Books, Arts & Manners: Liberating the Media

The Left-Leaning Antenna By Joseph Keeley

Arlington, 320 pp., $8.95 Suppose ABC, CBS and NBC were to hurtle through the looking glass one night, and we woke the next day to find the networks leaning to the right with precisely the same tilt that they presently lean to the left. CBS Morning News would nudge us awake with an amusing report on Mayor Lindsay’s expensive public-relations machine. The Today Show would expose the squalid horror of drug addiction and strongly imply that Timothy Leary was not, after all, as Hugh Downs had told us, a “misunderstood” prophet. On the evening news Phil Luce would interview a conservative student who had been roughed up by “left-wing fascists.” The grape-workers who sued César Chavez’ union would tell Bill Rusher all about it. A group of GIs in Vietnam would explain why they support Nixon. Just for balance, a Birch Society spokesman would give a kooky opinion of the Paris peace talks. And so on.

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Jean Jeffries

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The Left-Leaning Antenna By Joseph Keeley

Arlington, 320 pp., $8.95 Suppose ABC, CBS and NBC were to hurtle through the looking glass one night, and we woke the next day to find the networks leaning to the right with precisely the same tilt that they presently lean to the left. CBS Morning News would nudge us awake with an amusing report on Mayor Lindsay’s expensive public-relations machine. The Today Show would expose the squalid horror of drug addiction and strongly imply that Timothy Leary was not, after all, as Hugh Downs had told us, a “misunderstood” prophet. On the evening news Phil Luce would interview a conservative student who had been roughed up by “left-wing fascists.” The grape-workers who sued César Chavez’ union would tell Bill Rusher all about it. A group of GIs in Vietnam would explain why they support Nixon. Just for balance, a Birch Society spokesman would give a kooky opinion of the Paris peace talks. And so on.