Byrd Switches Stand, Urges Permitting TV Coverage of Senate Sessions

WASHINGTON — In an era when the President of the United States is known as a master of the media and the House competes for television viewers with daytime soap operas, the staid U.S. Senate is beginning to feel left out.

The upper chamber’s long opposition to television coverage has allowed the nation’s most prestigious legislative body to become “an unknown institution to much of the country,” Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) complains.

Issue of Media Coverage

Byrd, who previously resisted Republican efforts to bring television cameras into the Senate, conceded to his colleagues earlier this week: “If we do not accept television and radio broadcast of the Senate proceedings, we will continue to be unable to match the White House or hold our own with the House of Representatives in terms of media coverage.”

On Thursday, Byrd introduced a proposal that would open the way for television coverage of regular Senate business proceedings--provided that coverage is shared equally by Republicans and Democrats. The Senate Rules Committee is expected to hold hearings on the plan soon.

“I’d like to move the Senate into the 20th Century,” Byrd declared. “Television in the Senate is coming. It’s just a matter of when.”

But Byrd may also have a personal stake in his change of heart. Senate sources said that the Democratic leader threw his support behind televising proceedings in an effort to disprove the contention by members of his own party that he is behind the times. Byrd’s critics, led by Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.), recently mounted an unsuccessful effort to unseat him as party leader.

Ironically, Byrd’s proposal may have come too late. With the retirement last month of former Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.), the Senate lost its most influential proponent of television coverage. Baker’s successor, Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), is on record as opposing television coverage because he thinks it would impede the legislative process.

Republican sources who asked not to be identified said that they are skeptical of Byrd’s proposal because they see it as part of the Democrats’ effort to capture a Senate majority in the 1988 elections.

In the past, members of both parties have spoken out against television coverage on grounds that it would promote grandstanding by some senators. In addition, senators have expressed fears that coverage would allow voters to see firsthand how few members usually are in the chamber when the Senate is in session.

In the House, which has allowed television coverage since 1979, members have taken advantage of TV by making speeches directed to the voters back home. The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, an independent network that broadcasts the House sessions across the nation, boasts that 93% of its viewers voted in the last election.

C-SPAN President Brian Lamb praised Byrd’s proposal as “a major change of attitude” and said that the change might have been prompted in part by the results of the November elections, in which four House members were elected to the Senate.

“In the old days, senators were the only people who got on television,” Lamb noted. “Today, second- and third-term House members are household names. As more and more House members become better known, the Senate will come around.”

Debated for Six Years

Lamb recalled that the House debated the issue of television coverage for six years before it voted to install the cameras.

“The Senate is in its fourth year of debate,” he added. “Using that yardstick, we may be at least two years away from television coverage in the Senate. I’ve always felt it’s going to happen eventually.”

In the Democratic-controlled House, Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) sparked a bitter, partisan fight last year when he authorized panning the camera across the empty chamber while Republican members were speaking from the podium. Previously, the camera had been fixed on members at the podium.

But, according to Byrd’s spokeswoman, Linda Peek, his proposal for television in the Senate would avoid such partisan fights because the majority party would not control the camera. Byrd’s proposal provides that no Senate session may be televised without agreement of the majority and the minority leaders.

As Peek explained it, Byrd’s proposal does not spell out specific rules for television coverage of the Senate. She said that the Democratic leader hopes details can be worked out in the Rules Committee to satisfy the concerns of the leading opponents of television.

Byrd consulted with opponents of the measure before he proposed it, and, according to an aide, “he believes that the obstacles can be overcome.”

Sen. Russell B. Long (D-La.), the most outspoken critic of television in the Senate, could not be reached for comment.