CV What
I
Have We Learned from the TV Scandals?
A hard-hitting author pulls no punches
in appraising the real meaning of the rigged television quiz shows
BY PHILIP WYLIE
Charles Van Doren, Henry Bloomgarten, Patty Duke, and Herbert Stempel all won huge cash prizes and nationwide rep
utations on TV quiz programs which turned out to be rigged. Disc jockey Alan Freed lost his job during payola scandal.
A couple of years ago I was invited to be a -contestant
on one of the TV quiz programs. I de
murred on the ground I was busy writing. I added
that I didn't have a photographic memory or the
encyclopedia type of mind. I have to check my facts.
I said I'd be no good on a quiz show probably
flunking out on the first question.
Then I got a shock. My long-distance caller
laughed. "You needn't worry about that, Mr. Wylie.
Well give you answers to enough questions to
guarantee you'll make a bundle."
For a minute, I had no answer. Then I said a few
words which are not fit for print and hung up.
Curiously enough, that offer to help me cheat on
a network quiz spectacle did not lead me to sus
pect that fraud was widespread on such shows.
In common with millions, I thought they were on
the level. When the TV scandal broke wide open
in the past few months, I was disappointed but not
surprised to learn otherwise and to find that a good
many people were persuaded to defraud a vast
and trusting public for big money.
But I was not prepared for the public reaction to
proof of cheating, bribery, and blackmail that the
Congressional committee brought out in its inves
tigation of the quiz shows and, more recently, pay
ola and other abuses.
I was not prepared for the appalling evidence
that about half of us are as corrupt as the corrupt
idols. About half of us do not know right from
wrong; or we believe that wrong is right when
the stake is high enough or the temptation power
ful enough, or when the wrongdoer has every ex
pectation of getting away with his perfidy.
We all know that a certain number of men and
women have attained riches even public esteem
by unethical and criminal means. But we have kept
on thinking that the average American that most
Americans remained as fiercely honest as Abra
ham Lincoln. Now we can no longer keep on think
ing that The public reaction to the brazen cheating
on TV quiz shows makes the extent of our accept
ance of dishonesty so evident that no citizen, should
be allowed to miss its dreadful meaning.
It was focused on Charles Van Doren so he may
well be used here for reference. Setting himself
up as the very symbol of the scholar, the educated
man, the egghead Van Doren violated the first
principle of all true scholars and truly educated
people: honesty. Then, when his grim secret came
under grand-jury inquiry, he doubled his unwor
thiness by committing perjury. Only when other
witnesses before the Congressional committee made
it impossible to go on lying did he tell the truth.
How did the American public react to that awful
record? Charles, some said, was being perse
cuted. Some said he atoned by the mere fact of his
forced confession. Others felt that since "every
body was doing it," Van Doren was not really guilty
at all. Many stated that the quiz shows were only
"entertainment" and, consequently, the fact that
they were rigged meant nothing.
Students at Columbia University, where young
Van Doren had taught, protested his dismissal and
held a rally to demand his reinstatement Students
in another university hung in effigy, not Charles,
but the Congressman who had headed the investi
gation. And the commonest response of the Ameri-cans-without-morals
went like this: "I'd do the
same thing Van Doren did if I had the chance! So
would you! If you deny it, you're a liar yourself."
That view means something especially frighten
ing. It means that all who hold it believe there are
no honest Americans, none with ethical standards,
and that all of us are at least potential cheats,
crooks, liars, swindlers, or worse.
It is not the perfidy of the few but this accept
ance of it by the many that is the important result
of the TV exposures.
If even a large minority of us are so deeply cor
rupt in heart, a few predictions about our future
can be made with certainty.
Scholarship will decline for scholarship without
absolute integrity is mere pretense and quackery.
Science will suffer for the practice and the prog
ress of science depend on the absolute and constant
integrity of scientists in their many fields. Crime
will keep on increasing and so will delinquency.
Why? So many of us don't know right from wrong
that in millions of American homes the moral and
ethical upbringing of youngsters is literally not
possible. Business and politics will continue to be
more and more corrupt for a nation so thickly
peopled with actual or potential crooks will not see,
recognize, or follow honest leadership in any area.
If America is to survive, grow, remain meaning
ful or even free this trend of moral decay has
to be not just stopped but reversed.'
I believe, however, that multitudes of us if not
most still have enough old-fashioned honesty to
refuse to play for keeps by cheating. Here's some
heartening evidence, at any rate. A Freehold, N. J.,
history teacher, disturbed by the fact that his current-events
class defended the rigging of TV quiz
shows, decided to try an experiment Suddenly
announcing a quiz, he seated three students at the
front of the room where he supplied them with all
the answers. "When the others found out what I
had done," Mr. Willet said, "there were outraged
cries of 'unfair.' I pointed out that what I had done
was not against the law. It took a few minutes for
them to get the point, but when I said, 'Now let's
talk about the quiz-show rigging,' the discussion
was much more morally valid."
If the TV scandals have shaken our complacency
and roused us from our moral lethargy, then TV
and Charles Van Doren have ironically made a
great contribution to the national welfare.
COVER:
With all due respect to the reverence of
small boys, the one in Pete Hawley's paint
ing is in a predicament: he's sneaked his
kitten into church, and now he has to pray
that she'll keep silent through the services.
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January 17, 1960
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