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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Stanton:

Yes, I guess, the Washington opportunities started with Truman and went to Eisenhower, and to Kennedy and Johnson. And yet I wasn't a registered -- well, I wasn't a registered anything, because I felt I had to be as free of a party affiliation as possible in the job I had.

Q:

When you say you weren't a registered anything, by that, do you mean you were an independent or were you registered --

Stanton:

Well, you can't be registered as an independent, you see.

Q:

Right. Right.

Stanton:

You're either independent or you're not. So I was denied the right to vote in the primary, but I certainly wasn't denied the right to vote in any election. I felt that as soon as I was known as a registered Republican or registered Democrat, that in dealing with political issues on the air, I would be charged with being one or the other, and people would say that I was using the network or the news division for my own point of view. Now, it's impossible to be without a point of view, but I tried my best to submerge that and stay in the middle of the road. Paley did too up to a time and then he -- when Eisenhower ran, he cast his lot publicly with the Republicans. I believe that in the early days it might have been easy to say that he had been closer to the Democrats than to the Republicans. But he played it down the middle until Eisenhower and certainly in the Nixon period, he was very clearly on the Republican side.

Q:

How about you?





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