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gradually come to benefit by it), or must seek some other occupation which, because of the fort involved will automatically prove better than being a radio sponge.

Moreover, the case of the non-listener is not an unfortunate situation; for, less radio-listening under any circumstances is not to be deplored. There should be less addiction to the mass-media for the sake of allowing a wider scope to the autonomous ability to think - a fact which Europeans, again, recognize by confining broadcasting to certain hours of the day. A sane limit of indulgence in the mass- media is a point which even our psychologists carefully avoid discussing in public because it stands in opposition to the aims of the commercial interests involved.

It should be clear by this time in our discussion that all the evils of the mass-media do not hinge upon the nature and substance of program-content. Apart from content, there is a very real danger in the fact alone that radio and television, the most enticing of the mass-media, operate on the basis of perpetual temptation. One cannot always hold out against it even when there is strong reason for exercising one's effort in a more fruitful occupation. Thus, contrary to the popular belief, it can be accounted a real blessing to the bereft of the so-called blessing of radio and television; for, even to give only the best programs perpetually can ultimately have a detrimental effect on three important factors in mental development. These are: time for thinking, effort at learning, and the ability to read.

The lure of perpetual entertainment, then, even of the best kind, encourages the reduction of time for vital thinking, not only along paths of one's own choosing, but also on the material offered by the program. It also promotes the reduction of one's effort at learning which, despite the amount of instruction in the pro- gram, really amounts to less learning; for, there seems to be a ration of some kind between degree of effort and amount of learning. In other words, the less is the effort that goes into learning, the less remembered is the subject. And lastly, perpetual entertainment by radio and television reduces the need for reading, and thereby discourages the ability to deal more extensively with verbal symbols.

If psychologists are correct on the relation of language and thinking, then radio and television, regardless of program-content, can eventually lead to the destruction of thought and imagination in those addicted to the magic box. Hence, less exposure is as necessary as better programs, both equally vital to social progress through the development of the individual and should therefore be insured by and within the operation of the mass-media.

But less radio-listening and fewer listeners at a time is just what commercial broadcasting does not want, for it strives for the devastating ideal of everybody listening all the time. The achievement of that ideal is to the interest of the broadcaster rather than to the welfare of the public; and worse, it is disguised under the nobler ideal of public service. It is true, in a very limited sense only, that broadcasters give what the public wants, but they do it by continuously "educating" the audience to want what it gets in the direction of getting worse. To think of entertainment in terms of education would automatically establish the direction of getting better. Our reversed direction in this matter is a clear symptom of the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with our working concepts of entertainment, recreation, and education; for, our real concepts are not those which we profess, but only those which we put to work. Our direction cannot be other- wise than what it is when the motive of profit must outweigh the improvement of listeners.

Three Cheers

►FOR ROBERT KENNEDY, Attorney General, NEWTON MINOW, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and LEROY COLLINS, president of the National Association of Broadcasters, for their efforts to improve the quality of television programs.

►FOR SENATOR ESTES KEFAUVER, chairman of the Senate Antitrust Sub- committee, and CONGRESSMAN EMANUEL CELLER, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, for sponsoring legislation to stiffen antitrust laws and to pin responsibility for price fixing on corporate executives.

► FOR THE U.S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT for promoting legislation that would limit the tax deductability of business entertainment allowances.

►FOR DRS. ROBERT MISHELL of San Francisco and EDWARD C. MAZIQUE and LORIN E. KERR of Washington, D. C. for organizing groups of physicians, who in opposition to A.M.A. support medical care for the aged through Social Security.

►FOR STERLING M. MCMURRIN, U.S. Commissioner of Education, for speaking out against the tendency to identify and to stigmatize anyone with liberal economic and political views as "Communist" or "fellow traveler."

FOR EDWARD R. MURROW, Director of the U.S. Information Agency, for re-engaging Reed Harris, who had been forced to resign from that agency under pressure by the late Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

► FOR SENATOR PAUL H. DOUGLAS for promoting legislation that would re- quire loan lenders to inform borrowers about the true interest rates.

► FOR SENATOR J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT for warning against extreme rightist political and propaganda activities by the military.

►FOR CHARLES D. MAY, professor of pediatrics at N. Y. University's Medical Center, LOUIS S. GOODMAN, chairman of the department of pharmacology at the University of Utah, DAVID P. BARR, president of the Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, WILLIAM B. BEAN of Iowa University's School of Medicine, LOUIS LASAGNA of Johns Hopkins University, MARTIN CHERKASKY, director of New York's Montefiore Hospital, JULIUS B. RICHMOND, professor of pediatrics at the University of New York in Syracuse, ALLAN M. BUTLER of the Physicians Forum, and all other physicians, who support legislation that would authorize the U.S. Government to test the correctness of advertising claims for drugs.

Election Booth Blues

David Cornel DeJong