turned out a very well-produced, well-indexed looseleaf background factbook distributed to writers and editors, that could be updated periodically. And this was done, I would note, without getting into any of the controversial areas of the Apollo program.

Another device which has been used successfully on a small scaleand I do not know why it should not be used a lot more in educating the media of public problems-is the symposium, a national or regional gathering to which selected executive editors and reporters or, for that matter, any other professional categories of people-educators or people in government-a meeting to which they are invited at which topnotch experts brief them on the latest information in a field. and there is an opportunity for extensive two-way discussion.

An example of this is a thing that the American Cancer Society does almost annually. They hold sessions of from 1 to several days around the country where there are concentrations of cancer experts and cancer research. They regularly come to Los Angeles. And qualified reporters, science editors, national and local, sit in on as many of these sessions, going from place to place, as they want to, so you have sort of a revolving group. You hit the large media as well as the small or, at least, you give them an opportunity. This is a very relatively inexpensive sort of operation. The reporters pay their own expenses. The main cost is that of organizing the sessions. These tours, I know, have contributed greatly to media understanding and public understanding of the facts of cancer. There is no reason why the same format could not be adapted to the even more important realm of environmental problems at a minimum expense to taxpayers. But I do not close the door on any means of disseminating information. We will need every means we have to really come to grips with this critical problem of environmental degradation.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you very much, Mr. Hill. It is a most useful statement and I am particularly struck by some of your specific concrete suggestions such as that of the information center for the media and the symposium and handbook of information.

In essence, it seems to me what you are suggesting for the media is something not unlike what has been suggested for teachers, of environmental studies especially at the elementary and secondary school level where there might be symposia or institutes, as they have come to be called, for teachers.

It has also been suggested that, in Washington, at the U.S. Office of Education in the Department of or the section that would deal with environmental education, there be a central repository of teaching materials which could be made available to school systems all over the United States or to private nonprofit organizations of the kind represented by some of our witnesses here earlier that might wish to undertake support of such studies.

Is that did I misstate what you have in mind?

Mr. HILL. No: that is what I had in mind and the thing could be enlarged as much as you want it. I would not be frightened at the idea of a large building in Washington with some sort of an agency acting as an information center, on this vital area.

It could be enlarged even beyond the media, to the point where citizens could go. I am very conscious of the fact that we have, as a

nation, some tremendously momentous decisions before us in the years immediately ahead, things on what are we going to do about population, the internal combustion engine, and unless decisions, needless to say, are backed, supported by and involve a great mass of public understanding, the understanding of people in general, they are not going to be valid, they are not going to stand up.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Well, I appreciate that.

I just have one other point.

I share your concern that we encourage the States to play an active part in supporting these programs. It is very often the case when Federal grants are available, that the States, especially States, I find, where the leaders are most vocal in their championing of the States' rights doctrine, do not really care to practice States rights if it means involving the infusion of State tax dollars in the programs. They want Uncle Sam to pick up the tab.

I forbear making any personal allusions, having said that, but one way in which we might meet your concern and still be realistic-and I really had not thought about this until you mentioned it-is that we might say that we will start off by making the grants directly from the Federal Government to local communities, private organizations and schools and all of the other eligible authorities but that after a period of several years, the Federal funds would no longer be available on a hundred percent basis but there would have to be some sort of matching by recipient organization. I do not know. I am thinking out loud and I, frankly, am not too enthusiastic about my own suggestion there but if you have any comment on that

Mr. HILL. No. I think that would be a good entering wedge, for one thing, one way of getting it moving.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you.

I would call on your fellow journalist, Mr. Reid.

Mr. REID. Mr. Hill, I am delighted to see you here. I think you have been very much to the point.

On this last point, I think it is clear we need a bypass mechanism and, equally, there should be a penalty mechanism. Today, there are 400 counties that refuse to take either food stamps or surplus food and I think we have got to address ourselves to that point.

I think your ideas on the information center, a fact book, periodically updated, symposium tours for reporters, with some expenses shared, I think that is all very useful information. I would like to Mr. HILL. Excuse me.

Mr. REID. Certainly.

Mr. HILL. On the as you know but many other people who are getting behind this effort do not, that it is so important in galvanizing the media on something to hit that executive level. It's not that these people are dumb. It's that they spend a good deal of the time of their work in managing the media, directing them, they are insulated and sequestered from some of these everyday problems and when you get some of these editors and executives out at the symposia where I have been, it is remarkable the way their eyes bug out, where they hear about some of these things for the first time and then, they really get behind a thing and the word goes down fast. You know how it is on a newspaper: When the word gets down below that Mr. Big, upstairs, is interested in something, people pay attention to it.

Mr. REID. I think that is exactly right.

The only other question I wanted to touch on in a little greater depth is the overall question that you talk about: that there is vast public ignorance. You say that the time we have on the globe during which it may be habitable is perhaps 30 years. I have heard as short as 10. In certain points of the country, I agree newspapers and editors have not focused attention on it. Do you have any guarantee for a news hole?

Mr. HILL. At the moment, we are having a little trouble of guaranteeing getting a newspaper out tomorrow.

Mr. REID. I am not unmindful; but, basically, has there been any effort by the Times or other papers to recognize not only the expertise that you have developed but the whole field of environmental news reporting, environmental law and the need for some kind of—I would not say regular allocation of space but some understanding of priority dependent on the news value, some understanding in the Sunday paper, as well?

Mr. HILL. Oh, yes. It has not-it's something that is so big that nobody's bothered to spell it out, really, awfully explicitly, but it's something that occupies us every day and, of course, every day in the paper, we will have several environmental stories.

Mr. REID. I think you have done a remarkable job, myself.
Mr. HILL. Thank you.

The big problem is the coordinating of coverage, and that is something we work on all the time.

Mr. REID. Could you touch on just one other idea? You find so much and such vast public ignornace in this field because it is very clear that people just do not know that the life systems of air-they do not know out here they may only have 300 feet above them. They do not seem to know that it is now global and that pollution here goes all the way to New York. We are now the worst, in that.

Mr. HILL. I think the reason is just because it is such a huge field and it is so complex. If you just even take the tiny field of automobile smog, you get into tremendous complexities there, and other areas are equally formidable and this is something that just hit the public about a year and a half ago, I think.

I think of the Santa Barbara oil blowout as sort of the Hiroshima bomb of the environmental revolution. It somehow or other for no real logical reason, it dramatized and brought home to people things that John Muir had been saying as much as 70 years ago, that you could pick up anything on earth and you would find everything else hitched onto it. So people have had only really about 18 months to start thinking about those things and heaven knows, back in the days when we were going to school, you were not given much explicit education in this sort of thing. So they have had a lot of catching up to do, on their own time, and really not much way of doing it which isyou know-is as what you have in mind and why you are here.

Mr. REID. Well, I just want to thank you for your suggestions which I think are excellent and if it is seen fit, you might even try to stick in the words, "editor and publisher," somewhere here, as well as "working reporter."

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Bell.

Mr. BELL. I have no question. I just wanted to welcome my old

friend, Gladwin Hill, before the committee, here. I have known for many years of your great work in the news media field, particularly with the New York Times. It is a pleasure to see you here.

Mr. HILL. Thank you.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Hansen.

Mr. HANSEN. Mr. Chairman, let me also express my appreciation for what I think are some very helpful specific recommendations concerning the implementation of this bill.

I would only raise a question that grew out of our hearings yesterday, to solicit your comment.

Some of the witnesses in San Francisco made reference to educational programs that are being undertaken by many of the corporations through advertisements in the mass media, calling attention to the contributions they are making in cleaning up the environment. Many of the observations made by the witnesses who addressed themselves to the subject were to the effect that much of the material in the advertisements is misleading and inaccurate and designed apparently primarily to clean up the image of the corporation. In our discussion, we focused attention on the responsibility of the media itself in trying to-and advertising agencies-in trying to develop some kind of basic standards that might be applied. I would be greateful for your comments on this problem, if you think it is a problem, and on what you think the newspapers and the media generally can do to help contribute to the dissemination of accurate, balanced information to the public.

Mr. HILL. Well, I do not think that, generically, you have a different problem here from what you have always had with corporations tending to put their best foot forward or advertise their wares. They have always done that, in advertising. They have never told you about the labor troubles or the financial troubles or the stuff that was behind the facade and so it has always been up to the media to bring out both sides, really, on the financial page, to tell the story of their financial pros and cons and vicissitudes and, on the news pages, to deal with things like labor troubles and that sort of thing.

I think this can be carried over into this area. I can't foresee big corporations-Certainly, they are gilding the lily, right at this moment, a lot of them-I can't see them becoming really mendacious about the business because it would be very bad public relations; but if they should, there are two areas where it can be hit.

One is, most sizable, sophisticated newspapers are quite discriminating about sifting out misleading advertising. In the New York Times, for instance, somebody can't even say that they have the largest, the biggest sale of fur coats in history unless they can affidavit it. So you would get into exaggeration, that way.

And then, your other safety valve is putting the things in proper perspective in the news columns, which is our constant struggle all the time, and I think we are up to it, but we have-we are up to it in principle but we just have a huge job ahead in terms of volume.

It's like the Edison Co. down here in Los Alamitos has struggled for years to get rid of objections about the stuff coming out of there. Well, the stuff comes out at the rate of somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million cubic feet a minute and that much volume of anything is just almost impossible to deal with, but ways can be found.

They are finding the only way you deal with a thing like that, you can't treat anything that comes at you 1 million cubic feet a minute; you've got to change where you start in the beginning by putting in a fuel that is not so obnoxious.

We will have to narrow things down on the informational side the same way. And that is something that at least on the Times, we are worrying about and talking about, conferring about and planning about all the time, is how do we get this story across in the most-in a way that is meaningful. How do we cover the bases? At the same time, how do we not spread ourselves too thin and confuse people.

I think it is about the biggest challenge that the media have ever had. I mean, it makes covering a war relatively simple because this is a huge thing, far bigger than a war; it is going to go on as far as we can see ahead.

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you very much.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Hill, just following what you have said, I cannot forbear making one other point. I guess I really do not-though I find myself in agreement with most of what you have said, I do not really find myself in agreement with your last point with respect toif I understood you correctly-to the lack of mendaciousness on the part of, to quote you, many industries and to the-and, also, I-I do not believe that. I think it is quite clear on the record that a lot of industries do lie. I should have thought that one of the contributions that Ralph Nader has made to the public is to point out that the claims made by many of the automobile producers in the United States about the safety of their cars and so on quite obviously, by virtue of the fact that so many of them, after the Congress passed a law requiring certain safety standards, had to turn them back; that the revelations with respect to a number of the representatives made by American pharmaceutical manufacturers about the drugs that they produce have been-have made clear that have made it very clear that they have been lying to the American people about what their drugs could do and could not do.

I do not pretend to be an expert in this field but I do not really think you meant that, did you?

Mr. HILL. No. I was thinking more in the framework of Mr. Hansen's question about advertising. Specifically what I was thinking is that a big advertising agency is going to think several times before they put an outright misstatement in an ad where it is conspicuous.

I think the big problem we have to deal with is along the lines of what you were saying that the biggest problem is, the big lie which is not expressed specifically on a given piece of paper, at a given time. To me, the big lie that American industry has been putting out either directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously, doing it for some time, is the notion that it is exerting itself on this field of pollution. control.

The National Industrial Conference Board just came up with a figure that industrial outlays on pollution controls for last year, 248 major corporations, which pretty well covers your big ones-was $300 million. Well, that is ridiculous.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Perfectly.

Mr. HILL. You take that and relate it to gross national product, you relate it to value added by manufacturing or any other economic

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