One night time whereas my household was having dinner, the president of america referred to as my dad to complain about one thing he’d seen on tv. My father, Newton Minow, was then the chairman of the Federal Communications Fee. And the president, John F. Kennedy, was livid.
“Did you see Huntley-Brinkley tonight?” Kennedy requested, referring to NBC’s nightly information broadcast, anchored by the journalists Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. The information report had featured metal executives bitterly attacking Kennedy, who was offended with them about a rise in metal costs. The president yelled over the telephone, “Did you see how these guys lied about me? Outrageous! Do one thing about it!” Dad mentioned he would.
The following morning, Dad referred to as the White Home and spoke with Kennedy’s aide Kenny O’Donnell, who had been with the president through the telephone name the night time earlier than. Dad mentioned he can be blissful to speak to the president, or O’Donnell might give him this message: “He’s fortunate to have a buddy on the FCC who knew not to concentrate to the president when the president was offended.” Every week later, at a diplomatic reception, Kennedy beckoned to my dad, waving him over. He then put his arm round Dad’s shoulders and whispered, “Thanks.”
What my father knew, and what Kennedy appreciated as soon as he’d calmed down, is that it could be laborious to listen to what individuals consider your concepts, however it’s the solely approach to take a look at them. And even when individuals don’t agree, feeling heard typically helps achieve their confidence and help.
Dad is finest remembered for a speech he gave on Could 9, 1961, to the Nationwide Affiliation of Broadcasters, when he advised tv executives that they wanted to do a greater job of dwelling as much as their license agreements to serve the general public curiosity. He mentioned, “When tv is sweet, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is best.” However, he warned, tv can also be a “huge wasteland.” In return for the privilege of utilizing the general public airwaves, he mentioned, broadcasters needed to do extra for the great of the citizenry. (He mirrored on that speech within the pages of this journal in 2011, in honor of its fiftieth anniversary.) The broadcasters weren’t blissful. One producer even determined to insult him by naming the sinking ship on Gilligan’s Island the S.S. Minnow. (We’re all very pleased with that.) They could not have preferred his message, however Dad knew the place to attract the road. He had assured the broadcasters, “I’m unalterably against governmental censorship. There can be no suppression of programming which doesn’t meet with bureaucratic tastes. Censorship strikes on the faucet root of our free society.”
So, in his practically three years on the FCC, Dad’s precedence was not limiting content material however increasing selections. (In these days, community information was simply quarter-hour a day, and programming for youngsters included native productions and Howdy Doody.) When Dad was on the FCC, the equal-time guidelines and the equity doctrine have been nonetheless in impact. The idea was that as a result of the published spectrum was restricted, anybody granted a license to make use of the general public airwaves needed to enable all sides of an argument to be introduced.
Dad acquired three main items of laws handed whereas he was on the FCC, all giving viewers extra selections. The legal guidelines required new tv units to have chips enabling entry to UHF channels—bear in mind the “U” knob on outdated televisions?— launched the primary telecommunications satellite tv for pc, and created a substitute for the business networks. All of those strikes meant extra entry to extra selections in tv programming for the general public.
Dad and President Kennedy each got here from cities with academic tv channels, WTTW in Chicago and WGBH in Boston, respectively. (WGBH is now chaired by my sister Martha Minow.) After they realized that almost all cities, together with Washington, D.C., didn’t have an academic station, they labored collectively to determine PBS. I bear in mind him explaining to my sisters and me why it was essential that “academic tv” was changing into “public tv.” And when Kennedy requested Dad why the telecommunications satellite tv for pc mattered a lot to him, Dad advised him it was extra essential than placing an individual in house, as a result of the satellite tv for pc would launch concepts, and concepts last more than individuals.
Dad did as soon as threaten a station’s license when he was on the FCC, and it was due to one other telephone name, this time from a former resident of the White Home. Eleanor Roosevelt referred to as Dad simply earlier than Election Day in 1962 and mentioned, “Why aren’t you serving to Reverend Smith?” Reverend L. T. Smith was a Black minister who was operating for Congress in Jackson, Mississippi. The native station, WLBT, refused to promote him promoting time. The FCC employees had determined to not become involved, as a result of his opponent, the incumbent, was not searching for time, and thus their determination complied with the equal-time guidelines. Dad directed the employees to ship WLBT a telegram telling the station that it needed to promote Smith airtime or threat not with the ability to renew its license. And that’s how, for the primary time ever, a Black candidate in Mississippi had an opportunity to talk to voters on tv.
Twenty years after he left the FCC, I acquired to listen to Dad argue for the revocation of a radio station’s license. A station then referred to as KTTL, primarily based in Dodge Metropolis, Kansas, was broadcasting virulently racist and anti-Semitic programming. The FCC dominated that hate speech was protected beneath the First Modification and it couldn’t deny a license for that cause. By then, although, the station had been bought and the brand new proprietor modified the decision letters and switched the programming to up to date music. I’m positive Dad thought that was the proper answer.
Dad was 97 years outdated when he died in 2023. I take into consideration him every single day, and I’ve an excellent sense of what he’d say about what’s unfolding in our nation now. He determined to share publicly the story about Kennedy’s telephone name—and his determination to disobey the president—simply earlier than Donald Trump was inaugurated for his first time period. He considered it as a cautionary story for Trump’s incoming appointees. Dad was passionately dedicated to sturdy argument and {the marketplace} of concepts as the easiest way to resolve issues and search a fairer world. (You need to have heard the debates each night time at our household dinners. Unsurprisingly, my sisters and I all grew to become attorneys.)
I’ve spent a lot of my profession learning companies that fail, and the one constant theme in all of them is management that insulates itself from dangerous information, complaints, and disagreements. Dad taught us that arguing might be productive, however that insults will not be arguments. He mentioned we had to have the ability to disagree in good religion, and we had to have the ability to state an opposing view in phrases that even those that disagreed might see as correct.
He would have admired Harvard President Alan M. Garber’s response this week to Trump’s efforts to regulate universities. Gerber promised that his establishment would “proceed now, as all the time, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of reality liberates humanity.” Simply as my dad advised Kennedy he was fallacious, the individuals who make up the establishments we rely on for the pursuit of reality— individuals at information organizations, colleges, museums, and libraries—should stay dedicated to supporting fearless empiricism, logic, and debate, even when it hurts the president’s emotions.
