Friendly: A Nod to Quality Television

He has been a giant, leaving gigantic achievements along the way.

In his extraordinary TV career, producer Fred Friendly has given to posterity such landmark programs as “See It Now” and “CBS Reports,” and he made history with his old colleague, the late Edward R. Murrow.

And this week, he left for the archives yet another series of lasting national impact as he wound up his 83rd and final broadcast of public television’s “Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society.”

Friendly suffered a stroke in January, but the decision to end the PBS seminars was made before he took ill. In his taped remarks as host of the last program, “Criminal Justice: From Murder to Execution,” he said with characteristic candor and a camera presence that is still riveting: “I am 76 years old. Nothing is forever.”

That was Tuesday. On Thursday, in a phone interview, Friendly, now home from the hospital, said: “I’m feeling better. I had a little minor stroke, and I have to worry about that a little bit. But I’ll be back at work one of these days. I’ll be doing some seminar work, some speeches, lectures.”

Throughout the birth and growth of American television, Friendly has been an unrelenting conscience of the checkered-vest industry--a bull in a china shop, goading those around and above him to do better, refusing to compromise.

Asked why he had decided to terminate the PBS seminars, which brought together leaders from such fields as government, law, journalism and business for lively exchanges, Friendly laughed and said:

“Because of my friend Murrow. When we did ‘See It Now’ and it was over, Ed said to me, ‘Fred, nothing is forever.’ ”

The seminars--there were 600 in all since they began in 1974--often dealt with ethical problems in news-gathering. As the years passed and TV sank from its era of great distinction in news coverage to its current wallow in tabloid trash, Friendly’s insistence on the exploration of ethics became more and more pertinent.

“I believe that,” he said, adding: “Television has lost its ethical compass.”

In his remarks on the final seminar broadcast, seen on KCET Channel 28, he spoke of “our most essential agenda: not to make up anybody’s mind, but to open minds; to make the agony of decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” he emphasized in the interview. “Television has lost its ability to figure out what television is there for.”

Acknowledging the bottom-line mentality that now dominates TV, he said, “Television news, particularly, has lost its way. I watch the nightly news. They’re not really remembering what it is their job to do. If you don’t make television important, there’s not going to be any reason to be in the television business.”

The final seminar broadcast was a dazzling exit piece, employing the series’ usual Socratic-dialogue format to deal with the touchy subject of criminal justice and the Bill of Rights.

A vigorous moderator, Jack Ford of Fordham Law School, posed the hypothetical case of a 5-year-old girl who is sexually molested and murdered.

As the panel of law enforcement authorities, attorneys, journalists and jurists--including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia--responded to the topic, we watched a different kind of reality program.

It was an astonishing exhibit of how “talking heads” television can be just as engrossing as the most spectacular film footage. But this was nothing new for the seminars that Friendly brought into being.

“Fred Friendly is one of the great natural wonders of our time,” said Joan Konner, dean of Columbia Journalism School, commenting on the announcement of the final broadcast. “He is one of the few in our business whose principles have never wavered, an exemplar of journalism practiced as a profession--to educate the public.”

PBS journalist Bill Moyers likens Friendly to “one of those great redwoods.” Discussing the producer and the contributions of his seminar broadcasts, he said on Thursday:

“Fred is an original. I remember seeing the first ‘CBS Reports’ that he engineered with Murrow. He was my patron--he was the television adviser to the Ford Foundation and they made the first grant that enabled me to get into public broadcasting.

“Everything Fred has done has been unique, from the original documentaries to the ‘Media and Society’ seminars. He never thinks that because something is serious it has to be dull.

“A lot of people in television fail not because they don’t know the solutions but because they don’t know the problems--and Fred has succeeded because he knows what the problems are.

“The impact of these (seminars) is incalculable. Nielsen ratings won’t tell you the story, but they have created common ground, at least in communicating among disparate people so that they are bound to have had a positive effect on the political discourse. They kept alive an important part of the conversation of democracy (and) provoked the Establishment thinkers.”

Walter Cronkite, another Friendly colleague, added his own salute Thursday to the producer’s just-concluded PBS programs: “They’ve been marvelous, an absolutely splendid use of television to inform and educate in a format that is at the same time delightfully entertaining and intellectually challenging.”

Cronkite, who makes his own contribution to the national dialogue Sunday at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. by hosting a special with presidential candidates on cable’s Discovery Channel, said that he talks with Friendly “every couple of days.”

They both, of course, once were fixtures at CBS--Cronkite as anchor and Friendly eventually becoming president of the news division.

Asked about the changing TV fortunes that now find former CBS names such as Moyers, Friendly and himself offering their thoughtful programs on cable and PBS, Cronkite said:

“Well, unfortunately, that’s where the opportunities for this kind of television are. We all know the terrible economic pressures that (the networks) are under today.”

Added Moyers: “It’s not the fault of the journalists that they’re not doing these programs on a commercial network. It’s the fault of the owners and managers--those people who put on ‘Hard Copy’ and ‘A Current Affair’ rather than use the airwaves for this kind of public debate.”

From “See It Now” to “A Current Affair.” A hard way to go. But Friendly’s TV seminars were an antidote--an ethical compass.