The Press: Free, Equal & Ridiculous

To Chicago’s radio and television stations, Lar Daly, an obscure stool jobber with an unappeased appetite for public office, is a chronic squawk of static. Each time Perennial Candidate Daly runs for mayor of Chicago or President of the U.S., he shrilly demands his full free share of the air waves.* By law he has it coming: Section 315 of the Communications Act, the so-called “equal time” provision, requires a broadcasting station to give any political candidate as much time as it gives any other—as Daly knows full well. Last week Lar Daly’s insistence had radio and television newsmen across the country in a stew and the President of the U.S. in a state of irritation.

What generated President Eisenhower’s interest was a recent Federal Communications Commission decision handed down after a Lar Daly complaint. Running for Chicago mayor, as usual, in this year’s primary campaign, Splinter Candidate Daly howled that the TV stations had slighted him in favor of the other candidates—Democrat Incumbent Richard J. Daley and Republican Timothy P. Sheehan. The FCC agreed, ruled that Daly had time coming. Rather than contest the decision, most stations grudgingly put Lar (“America First”) Daly (for legalized gambling, against public schools) on the air. WBBM-TV, the CBS station in Chicago, was one which chose to fight. It fired a petition to Washington, asking the FCC to reverse itself.

WBBM-TV protested that the equal-time provision did not and should not apply to regular news broadcasts—as the FCC had applied it in the Daly case. During the Chicago campaign, the station admitted, it had used film clips of Candidate Sheehan (e.g., filing his petition for nomination) and Mayor Daley (e.g., greeting Argentine President Frondizi) on scheduled newscasts, but as legitimate news. CBS President Frank Stanton, longtime foe of Section 315, pointed out that giving equal time on newscasts would make a farce of radio and television coverage of political news, thereby dealing a serious blow to the principle of freedom of the press. Said Stanton: “[The Daly decision] attempts to substitute a ridiculous mathematical formula for the responsibility of news editors in handling the news of political campaigns.”

President Eisenhower echoed Stanton’s “ridiculous,” instructed U.S. Attorney General William P. Rogers to look for solutions. The FCC, in full accord with the presidential action, suggested that any real remedy will have to come from Congress, which has the power to amend or strike out Section 315. But until the Attorney General or Congress finds an answer, Chicago still has Lar Daly on its wave length, and radio-TV newsmen elsewhere are wary. Wiped out in the primary as usual, Daly bought an ad in the Chicago Tribune to announce himself as a write-in candidate for mayor: “Eligible to all—free and equal and purchasable TV-radio time. TV-radio licensees—take notice! Forewarned is forearmed!”

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Since the printed word generally travels farther and lasts longer than the spoken word, the law holds libel (written defamation) a graver offense than slander (spoken defamation), does not insist on proof of damage, as it does in slander. Last week the nation’s radio and television stations were on notice that the unkind word, when spoken over the air, is not slander but libel.

The precedent-setting decision was handed down as the result of a row between two Manhattan restaurateurs, Sherman (Stork Club) Billingsley and Bernard (Toots) Shor. Four years ago, during a TV program featuring the Stork Club, Billingsley, exhibiting a photo of Shor, invidiously wished that “I had as much money as he owes.” In a $1,100,000 suit, Shor’s lawyers called it libel on the grounds that television’s long reach should not be measured by slander’s limited range. The New York Supreme Court agreed. Last week the case was settled out of court for $50,000.

* In 1956, Presidential Candidate Daly asked all four major networks for equal time with Candidate Dwight Eisenhower, was refused by all four. Daly’s protest is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.