Television, like history, has no precedent for Watergate. There have been other scandals and hearings—notably Estes Kefauver's crime probe of 1951 and the Army-McCarthy confrontation of 1954—but those took place before the epoch of the Living Room War and the three-set family. Yet even back in the '50s, when TV aerials decorated only half the American roofs, Joseph Welch, hero of the McCarthy hearings, warned: "Perhaps we should never televise a hearing until we are as completely adjusted to television as to our newspapers, until such time as no judge, no juror and no witness is appalled, dismayed or frightened by the camera, any more than by a reporter's notebook."
That day may have arrived, but at least one legal authority, Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox, apparently finds the camera awesome and troubling. So troubling that he sought to have part of the Watergate hearings closed to TV. It was not print reportage that he feared so much as the camera. Its special qualities of magnification, its instantaneous publicity, seemed to allow no chance for perspective. Witnesses can use it unscrupulously; events can be publicized out of proportion until, at last, justice itself may be undone.
Klieg lights often throw more heat than illumination. Hearsay evidence can be spoken out of context. Mistakes cannot be edited on live TV. Even the most innocent cameraman can, at a tense moment, transform the zoom lens into a character assassin.
Yet it is easier to appreciate Senator Ervin's counterpoint. After a year of judicial sloth, he and his colleagues argued, television has actually accelerated justice. Facts that seemed irretrievable are now brought out in microseconds. Mystery figures are exposed as quite ordinary men. The conspiracy and cover-up no longer seem the work of shrewd political masterminds. Indeed, the figures on the screen are frightening not for their brilliant malevolence but because of their very ordinariness.
They might be—and in some cases they were—the conspirators next door.
It is because of television's power that the Watergate hearings have perhaps served to mend, rather than rend the political and social fabric. To be sure, Senators are not above using the networks for publicity, but they have been scrupulous about the witnesses' rights and privileges—within the fairly loose rules of a Senate hearing. The witnesses, whether genuinely innocent, regretful or simply anxious to avoid the ultimate penalties, are only too ready to inform the world of past transgressions. The result of all this has been a sense of assurance, a feeling that the country's temperature may yet return to normal.
As proof, the networks' switchboards no longer light up in protest against interrupted game shows and soap operas. Audiences have taken the advice of the Miami Herald, which recently admonished its readers: "This isn't the monotony you think it is. There is real excitement and drama in this continuing investigation. Lay that telephone down, pour yourself a cup of coffee and watch the real Secret Storm." Network officials believe that that storm is now attracting a steadily growing audience as the drama heightens, beginning with last week's appearance by Jeb
Stuart Magruder and continuing with this week's testimony by John Dean.