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Show L ,1.: V" . . . . i d rocao jo truth, claims i BY HELEN FORSBERG Chronicle Staff "I believe that the direct influence in-fluence which the media exerts on the public's political thinking and behavior is relatively slight," said Robert Christopher, Executive Editor of "Newsweek" magazine at the meeting of the Contemporary Contem-porary Issues class on Thursday in the Union auditorium. Mr. Christopher said if the public were strongly shaped in its political attitudes by editorial comment or even by biased news stories Franklin Roosevelt probably would not have been re-elected in 1936 and Harry Truman surely would not have been elected in 1948. Reporters and writers, according accord-ing to Mr. Christopher, have to confine themselves to what they consider to be the most important facts and this, he said is a tricky process. Selection among facts involves in-volves judgment. And human judgment, even when it is disinterested disin-terested is always fallible. Journalist's Standard "The standard to which I believe be-lieve journalists should adhere in the face of thisselectionproblem is simple to state: They should give enough of the salient facts on all sides of an issue to enable a reader : to come to his own judgment in : the matter." A cliche which he finds dubious is the widely made charge that consistent press criticism of government actions abroad weakens the administration's hand internationally and limits its freedom free-dom of action in the field of foreign policy. "The short answer to that, I suppose, is that although many of the most respected journalistic jour-nalistic voices in the country have vigorously questioned the wisdom of any further United States adventures ad-ventures in Indochina, Mr. Nixon still had enough of a free hand to invade Cambodia and Laos." Outright Government Deception Christopher believes there is a certain amount of outright deception de-ception by government officials. He told of a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Arthur Sylvester who, after his retirement, publicly admitted ad-mitted that he himself had told reporters things he knew to be untrue. This kind of behavior on the part of government officials, according to Christopher, obviously ob-viously poses very serious problems prob-lems for journalists. Critics of the press frequently say that the press should restrict itself to simply reporting facts. "But the question immediately arises: What is a fact?" Tricky Matter Christopher said as a newsman deciding what is truly in the national interest is a tricky matter. mat-ter. Scotty Reston of the "New York Times" has admitted that although he knew about the Bay of Pigs invasion in advance he deliberately suppressed the information infor-mation because he believed that to publish it would not be in the national interest. ' Yet after the disasterous failure of that invasion, in-vasion, Reston came to feel, and so did President Kennedy, that had the Times published the story a national debacle might have been avoided. Mr. Christopher said he believes that if a reporter has a story he should publish it and not worry about the national interest because be-cause it is something one will never know until later. Quoting Walter Lippman, Mr. Christopher said, "News is no substitute for truth. But when the pursuit of news is free and unfettered, unfet-tered, what emerges from the imperfect im-perfect efforts of the press is at least a mighty weapon in the people's search for truth." ROBERT CHRISTOPHER ...media leads public to truth |