On campus whip Gary McCaleb,
tonight's guest is the professor of radio
and television at the University of North
Carolina. Dr. Dick Elum, Dr.
Elum, we'll talk about today's mass
media.
Here's Gary McCaleb.
On campus today is Dr. Dick Elan,
professor of radio and television at the
University of North Carolina.
Thank you for being with us.
My pleasure.
You've had an interesting background
because many times it seems that people
who teach radio and television
have been on that side of things, but not
as much on the practical side
of the field as well.
But you've had a
variety of experiences in both journalism
as well as radio and television
for the benefit of our viewers.
I wonder if you could summarize
some of the experiences you've had with
various places, including right here.
And I would say most of it happened.
Abilene in Wichita with high battery.
I got an op ed that when I was in high
school, I
went deep debt and bought in the
KPA. Are they on Channel 12 in 1960
and on that station for six
years? I'd like to think somebody
watching saw me do an editorial or about
the show, but
I have started working on the Abilene
reporter news when I was in junior
high school, 13 years old,
the RODDING Sports
Billy Maxwell won the city
golf tournament when he was 12 and I was
13 years old and got a byline for the
story, you know, and
then what?
The University of Texas editor of The
Texan that worked on
Abilene, reporter news story, book
page, did a little gas
reporting and regular reporting
telegraph, all of those sort of things,
and then worked with my father and
the drilling mud chemical in a
trucking company before I went into the
television, after I sold the station.
You have to get off the street.
So I went back to the University of Texas
and they asked me to teach and
I ended up going into the teaching
business. And that's why I'm now a
professor at the University of North
Carolina.
In your experience with teaching
courses today, what
what level of of
professionalism are you finding in
students who do a lot of students come
having already had experience in radio
and television?
I think that's yes. And and
unfortunately, what they don't have
experience in that they're fine.
And this is going to it's sort
of it's going to be unfortunate for them.
Not not for us is
I think they think it's a business in
which you just sit around and talk or
push cameras and they don't come prepared
to write and they don't have a
broad education.
They don't know what they're talking about.
And that's the problem we run into.
Seems to me that the technical facilities
come fast.
The students at our universities
now probably know more about microphones
and recording than than
you 10 or 15 years ago.
But they don't seem to know enough about
the broad sort of interested me
that biology.
How would you remedy that?
Well, I think we'd take more history
courses and we'd take
political science and we'd read more
and we learn how to run a computer
and we would take them off course.
What's the term Renaissance education?
Yeah, I think so.
And so I think even though I'm in a
school that offers a professional degree,
it's in the College of Art and Science.
I think the most important thing is what
they get into broad education.
You know, I think that's I think we
probably as a society sat
here and watched this happen as we've
seen the shift and especially the college
level education from what used to be a
very liberal arts oriented education
and more of a career preparation
where you take the technical courses that
prepare you for a career.
But the point you make is an extremely
important one, that if you know how to
run all of the gadgets and the equipment,
that you don't really have any substance.
As far as part of the pressure, though,
may very well come from parents.
I'm not pretty biased, but the parents
think, well, if my if my child
will take a professional degree, they'll
be able to get a job.
Well, they probably will get the first
job. They may not be too well qualified
for the ones that come two or three years
after that.
You think I'm thankful for was Mrs.
Selmo Bishop, whom I just read literature
at Abilene High School.
You know, that sort of background
I think is important.
I read once that said, really the
ultimate charge of a college education
is to teach a student to learn
how to learn and to learn how to think.
And if you can do those two things,
everything else will always be
taken care of.
Because what we get in this business, and
you and I may be great examples of this,
is what the definition of a journalist,
someone who doesn't know what he's
talking about and knows how to say it.
Well. Well, you know what?
We end up with a little bit of that, I
think, in and out of the college programs
where we have the emphasis on the
technical point.
Yeah, that reminds me of
another state where I said one of the
most dangerous individuals that we're
producing today is the college student
that this man called the articulate
incompetent.
He sounds good, but
all he's picked up is the phrases and the
terminology and the things like this.
But there's really no depth.
To the person, I think just from
one of the things I think that fits right
into your your feeling, I suppose all of
the students that are going into this
area have to deal with it one way or the
other is there seems to me to be a lot of
criticism being leveled
toward media today.
Reports that I've seen recently, you're
showing that the American
people, their confidence
level in the media is dropping.
From your perspective as both a
practitioner as well as a teacher, how
do you see that?
Well, I say by the alarm
you I'm still have interest
in four weekly newspaper and two radio
stations. So, you know, I'd like to think
that people trust you.
There's no question that we've fallen
into the category.
We're somewhere below lawyers and what
people trust like that.
Well.
Part of it, I think, goes back to what
I'm saying and that and we've
had some people who can make snap
judgments on little information.
So we need to have people
who know more about what they're talking
about and that the broad
education does not necessarily mean
going to college. It means having some
smart people up.
The other thing is probably in the
professional schools, we need to be
a little bit more
faithful to the language.
By that, I mean that we used the correct
words that we don't use superlatives
and the adjectives and the adverbs, that
we train our students
to respect English and
writing and the words that they choose
and to use the precise word
that go into some research that
we're embarked on in North Carolina to
try to work on part of that problem.
But the problem is in
the fellow who's telling the story
has got to be fired up about what
he's talking about.
I can understand that, in fact, in the
United Press Stylebook that we
pass out students, we say
be enthusiastic.
If you don't think the story is
interesting, nobody else will.
Well, sometimes I think we get
enthusiastic with the wrong words.
The superlatives we
get get carried away and we're
on camera and people are looking at us in
showbiz and stuff like that.
I'd like to think that if there's any one
answer to it, it would be more attention
to the to the choice of words,
choice of pictures that really tell
the story. And that takes a little bit
more work
than some of we lazy people in
the profession really want to put out.
And I think that's the problem.
I think I think if we
were better at using the language,
we wouldn't have that.
I wonder sometimes if as part
of the responsibility for this doesn't
come back to the American
citizens, because
when you were talking about show biz, I
thought that when you start
looking for the showbiz approach
to things, we hear the word
sensationalism a lot and the stories
get sensationalized and things like that.
But apparently
over and over again, those are the papers
that sell the most or those are the
magazines that they keep
selling. And so the people are if
the people really didn't like that
approach to reporting and journalism
and left it alone, I don't suppose they'd
keep producing, at least in those
quantities.
You know, we were never talking about
theory. And I went to a conference
for six weeks once fellow from San Diego
finally got tired with all the theories.
And so he set forth the theory, says,
I've got to give them what they want,
baby theory.
And he ran out a list of seven million
people buying sensational
true love magazines and
such like that.
So if we
choose to pander to
to, you know, to those sort of audience,
it will make money. Well, we'll do well.
On the other hand, I
have a little bit more faith in the
audience. It's it's not
that they're just soaking everything.
And if they didn't like what we were
saying, they've already turned us off in
a way.
And but, you know, and
I think probably if we pitched it a
little higher, we'd be surprised in some
respects. Ted Turner
was cable news network has made the point
that people will watch news in
television and then give us more.
And and
so I think the audience is there
if we meet them.
Well, we're on cable.
And anybody that's receiving this has got
how many outlets in this market?
Oh, probably about a dozen or so.
They have 12 choices here.
Well, that and then there is a place
for that type of programing.
And I think as we put it, and
we use the expanding channel and put
the program in, it will you know, we'll
we'll raise the consciousness.
But that doesn't mean I'm still not going
to watch some
show that I like.
The cars are running off the road and
that sort of thing.
They're certain about release and
entertainment in this business that
you've got to count for, I think.
What about the statement I
sometimes hear that says bad news always
gets bigger play than good news?
Of course, the
time we tell a story about why went down
and spent my two weeks on the air and the
Herald running the newspaper and
first week ran off.
So they got the paper out.
Chamber of Commerce manager and hand came
back and said, You're supposed to be down
at the coffee shop on Thursday morning to
get your critique. And I said, OK, I'll
be there next week.
So I worked hard and had a story about
the meatpacking plant closing.
A Little League team lost.
There been an oil spill and,
you know, they closed up commodity credit
plays in town.
I think I had it all.
I I've worked night and day to get
started.
Elderly gentleman came in.
Picked up the paper and started reading
it like that, and I sort of lean back to
see what then put it down so there
ain't no good news in this place.
Well, that's that's part of being
the messenger. That brings the bad news.
People don't find
that much interest in the good news.
The bad news we've got to know to sort of
protect ourselves, I guess, in some
respects.
Now, how you get around that,
you find an audience that's interested
in the good news and you find
a channel that you can deliver it to.
And we may have that audience right
here if they're interested in university
and what's happening and how can they
upgrade now on
this channel, we can have this this
message. But I've got an idea that
quite a number of channels and soon as
you and I start talking about how we're
going to improve education, people will
go and I'm
just going to make it entertaining.
Does it does information have to be
entertaining?
In other words, are you saying that
people are a bit more interested in being
entertained than they are being informed
not to serve a purpose?
And, you know, I'm going to go to
information to serve a purpose,
all the things that you and I are doing
and stay in business now.
Maybe I'll buy the board someday when
each person can go to the computer
and select their own news.
And they can do that. Now, if they have a
home computer, they can get
quite a number of news services and they
can select the news that they want.
At that particular point.
They don't care whether a good looking
anchor person is delivering the news
or not, just the information that they
want.
I think that's what we do when we talk
about an information society where people
can get their own news. I think that's
where we're moving in a different
light.
Are we are you saying we may be moving
past the point of the good looking news
reporter? Because that's seems to be,
you know, an issue in several cases.
I think after the three hundred fifty
thousand dollar lawsuit that a lot of
stations just getting ready to move
past that.
And I'm not sure we haven't always been
impressed.
Yeah, and yet the person that is
anchoring the news
has a little bit more.
He has to be a good journalist, I
suppose, or she wish they
all of them were not sure they have
to be mellifluous, but
they also have have
to be able to do some other things as far
as come across
visually and I suppose
project some kind of personality.
Well, they have to have a good writer.
They have to be one themselves or they
have to they have to have a good writer
who's writing the copy for them.
I think that that's the first.
So when you're teaching, let's say,
television journalism, are you
teaching how to be a good writer
and a good journalist, or do you have to
also deal with these other dimensions?
I think you have to look at all of them.
We have a our television news
is produced quite similar to what you're
doing here, except students go into the
field and
we work on the writing.
But still, the presentation is part of it
also.
And people don't understand
what whatever you do to convey the story
and you haven't got through.
And it's the problem.
Unfortunately, it's sort of like, you
know, being a good football player, it
helps if you can run
a four point forty and
it helps that you can talk and have
a voice and look nice.
Yeah, it's something when you take a
break here for just a minute and then
we'll be back and continue to visit with
Dr. Dick Elum, professor of radio
and television at the University of North
Carolina.
Abilene Christian University is a place
where people really matter, a concept
held since the school's beginning in
1986.
Well, today, more than 4500 students
from across the nation enroll in ICU
in the middle of west Texas because they
know it's where people really matter.
The university's academic program
reflects people orientation and
preparation on both the undergraduate and
graduate levels.
If you agree that people really matter,
you love Abilene Christian University.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Dr. Dick Elum, professor
of radio and television at the University
of North Carolina.
You know, when you talk about teaching
the young people who'll be going into the
various professions in the media in the
future, I guess it all
comes down at one point or another to
getting the story and then turning
around and reporting the story that you
got.
And it seems that there are several
constraints on that, especially as we
look at the electronic media today.
You've got time constraints and sometimes
I'm sure a lot of people must feel
frustration about a story that really
needs ten minutes to be told.
But it's it's compressed into 30
seconds to be told.
And so sometimes the person really feels
like they didn't tell the story that
needed to be told when they came out and
interviewed me. And how can you
realistically deal with something like
that?
Or is that just a problem that we've got
to live with your psychologist
or your attribution theory?
The psychologist may have you may have a
theory that that actually.
I don't think that's any different
than what the situation
we've always had.
You have your stories.
If you write stories and newspapers going
to be cut probably to fit.
And if you
are on television,
you know, a big stories, 30 seconds, and
you've got to know that I know I keep
coming back to writing as a
you know, this is the simple answer
because writing is nothing simple about
writing. So it's not a simple answer.
But somebody who can boil
that down into 30 seconds
can tell you the story.
I don't really think there's basically as
much dishonesty.
There may be some among reporters as
there is laziness and
somebody who's willing to sit and rewrite
a story several times to boil it down
to 30 seconds is not easy to find.
It's not easy to encourage students to do
it. They like the first draft.
So, so so, you know, this is a
sort of a discipline that one
comes to.
Now, how how you get around the
question of how are we going to qualify
somebody to me and, you know, be a
reporter and use the Japanese
system, give them examinations, or
you can use some of the other
systems across the world where they
license reporters.
I don't think I'm ready for that.
Not our system.
But there, you
know, but finally comes down to
is if you reward good reporting, then
you'll get good reporting.
And that's that's part of the difficulty.
What do you think would have to happen
for the
confidence of the American people to go
back up?
As far as the media is concerned?
We were talking about it earlier and
dropping.
What would have to happen for that to
turn around with accuracy and have to
improve?
Also, the people who rioting would have
to have a better idea about the audience
to which the rioting so that they
can tailor the story
within the framework of that
person's ability to understand.
And that takes that takes a little skill.
I think that we're going to get
an improved
sense of fairness.
I think that's what we're talking about
because of the larger number
of channels, a larger number of ways
news can be distributed.
I find myself
flipping back and forth between channels,
between news channels, and it used
to be between CBS, NBC and ABC
on a big event.
Now I go to cable news network
also and
I go to the station WNYC in New
Jersey, which comes in on our satellite.
And so I
think I think the audience is selected.
I'm not worried about the audience.
I know how to select.
And now that we're getting more
places for them to get information,
they're going to go to those different
places and make a difference, that
they've got a broader, broader base upon
which to make a selection.
I think from our school, I'm going
to have to spend some time training
people to use
communications, television and radio,
as well as is how to produce
it and those people who will never be
in town.
But I'm not even sure, quite frankly,
we're not too far away from the point
that I you and I will not correspond by
videotapes and we'll
make it our home.
And and then it's
you know, it's going to be that
particular medium.
And I think we may very well require
children to present
preparations or videotape.
And I do now, I guess, for the people or
in my classes.
So instead of writing a term paper, they
bring in their term videotape
or something.
Are they they bring your desk, they bring
you the disk off the word processor and
you stick it in and check it out.
Like I'm doing some of that right now.
My media class, they bring me a disk
and I put it in the computer and I look
and see what their solutions were to the
to the problem
with all of this specialization going on,
I think it's obvious we can see some of
the benefits from having a multiplicity
of channels to turn to rather than three.
And from you know, we move from Saturday
Evening Post and Life and look magazines
to very specialized markets and magazines
and city magazines
and things like that.
There's some obvious advantages.
Are there any liabilities that come with
moving in that, you know, an avalanche
of communications falling down on you
is not a happy thought?
You know, we're all just an information
overload indeed.
And that kind of thing that we're having
to stress. Right.
So so you have that.
But I guess the happy thing is
if you if there are machines
that can produce that dros
of information, there are machines
that will help me winnow out of that
large amount of information.
And of course, that computer,
you know, we're in on a presidential
election year and the media
really plays an important role.
Is there any possibility now that the
media plays too important
of a role in the election
process?
By that, I mean, are they doing
more to determine who is elected, maybe
even unintentionally, but because
we all know that the candidates today
use the media?
Oh, yeah. And they know, in other
words, that a successful time sitting
here looking a little dumbfounded.
I spent a good portion
of two years writing a dissertation on
this subject. I hardly know where to
start to answer that question.
I'm not sure I answered it then
of one way you've got to look at it.
Is that
sure that a lot of people on television
using television and
maybe that will create the forum?
And people will know more about
the candidates than they knew before.
Well, in effect,
people know more about the candidates,
but the candidates want them to know
about it, which is what happens if you
don't have a good public relations man.
You probably shouldn't be in a political
campaign these days.
And so it's a certain extent
the candidates are tailoring their
messages to the audience and
we're not getting a full debate.
That's true.
But I think we're getting a very large
exposure.
And if
I was worried about anything, it would be
that we come to depend more upon
what comes across the medium than we do
on contact with opinion leaders and
meeting the candidates and and
going into the issues and that particular
sort of specifications that
every voter should go to.
I'm concerned that the young are
not registering and voting.
They've always been one of the groups
who registered and voted the least.
But I'm also concerned that
they're not getting the and the
the answer, again, may very well be
that as we we have, so
is the media. Expand the different
technologies, explain that we have so
many different ways of presenting a
candidate that
the message will get through.
I'd still like one quote that a fellow
had about the you
know, the people who are watching the
boob tube and do they know what's
happening?
Well, I think they do.
I have a great deal of
confidence and the people who want.
We need more dimensions, I guess, is what
I'm saying, more facets of the candidate,
we need to know who's footing
the bill and who's going to get the
elective positions after they
get elected. And a few things like that,
we probably need more information, not
less.
You know, historically, there
have been a number of military heroes at
times in the past, elected
president of our country.
Now, at this particular
point, we have really a media
personality, a person whose whole
background is with the media
and for the first time serving as
president, not to get into politics as to
whether he's good or bad.
But but I suppose this is the beginning
of a succession of
more and more people who come out of a
media experience and background.
And you don't think he's going to be
replaced by a fellow who flew
spaceships or by a fellow who's a
preacher?
OK, you know, it's also, you
know, all sorts of ways of.
So the question becomes a question
of do people know?
And if people know you, then you're a
good candidate.
But the question also seems relevant
is, do we know that this person will be a
good president or do we know that we sure
do like him when he comes across
television and radio or he handles
the media?
Well, what he's able to communicate
through the media, what what your
question is, do we
use the political campaign
as a measure of whether that person
will be a good president?
Of course. Yes, we do.
And if you realize that there's a great
deal of organization and
a political campaign, particularly the
magnitude that we're running now, I
first, as far as I know, the first
million dollar campaign in Texas
was the one run in nineteen sixty six
for Senator John Tower.
There was a million dollars spent on that
campaign.
A million dollar campaign will not get
you introduced in half of Texas now
because of that, because.
Well, to a certain extent, I think what
we're saying, if a person can organize a
campaign, can present the issues,
can rally people around them,
that we're using those indications of
whether they'll be a good diplomat
or whether they will be a good legislator
or whether they'll be a good executive
officer.
Well, that's a bit of it's a bit
of a leap of faith there.
But I think that's just as good as
whether they went to law school or
whether they had a degree in political
science or whether
or whether they were injured in
some way. And therefore, they should have
a job because they're handicapped.
Not nothing against that.
But it seems to me that at least
in the political campaign, there is
an indication of an organization.
And you can see that if the
media helps you see, you know,
along the same line, but not dealing with
the president itself, there is a way
in which a person living in Texas
could have a sort of haunting
feeling of thinking. I really don't know
what goes on in Washington.
The only way I know what goes on in
Washington is, is
what the people in the media tell
me went on in Washington.
And and in
in that regard, the feeling will go
ahead. And in that regard, we have
indications from surveys that say
the national press is extremely liberal
and its point of view, and that there's
the chance that all of the
information that's and
disseminated through the media has a
liberal slant to it at
times.
And without getting into that, other than
the question, why haven't you heard
that liberal press is
it starts with same starts with an L same
letter, lazy.
The candidates, the congressman,
the president has a press agent and he
lays out the press releases
out there and all you have to do is go by
and pick them up and put them in the
newspaper. And it's an easy way to make
a living.
I'm more concerned about the lazy
people than I am about the.
And yet, at the same time, I think we all
probably owe a debt of gratitude
to the press because of the role that was
played in the Watergate situation.
Oh, I think so. Might not have been aware
otherwise if it hadn't been for some.
Apparently in that case it wasn't lazy
people, but investigative
if the bar from somebody else you
investigated for, those were a couple of
police reporters who were covering the
beat, is somebody pointed
out if Broder had been doing that, we
would have had a treatise on the
sociology of crime.
But, you know, we had two policemen
who dug out the story and kept digging.
But we also, as a result of that, had
some real abuses of
up of the judicial system,
particularly the grand jury system.
And so, you know, the
press has got we, the press have got to
take some blame along with the credit.
And that in that particular case.
And then.
It wasn't really that simple,
and it was the time frame we simplified
when we shouldn't, and we do that now.
It's a complex situation.
And the problem is, I think, is that
we're back to trying to getting people
who can understand
the complex situation and tell other
people in a way that they can understand
if sort of brings us back where we
started, because that means you've got to
know what you're talking about and you've
got to have good people who
are willing to work hard and
who also have the first thing you said at
the beginning, the ability to think
some depth helps, not superficial.
That's for people that are just looking
for a way to skim the surface
without without providing.
Sanjay, thank you very much for
being with us. I'm sorry we're out of
time, but it's been a real pleasure to
visit with you today.
We've been visiting with Dr. Dick Elum,
professor of radio and television at the
University of North Carolina.
And thank you for being with us on
campus.