or the un and then lightened educational pattern of  thinking in washington or a governmental responsibility to equip for instance schools with this telecommunications capability mr whittle has economic clout of you know to do that must be a tremendous incentive to the   i would argue i would argue that the first interest haven't followed haven't followed the met the responsibility no but i would argue that the first the first thing that the school system should do the school system should do is spend more money on teachers and reduce class sizes ok i think that buying television sets and and v c r s is nice and is a nice luxury if you can afford it but if the first thing they need to do is to hire more teachers more to pay the teachers they've got more money  technology to needy school systems is disingenuous because in fact the nice school systems are precisely the ones he doesn't want because advertisers don't want to advertise to poor people you know they're not going to the money to buy i try to sell the most affluent school districts in the country and that means the upper middle class for middle class white school districts around the country will tend to be suburban because they provide a more attractive they will provide a more detracted demographic target for advertisers back to the basic injustices that exist in our society and in the world i say it's like redlining in the mortgage business right it's banks do not go out of their way merely write to lend money in porn neighborhoods  because the risk is poor yeah the return is bad so what do you think what do you think we ought to do we got about five minutes left what what what direction we can we can have a critic's role in terms of these things that are going on is there a positive initiative of the things that could be done by people who are imbued with an alternative sense or something if the political system the business system the only sort of think well what is the best ave is there is there something to the idea of an alternative believe it or not our television or alternative media or something to change the consciousness or where does will or why as long as a as long as the democratic party is not an opposition party as long as it's in collusion with the republican party i can't see the mainstream media in country changing they need to take they need a cue from one of these stand you don't think is enough clout by alternative people maybe maybe in connection with third world alternative peoples it would test the first amendment toward gaining some sort of media contact to the american consciousness well utilizing fiberoptics coming now we have incredible capability technologically of putting programming in the living rooms of a home right there's no matter our television is most of the other harper's magazine had a tremendous influence on changing the way americans thought about the war but the democratic for the war to end the democratic party had to turn against foreign elements of democratic party had to turn against the war and for the democratic party to turn against the war and people had to turn against the war and i almost i don't think that with i don't think that without the people the american people taking the initiative we're going to get you know the down you know the the the the the the end of the communist thing that the world is our oyster we can do what we want there's this the end of history view there's this triumphal so yes of we are there so there's very very little root for you know i mean they're in control but i really hands of those but i think the i think the american people are more sophisticated and i think they're they're braver than some people give them credit for and i think that eventually skepticism they threw nixon out they stop the vietnam war they're capable of an awful lot you know i think they could stop christopher whittle too you know won't if they could do that that would be a big thing is that thing is on a roll as it were seems  i can't judge i mean look it's hard to get by is salesmanship he of course is telling everybody that he's succeeding and that everybody in the cut all the school systems in the country are dying to get this and of course there is opposition and  there is going to be an argument about this so i haven't i'm i'm not i'm not hopeless but i do think the odds are with little because he's exploiting this sea change in philosophy  about the separation between the public sector in the private sector and and you know and also in a certain sense alternate deliveries are probably good enough and there are private interests and there is the public good things are don't always match r told us that they always met at the market always does for us that's a lie yeah all right well maybe mr slawson just correct these things go in the title swings yeah things go back and forth things move back and forth but it's a it's a it's a time of where alternately would come around to where we would want to have some sort of a vision beyond just individualized greed which seems to have been driving so much of the society one that goes to encapsulate some of the traditional public values that are important to a society i don't know moral values perhaps reaching out and that we have a vision of how practically these kind of things might be able to be achieved within our society we need a vision of political philosophical vision that can  be able to be presented to a sufficient number of people and then perhaps gain some strength from that and then be able to bring about this kind of a different kind of a a sense a sense of the of the world were many people must be just in thrall and captured by the realities such as they are now and it's this kind of a vision that we are perhaps grasping for the various media and electronic now media and so forth and again these things do  creasing lee if i may say so so that these things that we could because the technological promise of the era in which we find where we could nearly destroy our species also might offer tremendous liberating potentiality and dig in the ancient scourges on a world scale that's the vision we all face that's the ultimate vision we all face now and we need vision and visionary leadership and ideas that can help us move in that humanistic but there is an irony there that one minute you're sorry that the idea of the irony is that people have argued that the reason it's difficult to stop democratization in eastern europe is because you can't stop television signals from crossing borders well we should do it this way and that's a true and and yet self censorship continues to be the most effective form of censorship in the history i think in the history of the world yeah self censorship in this country is just a rampant well media we need something to stand  the universal declaration of human rights adopted by the united nations forty years ago may not be a legally binding document it is rather a promise made by all the members of the united nations to the people of the world we had amnesty international believe that the governments who have adopted the declaration have a moral responsibility to keep that promise right amnesty international post office box three seven one three seven washington d c two double row one three this may be the best kept secret in the world the universal declaration of human rights forty years ago the united nations around and adopted every single member country promised to support it every single one they also promised to teach publicized and displayed have you ever heard of it the universal declaration of human rights to get your copy right amnesty international p r box three seven one three seven washington d c two double zero one three this may be the best kept secret in the world the universal declaration of human rights to get your copy right amnesty international box three seven one three seven washington d c two zero zero one three