C-SPAN founder first in Dole lecture / LJWorld.com

Archive for Wednesday, September 18, 2002

‘Make up your own mind’ advice of KU institute’s inaugural speaker

September 18, 2002

Make up your own mind.

C-SPAN founder and president Brian Lamb believes American audiences still are capable of doing that, which is why he and other moderators on the network don't express their own opinions.

Founder and CEO of C-SPAN Brian Lamb, far right, interacts with Kansas University students who gather at the Pine Room in the Kansas Union to hear the journalist speak. Lamb, who is host of a listener call-in show on C-SPAN, said Tuesday that the convergence of large media companies discourages dissent and diversity of opinion in American dialogue.

"The minute we do that, then we aren't what we are," he told an audience Tuesday night at Kansas University's Woodruff Auditorium.

His talk was the inaugural speech of the Dole Forum lecture series, sponsored by KU's Dole Institute of Politics.

Though it has grown from one to three cable television networks since 1979, C-SPAN still brings viewers nonstop coverage of meetings, hearings and speeches.

The idea is to move information without squeezing it through a journalist's filter, Lamb explained to audiences both at his evening speech and an afternoon appearance with students and faculty.

"I think I'm smart enough to make up my own mind," he said, emphasizing that he was a C student at Purdue University.

Lawrence High School senior Caitlin Welch attended Lamb's afternoon talk and said she appreciated his decide-for-yourself philosophy.

"C-SPAN lets viewers choose the issues they think are important," she said. "I was fascinated with his discussion of how the public has been looked down upon in terms of intellect."

Not everyone has the tolerance for gavel-to-gavel coverage of a Senate hearing, Lamb acknowledged. Some people's eyes glaze over at the mere mention of C-SPAN.

Lamb himself has been bombarded with not-so-flattering descriptions of his "charisma." Articles have called him deadpan, computer-simulated. His name nearly makes an anagram for lame brain, one journalist wrote.

But Lamb is the hero of C-SPAN junkies, said Richard Norton Smith, director of the Dole Institute of Politics and one of nearly 700 authors Lamb has interviewed for his series "Booknotes."

"Thank God for C-SPAN, a last refuge for untelegenic historians everywhere," Smith quipped in his introduction of Lamb.

6News video report: CSPAN co-founder leaves impression on KU students

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C-SPAN Web site

It's also a refuge for untainted information, Lamb said. Network news is driven by ratings.

"It's all about money," he said.

C-SPAN doesn't even know its ratings for individual programs, he said. And though people who dial the network's call-in shows sometimes accuse the moderators of having an agenda of hating the president, for instance C-SPAN carries every speech the president makes.

Moderating call-in shows has taught Lamb that "the people who hate the most call the most," but "there is tremendous value in hearing what the ordinary people in this country think."

That's what democracy is all about, he said, and C-SPAN tries to mirror democracy.

"We are lucky to be able to do what we do," he said. "What we do, in my opinion, is very special."