First Amendment Television

John Henrik Clarke was born in Union Springs, Alabama in 1915. He was largely self-educated – formal schooling was not available to him in the way it was available to others – but he became one of the most significant historians of African and African-American life in the twentieth century.

Part One of this paper set out the evidentiary record across four issue areas: health care, defense spending and the treatment of veterans, student debt and housing, and incarceration. This second part addresses what in that record holds up under scrutiny, what requires care in its presentation, and what was deliberately excluded. It closes with the FATV institutional statement on the work of the gap.

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence pledged that all men are created equal, with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the United States holds more wealth, more military power, and more global influence than any nation in recorded history.

This paper does not dispute that power, nor does it dispute the genuine achievements built upon it. It asks a narrower and more uncomfortable question: across the areas where the nation has made its clearest promises — health, housing, education, public safety, and the defense of those who serve — does the promotion of American success match the documented record?

A few days ago, I received a phone call from a man I had not spoken to in almost sixty years.  We were classmates once. Then life happened. He called because he had attended a wedding in Florida.  Nothing unusual about that.  What was unusual was what happened at his table.

This paper is based upon internal CBS News standards memoranda and policy documents distributed to CBS News Division personnel over multiple decades.

They include guidance and directives issued under the leadership of William S. Paley, Richard S. Salant, John A. Schneider, Eric Ober, and others responsible for the management of CBS News.

Taken together, these documents describe not merely a collection of newsroom procedures but a coherent philosophy of journalism.

THE DOCUMENT THEY WROTE IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Before we talk about what is wrong with American public education, we need to talk about what is right with it – which is to say, what it was designed to do and how effectively it has done it.

In 1902, John D. Rockefeller founded the General Education Board and began funding what would become the architecture of the American public school system.