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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

It's a different period now. Today you couldn't carry the budgets we carried in those days. The conventions cost an enormous--the presidential campaigns put an extra heavy burden on the news department, and that only came in four-year cycles. Then we had very excellent, I thought, bureaus in the key parts of the world. But today you just can't afford it. It's way too costly.

Now, could there be some kind of pooled effort in various parts of the world, so that each of the three--or now four--networks didn't have to carry all the burden? I guess so, but never was very happy with the thought. I thought it took all the competition, if you will--the advantages of multiple points of view would be removed if you had a pool job, and it seemed to me that a free press meant we ought to be free to go wherever we wanted to go and cover as we wanted to cover. If we could afford to do it. But the people who are running the networks now don't feel that they can do that.

But I don't think we ever--certainly to my knowledge we never said “Let's not do something, because we can't afford it.”

Q:

Right. Which may be different today.

Stanton:

Yes.

Q:

In terms of the reporting from Vietnam, did difficulties arise at times where reporters got hold of somehow embargoed information, and how was that handled? I was thinking particularly Maury Fromson's reports on the bases in Thailand. Could you discuss that a little bit.





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