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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

therefore I'm going to behave as though I'm a print journalist, and have all the rights that go to the press, to the press as we knew it before electronic press. I've also avoided using the word -- meaning the press for print. I've always meant the press to embrace both radio and television as well as print. But I was always nervous about getting out there and losing -- and if you lost in front of the Court, then the road back would be a very very tough one, because it would be a difficult thing to get legislation that would include electronics under the press umbrella. So I all along said to my colleagues: Let's fight like hell to insist that we have equal rights, but let's think it through very carefully before we ever get into a position of taking something to the Supreme Court and running the risk of losing. Because I knew that over time -- no, don't say I knew -- I believed that over time we would achieve equality with print if we conducted ourselves properly. And that's why I was so intent on having CBS news be as objective as it could be, as dedicated to doing a complete job of news coverage, so that we would gradually raise our level of position vis a vis the print journalists until the time when everyone would accept us as equal and I think that's almost the case today.

Q:

What was the turning point? Looking back over your career, what would be the turning point in including broadcast journalism in the press?

Stanton:

I can't -- I suppose that if I went back over the events of the past twenty years, I could find a point where I thought the thing tipped, but --

Q:

Do you think “The Selling of the Pentagon” broadcast and the controversy that surrounded it --

Stanton:

Well, that made a big difference on the Hill, certainly. I don't think that made a big





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