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.cb MAKING AN EFFECTIVE RIGHT OF REPLY


	Technology now exists to establish and make effective a new
civil right - %2the right of reply%1.  This article is a proposal for
an experimental system that can be implemented now, together with
a vision of how the %2right of reply%1 may develop in the future.

	At present every newspaper or magazine or TV station or
radio station is a minor monopoly.  It has a certain audience,
and it controls access to it.  When it states a position on some
issue, either directly or implicitly in the way it covers the news,
people who disagree or who consider themselves unfairly attacked,
have no way of expressing their disagreement directly to the audience
of the medium.  Of course, there are letters to the editor, and
local commercial TV stations sometimes offer reply opportunities, but
it is always uncertain whether a letter will be accepted, there
is always a delay, and the reply cannot be addressed to the viewers
or hearers or readers of the item disagreed with.
The TV networks will not even accept statements opposing
positions taken in their news coverage as paid advertisements.

	Imagine a TV program on nuclear energy.  It is a hot issue,
and many individuals and organizations disagree with all or part
of what was said.  Many of the viewers would like to know, for example,
what Westinghouse has to say about a criticism of the safety of
one of their reactors, what the National Resources Defense Council
has to say about a proposed plant, or what Scientists and Engineers
for Secure Energy has to say about the need for nuclear energy.
Suppose that at the end of the program, the announcer said that
there were replies and told what buttons you must push to get
a list of them or any one of them on your screen at any time you
want.  The replies would come over your Picturephone telephone line,
and they would be available, because the TV station had made the
program available to potential repliers in advance, assuming it
was a special that had been in preparation for some months as is
usually the case.  Additional replies could be made by people who
saw the program, made their replies on their home videotape machines,
and sent them to the "reply bank" by the afore-mentioned Picturephone.

	The above ability for anyone to make a TV reply to TV programs
and for it to be available instantly to anyone is a bit futuristic.
Picturephone hasn't yet achieved widespread acceptance, and it is
difficult and expensive for individuals to make TV statements.
However, something almost as good is within our technological
grasp.

	In the last few years, the home computer system equipped with
a video terminal has started an enormous boom.  Many thousands of
such systems are already in homes, and thousands are sold each month.
Many of these systems are already equipped with the ability to be
connected to larger computers by telephone.  With such a connection,
the home computer can ask for text to be transmitted from the disk
files of the large computer.  It can also transmit text to the
large computer to be filed and made available to anyone else.
Those systems that do not have telephone transmission facilities
can add them readily.  Some of them have screens that can display
a page of text, though many still can only display about 12 lines of
capital letters.  Some terminals print on paper, others display
on screens, and some have both capabilities.  If one is solely
interested in being able to read texts stored in a large computer
and to be able to compose texts for others to read, a suitable
terminal now sells for less than α$1,000, but the amount of
electronics in the terminal is less than that in a black and white
TV set which sells for less than α$100.

	We propose a pilot project to experiment with making the
right of reply effective in a metropolitan area.  Good areas for
experiment would be the San Francisco Bay area, the area around
Boston, and the area of Washington, D.C.  The main cost is a computer
and disk file system to receive and store replies and to retransmit
them over the telephone on request.  The operation of the system
would be entirely automatic.  Anyone with a terminal could dial
the computer, transmit his statement, and anyone with a terminal
could dial in, find out what statements had been submitted on
a topic that interested him, and display what he wanted on his
terminal.
The co-operation of the TV stations and/or newspapers would be
helpful.  They would remind their audiences that replies existed
and how to get them, but even when they didn't co-operate, the
replies could still be filed, and readers could still find them.
As a bit of pump priming some public terminals should be placed
in educational institutions and libraries.  As part of a class,
students could listen to a program like %2Sixty Minutes%1,
try to analyze what replies would be made, see what replies were
actually made, and put in statements of their own.

	A suitable computer system for a pilot project would probably cost
a few hundred thousand dollars, certainly
less than α$1,000,000.
Accurate cost estimates would depend on an analysis of how many
people would dial in at once and what their requirements would be.
It would be possible to rent the computer or even to use the facilities
of existing public time-sharing companies.  The necessary staff
would be between five and ten including people to maintain contact
with the media and to solicit statements from interested parties.

	We view this project as a means of greatly improving
the quality of discussion of public questions in America.
Many statements to the public rely to a greater or lesser extent
on the fact that the opposition or the group attacked cannot reply
immediately to the same audience.  Statements are now made for their
immediate effect.  Once every controversialist knows that his
audience has immediate access to replies, he will readjust his
style to that fact, and try to make his point in a way that will
withstand criticism.  There will then be some hope of restoring
the quality of argument that was shown by both sides in the
Lincoln-Douglas debates and the even higher quality of the
public discussion at the time the Constitution was being adopted.

	We would like to form a Committee of Sponsors for this
project - prominent people who will lend their influence to the
idea that making the %2right of reply%1 effective is important
and that this is a worthwhile way to try.
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John McCarthy
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305

ARPANET: MCCARTHY@SU-AI
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