The Carrot-Juice Council

When the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story stating that a man had died from drinking too much carrot juice, C.T. Budny of Woodbury, N.J., was incensed. "I have been drinking one, two or three, or even as much as four quarts of carrot juice at times daily," he wrote to the National News Council, "and have never had any but beneficial health."

Budny's complaint was one of 200 received by the 15-member council since it set up shop last August as an independent watchdog of press fairness. The complaint was also one of the 34 cases to get past a staff screening and reach the seven members of the council's grievance committee. After sage deliberation, the committee deferred judgment "pending further study."

Established and partially supported by the Twentieth Century Fund, a smallish New York-based foundation, the council has spent much of its first nine months dealing with trivialities. It is not a record that pleases its members, an eclectic group drawn from print and broadcast journalism as well as the law, civil rights and other fields.* Executive Director William Arthur, a former editor of Look, blames the council's slow beginnings on public ignorance of its existence and on the naivete of early complaints. "Too many of them had to do with editorial opinion rather than accuracy," he says. "Bias is not something we handle." Associate Director Ned Schnurman concedes that only "about seven" of the council's 34 cases thus far have been "significant." But he adds: "Now we are getting the kind of cases that will make the council worthwhile."

Indeed, the council has several weighty allegations of press unfairness on its docket. Among them: charges by Graham Martin, U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, that New York Times Reporter David Shipler had inserted "numerous inaccuracies and half-truths" in a story about U.S. assistance to Saigon (TIME, March 25); a complaint by a New York lawyer that public television's Black Journal had been one-sided in supporting the construction of black housing in a white Newark neighborhood.

Yet doubts about the council's effectiveness remain. Last week, for example, it deftly sidestepped a host of complaints registered by the Mobil Oil Corp. against a March 20 ABC television News Closeup special on "Oil: The Policy Crisis." The ABC program indicted Government oil policies, blaming them and the major oil companies for leading the nation into last winter's energy crisis. Offended by ABC's interpretation, Mobil listed 32 "particularly inaccurate or unfair" statements in the broadcast. Astonishingly, the council's decision, written by National Review Publisher William Rusher, concluded that it would not be worthwhile to "comment on the issue of the precise accuracy or fairness of the individual statements" in the program. Instead the council said that "ABC kept well within the bounds of robust opinion journalism in its selection and presentation of material."

Editorial Impression. The verdict left Mobil officials "disappointed" and the question of "inaccuracies" in the ABC special unresolved. Some of Mobil's complaints seem specific enough to merit more than a blanket dismissal. To the ABC statements that Government policy encourages foreign oil exploration at the expense of domestic drilling, for instance, Mobil responded that over the past ten years it has devoted about two-thirds of its exploration funds to projects in the U.S. In refusing to deal individually with such areas of disagreement, the council defended ABC's right to create any "editorial impression" it wants. Said the council: "Whether that is true or not is not for this council to say. It is, however, well within the right of ABC under the First Amendment to say it."

That view may be laudable. But if truth is not the council's business, who needs a news council? Among those who have no use for the council is ABC's Av Westin, director of the series in which the oil broadcast appeared. "We are fully responsible for our broadcast," he said. "The show stands on its own."

The council has no power to penalize except through whatever publicity its findings on stories or broadcasts might generate. Some major news organizations, including the New York Times and ABC, are still withholding cooperation from the council. Expressing a widely held doubt about whether the press really needs an outside conscience, Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger has worried publicly that the council "would encourage an atmosphere of regulation" that could lead to Government intervention. While few members of the press claim immunity from legitimate criticism or correction, many wonder whether the news council will ever establish itself as an appropriate forum.

*The seven members of the key grievance committee: William A. Rusher, publisher of National Review; Stanley Fuld, a former New York judge; Molly Ivins, co-editor of the Texas Observer; the Rev. James Lawson Jr., a civil rights leader; Robert McKay, dean of New York University Law School: Ralph Renick, news director of WTVJ (Miami): Sylvia Roberts, a Baton Rouge attorney.

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