Speaker A
from CLEVELAND, OHIO
Discussion on TV's ideological biases, cultural impact, and stereotyping in network television with Dorothy Fuldheim and Ben Stein.
Key Takeaways
- Network television often portrays stereotypical and ideologically biased characters, especially businessmen, military officers, and criminals.
- Television has a significant cultural impact, shaping public perceptions and societal norms.
- There is a divide between the educational value of public TV and the ideological content of commercial prime-time shows.
- Producers and creators hold responsibility for the content and stereotypes presented on television.
- Despite criticisms, television also democratizes access to cultural experiences like opera and ballet.
Summary
- The video features a discussion on the ideological tendencies and cultural impact of network television and radio.
- Dorothy Fuldheim, a pioneering TV journalist, and Ben Stein, a TV critic and author, debate TV stereotypes and ideological orthodoxy.
- Fuldheim highlights negative stereotyping of businessmen, small towns, military officers, criminals, and religious figures on TV.
- Stein argues that such stereotyping is real and pervasive in the television industry, supported by insiders like Norman Lear.
- The discussion touches on how TV shapes public perception and culture, with some pessimistic views that TV reflects societal flaws.
- Fuldheim defends television's role in raising cultural knowledge by providing access to arts like ballet and opera.
- The conversation contrasts public television's educational value with the commercial prime-time TV's ideological biases.
- Examples like the TV show M*A*S*H are used to illustrate the portrayal of military personnel in stereotypical ways.
- The debate includes the responsibility of TV producers to avoid harmful stereotyping and better represent society.
- The video captures a critical examination of television's influence on American culture during the late 1970s.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
SECA presents
Speaker A
FIRING LINE
Speaker A
with WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Speaker A
"THE TELEVISION MACHINE"
Speaker A
Although Mr. Agnew has disappeared from the scene, some of the questions he raised have not, those questions having to do with the ideological tendencies of network television and radio, and other related questions.
Speaker A
I have to do with the general impact of television on US culture, and they are almost obsessively before the house.
Speaker A
In 1977 for the first time, TV viewing actually decreased, and the postmortems are endless.
Speaker A
The most pessimistic of them being to the effect that TV is us, and to confess any disappointment in TV is to deplore our own culture, and that is the end of that argument.
Speaker A
The arguments do not end ever for Mrs. Dorothy Fuldheim.
Speaker A
Among the most celebrated and certainly the most venerable television and radio journalists and commentators in the United States.
Speaker A
Her home is here in Cleveland from WEWS for almost as many years as we have had television.
Speaker A
She has centered her activity as an interviewer whose opinions and commentary are observed everywhere, bringing her award after award.
Speaker A
She is the author of several books, including I Laughed, I Loved, I Cried.
Speaker A
And in the industry, she is known as the first anchorwoman in the United States.
Speaker A
Ben Stein is a graduate of Columbia and of the Yale Law School.
Speaker A
And the author of a much discussed book, The View from Sunset Boulevard.
Speaker A
Mr. Stein wrote television criticism for the Wall Street Journal, speeches for President Nixon, articles for Esquire, Playboy and the New York Times, and three books, then he decided to go to Hollywood, responding to an invitation from Norman Lear, who couldn't find anybody in Los Angeles who could utter a witticism in behalf of a right-wing character in a contemplated series, All's Fair.
Speaker A
Mr. Stein's extraordinary book, in which he gives us a portrait of the ideologically homogenized television producing industry in Los Angeles, asks questions Mrs. Fuldheim unquestionably has a position on.
Speaker A
Our examiner today is the distinguished publisher and editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mr. Thomas Vail, whom I shall introduce in due course.
Speaker A
I'd like to begin by asking Mrs. Fuldheim whether in her opinion, she discerns this orthodoxy about which Mr. Stein and others have written.
Speaker B
Well, first you'll have to explain to me what you mean by his orthodoxy.
Speaker A
Uh, the an orthodoxy.
Speaker A
Well, uh, why don't you describe the orthodoxy?
Speaker B
Yes, why don't you?
Speaker C
Well, the what I notice on television is that there are certain characteristics that certain people, certain stereotypical people have on television.
Speaker C
For instance, all businessmen, if it's an adventure show, are evil, murderous, hypocritical, cheating scoundrels.
Speaker B
Where's that?
Speaker C
On television.
Speaker B
I just want to know whether they are, they're not.
Speaker B
Is it a true delineation of them?
Speaker C
Oh, yeah, I mean, I didn't, it's not, it's the book is not supposed to be fiction.
Speaker B
No, no, I don't.
Speaker B
I don't mean is that the way they are?
Speaker A
She wants to know if you know a businessman who's not a murderer.
Speaker B
Thank you very much.
Speaker C
Oh, sure.
Speaker B
Thank you very much.
Speaker C
Now, that, that, it seems to me, is not a true delineation of them.
Speaker C
Similarly, on television, all small towns are evil, vicious places where the big city innocent goes, his car breaks down, he gets caught in a web of murder and kidnapping and extortion.
Speaker C
And all military men are, if it's an adventure show, are planning for a neo-Nazi takeover, and if it's a sitcom, they're buffoons.
Speaker C
On crime shows, the criminal is almost always a middle-class, well-to-do person of the majority group.
Speaker C
There are almost no poor people portrayed as committing crimes, the criminal, even if a poor person has committed a crime, he has been forced into doing it by a businessman or some other middle-class seeming person.
Speaker C
Um, there are no useful or vital religious figures on television.
Speaker C
They are all either buffoons or kind of helpless fuddy-duddies.
Speaker C
They, there is this kind of overwhelming stereotyping of certain power centers and power groups in the society as either bad or foolish.
Speaker C
And then there's, there are certain groups which are very good, for instance, policemen on the beat are always very good.
Speaker A
How about newspaper publishers?
Speaker C
Well, uh, they used to be bad, but now they're, now they're good.
Speaker A
Post-Watergate, they're good.
Speaker B
You know, Mr. Stein, while you're talking, I'm wondering what category I come.
Speaker A
Well, you're not a sitcom.
Speaker B
Well, I know, but it touches me.
Speaker B
I think that's a lot of baloney.
Speaker B
I, I really do, I mean, you mean to tell me that millions of people are such idiots that they're going to watch pictures or stories, whatever it is, that portray people stereotypes constantly?
Speaker A
Businessman is always evil.
Speaker C
Well, this, this is, this is absolutely happening without any question at all.
Speaker C
And you, you make, you may call it baloney, but I watch television.
Speaker B
You don't watch the same shows I do.
Speaker C
And the people who, well, let me just say that the, the, even the people who make television, even the Garry Marshalls and Norman Lear's of Hollywood do not really dispute that this stereotyping goes on.
Speaker B
Well, then they are shameful.
Speaker B
If that is true, then let them reform, they're the ones that are putting out these, uh.
Speaker C
Well, I wasn't blaming you, Miss Fuldheim.
Speaker B
No, no, I'm not blaming you, but I'm blaming the producers.
Speaker B
Because if what you say is true, it's lamentable, and it could be very pernicious and very dangerous.
Speaker B
And I think that men who are in that position of responsibility owe something to the people who are watching television.
Speaker C
Well, it is, it is a very serious condition, that's why I wrote the book.
Speaker A
Will you stop smiling?
Speaker B
Touché.
Speaker A
I understand your point.
Speaker B
That's all I asked for.
Speaker B
I watch Mash, I watch Barney Miller.
Speaker C
Well, Mash is a perfect example of what I, what the book is about.
Speaker C
Because one of the parts of the book is that in, on television, military men are in two different categories.
Speaker C
If they are enlisted men or draftees, they're saintly, virtuous people.
Speaker C
If they are professional military officers, they are killers.
Speaker C
Their whole aim in life is to kill and torment.
Speaker B
That's not so in Mash.
Speaker C
Oh, it is absolutely true.
Speaker B
No, it's not, the officer in charge is a very nice guy.
Speaker C
But he is a draftee.
Speaker C
All the people in the, in the mobile surgical hospital are draftees.
Speaker C
The people who come over from headquarters are only concerned with bombing civilians.
Speaker C
Mash is the absolutely perfect example of how on television a professional army man is one inch away from being an SS man.
Speaker B
You know, I want to say something.
Speaker B
Maybe he is right.
Speaker B
I'm not going to argue that.
Speaker B
But I think that television is one of the greatest influences that has ever occurred in civilized society.
Speaker B
For it is going to create a homogeneous quality between people.
Speaker B
The alienation, the different customs which separate us by, really not important.
Speaker B
But because they were different, and I think that the average person.
Speaker B
Who would not read the National Geographic or the Saturday Review or any of these magazines.
Speaker B
Can see things in television, maybe true that there are these shows too.
Speaker B
But generally, the whole standard of knowledge has been raised, not only in this country, but all over.
Speaker B
For example, you can see a ballet.
Speaker B
You can hear opera.
Speaker B
How many people could afford to go to the opera?
Speaker B
Now, it's true, not all people listen to that.
Speaker B
But it must, it trickles down, there is an addition to the culture.
Speaker B
And erudition as a result of television.
Speaker C
Well, that is true.
Speaker C
Public television.
Speaker C
But that is certainly not true of prime time commercial television.
Speaker B
You're talking about my television station.
Speaker B
And I don't agree with you.
Speaker A
Well, as a matter of fact, Mr. Stein, the, I don't think you have any call.
Speaker A
With the, with the technological reach of television.
Speaker A
I remember, and this was not on public television, I remember when Leonard Bernstein lifted his baton on the Ford, I think it was, I think it was called the Ford Theater, back around 1953.
Speaker A
To lead the symphony and chorus in Bach's B Minor Mass, and he said to his audience, more people will hear Bach's B Minor Mass, will have heard it one hour and a half from now, than have heard it since it was composed in 1732.
Speaker A
He was right.
Speaker C
That is, that is a great achievement.
Speaker C
But I, but that is an extremely rare achievement.
Speaker C
That was an awfully long time ago.
Speaker B
Not every Saturday night.
Speaker B
Every Saturday.
Speaker B
There is opera.
Speaker C
Well, not on the three networks, I assure you.
Speaker C
The, the, I think to whatever extent public television or these infrequent high culture events on, on commercial television occur, there is an enormous backlash going in the other direction.
Speaker C
Which is that television tends to lower the standard of national culture.
Speaker C
By taking time that people might otherwise spend reading or doing almost anything.
Speaker C
And instead subjecting them to this kind of alternate reality, which is a reality.
Speaker C
In which nothing is difficult, there is no thought, there is no analysis.
Speaker C
Everything is done by squealing automobile tires and by people making fun of one another.
Speaker C
That is the reality in which people lose themselves for four and five hours a day on television.
Speaker C
Is not a very enlightening or uplifting reality.
Speaker C
It's a reality which says that life is best lived effortlessly.
Speaker C
Driving to the beach, uh, shooting people.
Speaker C
Making fun of the people who live below you in the apartment below you.
Speaker C
It does not really add much, it seems to me, to the human spirit.
Speaker A
It's interesting, how about, let me ask Miss Fuldheim this.
Speaker A
If you consider the librettos of the standard repertoire of operas.
Speaker A
Most of which, of course, were composed in the 19th century.
Speaker B
Full of murder, killing.
Speaker A
Full of murder and killing, and the aristocracy there were always the villain.
Speaker A
Were they not?
Speaker A
It was always the count or somebody.
Speaker A
And interestingly enough, Lieutenant Pinkerton was a professional Navy man.
Speaker C
Also, but a very, but a very good point, which people often raise.
Speaker C
The answer to which is.
Speaker C
How many people watched Madame Butterfly five hours a day, every day of their life?
Speaker C
That is, in the past, when there were cultural events, people could differentiate them from life.
Speaker C
They'd say, well, this is an amusement.
Speaker C
At present, people swim in a sea of television almost as much as they do anything else.
Speaker C
So that television's messages take on an importance and a significance and a weight which cannot really be matched by any other form of entertainment.
Speaker B
Mr. Stein, may I ask you, how many cultivated people listen to Madame Butterfly five hours a day?
Speaker B
It just can't be done.
Speaker B
It isn't.
Speaker B
And when you talk about books, the fact is.
Speaker A
Puccini wouldn't have listened to it.
Speaker C
Well, exactly, my point.
Speaker B
And, and, of course, there are more books read and sold since television than there were before.
Speaker C
Well, because the population of the country has increased by about 80 million in that time.
Speaker B
I don't think that would account for it.
Speaker A
You mean per capita?
Speaker B
Yes.
Speaker A
Well, I, I, I don't have the figures.
Speaker A
But I'm presumptively skeptical.
Speaker A
Because there aren't that many hours in the day.
Speaker A
The average man works one hour and a half, spends one and a half, one and a half hours more watching television than he does working.
Speaker A
It's something like 36 to 35.
Speaker A
And, uh, I, I don't see how he can devote that many hours to, uh, to television.
Speaker A
And still read as many books as he would otherwise read.
Speaker B
You know, I have made a valiant effort to save television for you.
Speaker B
If you took television off for one day, you would have a storm of protest.
Speaker B
You could stop printing the newspaper.
Speaker A
They couldn't get gas to, to go to the rallies.
Speaker B
Well, of course, that is a handicap.
Speaker B
I don't, I don't quite understand the abuse.
Speaker B
Of something which has brought, uh, could I tell you a story?
Speaker A
Sure.
Speaker B
Illustrates what I mean.
Speaker B
One day I was waiting for my car, and a, our station is where there's a bus stop.
Speaker B
And a bus stopped there.
Speaker B
And a woman got out, I, I knew that she was a woman in humble circumstances.
Speaker B
Because I could tell by the, the clothes she was wearing.
Speaker B
You know, the, the skirt had been washed a half a dozen times.
Speaker B
She was carrying a package in her hand.
Speaker B
And she stopped and looked at me.
Speaker B
And she said, oh, is it really you?
Speaker B
You know, and it embarrasses me a little.
Speaker B
When people treat me as something odd, that kind.
Speaker B
So to make conversation, I said to her.
Speaker B
Oh, you've been visiting, haven't you?
Speaker B
She had this little package in her hand.
Speaker B
I could tell she was arthritic by the way she was holding it.
Speaker B
She said, yes, every Thursday, I go to see my daughter.
Speaker B
She gives me my dinner.
Speaker B
Because that's the night that he is working, presumably, her son-in-law.
Speaker B
I said, where do you live?
Speaker B
Now, about four blocks down from my station, there's a high rise.
Speaker B
You know, where we put old people to get them away.
Speaker B
Like you graze a nice, a nice horse that has served you well.
Speaker B
And then you put him off to pasture.
Speaker B
Well, she lived there.
Speaker B
And I said, do you work?
Speaker B
She said, no, not anymore.
Speaker B
I think she'd been a charwoman.
Speaker B
I could tell it by her whole manner.
Speaker B
And I said, what do you live on?
Speaker B
She said, my social security.
Speaker B
I asked her how much it was.
Speaker B
At that time, it was $183.
Speaker B
I said, what do you pay for rent?
Speaker B
$36.
Speaker B
I said, well, how do you manage?
Speaker B
And this is the whole point of the story.
Speaker B
She said, oh, I'm all right.
Speaker B
She said, you know.
Speaker B
I have two friends.
Speaker B
One is God.
Speaker B
And the other is my television set.
Speaker B
Now, what would happen to these great groups of lonely people?
Speaker C
You know, your point is a very bizarre one.
Speaker C
Because I don't think, I, that anyone that I know of has suggested taking away television.
Speaker C
Don't you agree that for the sake of this poor woman, as well as all the other people in this country.
Speaker C
That television should be as good as possible?
Speaker B
You don't think there's enough talent for that in the world?
Speaker C
I think there's enough talent to make it an awful lot better than it is.
Speaker A
Yeah, I, I don't think, Miss Fuldheim.
Speaker A
I, at least having read the book, I didn't see anything in Mr. Stein's thesis that, uh, that argued against.
Speaker B
I didn't read the book.
Speaker A
Or entertainment.
Speaker B
I can only judge by what he's saying.
Speaker A
Yeah, well, take our word for it.
Speaker A
How's that?
Speaker A
And, uh, but, uh, but he, but he is, he is, he is saying that there are stereotypes.
Speaker A
Now, for instance, if those stereotypes were at to the disadvantage of Jewish people or to the disadvantage of, uh, blacks or whatever.
Speaker A
There'd be screams and yells of protest because we are against Little Black Sambo.
Speaker A
We are against the Stepin Fetchit type business.
Speaker A
We are against the Merchant of Venice.
Speaker A
And, uh, and this, I think, is a civilized, uh.
Speaker A
This, this is a form of, of, of, of social progress.
Speaker A
Do we have to have a situation in which the businessman is always villainous?
Speaker B
Of course not.
Speaker A
No, no, so, so, therefore, therefore, it's a legitimate protest.
Speaker A
Incidentally, Archie, I, the program that I used to watch.
Speaker A
When it was on Saturday, is Archie Bunker.
Speaker C
Yes.
Speaker C
Very good show.
Speaker A
Now, is it, it's a hilarious.
Speaker A
But Archie Bunker is the greatest anti-conservative rip-off in the history of modern offenses.
Speaker B
I agree with you.
Speaker A
I mean, you don't, you don't need Karl Marx.
Speaker A
All you need is Archie Bunker.
Speaker B
But he's absolutely despicable.
Speaker A
But he's kind of endearing in a way.
Speaker C
Well, this is the, but, but there are.
Speaker B
But why does she put up with him?
Speaker A
Mrs. Bunker.
Speaker A
Well, uh, Norman Lear wanted her to be stupid.
Speaker A
You see, but, but that, that's the thesis.
Speaker A
Is that you have to be stupid to be married to Archie.
Speaker A
Which is, which is, it's, it's more interesting than that.
Speaker C
No, it's, it's more interesting than that.
Speaker C
She is the saintly liberal.
Speaker C
She, she is the liberal foil for all of his cruelty.
Speaker C
She is the humanitarian liberal.
Speaker A
She's the mediatrix, as we Catholics say.
Speaker C
Well, she is a, she is a person who can handle all of his evil.
Speaker C
Because she is so humanitarian and good.
Speaker C
But she, but this is, but your point about Archie Bunker is well taken, you have to say to yourself, look at a generation that's gone up, grown up watching nothing but television.
Speaker C
What must they think of people who are businessmen?
Speaker C
What must they think of professional military officers?
Speaker C
What must they think of bureaucrats?
Speaker C
What must they think of clergymen after being exposed almost exclusively to television?
Speaker C
Would be another example.
Speaker C
Well, I offer you this example, which I think you might not find as far-fetched as you seem to find the rest of what I say.
Speaker C
Which is the, uh, have you ever been with a person who has had a flat tire recently?
Speaker C
And had that person say, oh, boy, I wish I could change the channel.
Speaker C
And that, it seems to me, is what in a nutshell is happening to the American people.
Speaker C
That when they see something disagreeable or difficult happening, they have the idea that they can just change the channel and be out of it and onto another show.
Speaker C
And they can't.
Speaker C
And I think it's very upsetting.
Speaker A
What is your point, Mr. Stein?
Speaker A
That a guy who, who's, whose tire has gone.
Speaker A
Wishes he could have some way that he could change it.
Speaker A
Or someone could come and do it.
Speaker A
I don't see how that's related.
Speaker A
The fact that he uses the word channel.
Speaker A
It's just part of our vocabulary.
Speaker C
Well, the relation, Miss Fuldheim, is that people have the idea that there is an alternate reality.
Speaker C
Which they, which is incredibly perfectly effortless, which they can get by simply switching a channel.
Speaker C
And that real life is far more painful and unpleasant than that.
Speaker A
With that, we will introduce our examiner, Mr. Thomas Vail.
Speaker A
is, um,
Topics:televisionideologystereotypesnetwork TVcultural impactDorothy FuldheimBen SteinM*A*S*Hmedia criticism1970s television
