In December 1973 the public television current affairs programme, The Open Mind, held a special edition devoted to what its main guest, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr, dubbed the \u201cimperial presidency\u201d.<\/p>\n
The televised roundtable discussion<\/a> was well timed. Escalating oil prices from the Opec crisis were wreaking havoc with the global economy, the Watergate scandal was blazing in Washington, and Richard Nixon was looking increasingly Richard II-like in the Oval Office as he attempted to pull off what Schlesinger called an \u201cescape from accountability\u201d.<\/p>\n Fast forward to today, and it is hard not to feel trapped in deja vu. Oil prices have spiked again, the Epstein scandal is reverberating, and there is a new imperial president in the White House displaying utter disdain for norms of accountability, from snatching national leaders and launching wars without congressional licence to threatening the rule of law<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n The return of the imperial president poses both a challenge and an opportunity for the show on which that 1973 discussion took place: The Open Mind<\/a>. As it approaches its 70th anniversary next month, it stands as the polar opposite of Donald Trump and his Maga revolution.<\/p>\n One way of thinking about The Open Mind is to see it as a sort of media representation of Michelle Obama\u2019s<\/a> refrain: \u201cWhen they go low, we go high.\u201d Where Trump communicates through erratic all caps posts on his Truth Social feed, The Open Mind deals in unashamedly low-key conversation and in-depth policy debate.<\/p>\n While Trump unleashes justice department prosecutions against his political enemies, rejoicing at the death<\/a> of the former FBI director Robert Mueller, The Open Mind tries to bridge the partisan divide and revive what residual consensus and mutual respect remains. It is as calm as Trump is shrill, and as contemplative as the president is impulsive.<\/p>\n If that sounds old school, that\u2019s because it is. The Open Mind has been serving up its recipe of sarcasm-free, reflective discourse for seven decades with remarkably little change in formula.<\/p>\n If longevity is any measurement of success, it has worked. The show is the longest-running series in the history of American public media, predating even the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and its radio equivalent, NPR.<\/p>\n In 1957, The Open Mind\u2019s Richard D Heffner sat down with Martin Luther King Jr and Judge Julius Waties Waring. Photograph: Courtesy of The Open Mind<\/p>\n Only five existing TV news reports can boast a longer run \u2013 Today on NBC, the same network\u2019s Meet the Press, CBS News\u2019s Face the Nation, and the nightly news programs on CBS and ABC.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s fast-moving and ever-changing media environment, such endurance is remarkable. So how has it done it?<\/p>\n How has The Open Mind\u2019s fusion of what the media writer Margaret Sullivan<\/a> has called \u201clow-snark and high substance\u201d survived for so long, even as the world around it has fragmented into so many 30-second TikTok videos?<\/p>\n double quotation markThe show has prescience. We try to grasp the importance of modern trends earlyAlexander Heffner<\/p>\n I put the question to Alexander Heffner, the show\u2019s current host and only the second in its 70-year history. Being the front guy of The Open Mind, it should be no surprise that his answer is not confined to an easy soundbite.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a combination. Our initial mission still stands, arguably more so now than ever before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd on top of that the show has prescience. We try to grasp the importance of modern trends early, whether it was Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the 1950s, pandemic preparedness 10 years ago, or the rise of populism today.\u201d<\/p>\n The mission to which he is referring was coined by the founder and first host of The Open Mind who happens to have been Alexander\u2019s grandfather, Richard Heffner. He helmed the program for almost six decades until his death in 2013, at which point the show passed like a stately home to the grandson.<\/p>\n The elder Heffner set the ambition of the show when he launched it on 7 May 1956 with a discussion \u2013 aptly as it now seems \u2013 on the powers and problems of the presidency. The debut was broadcast in the midst of the re-election bid by incumbent president Dwight Eisenhower and his vice-president, one Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n Born in the infancy of television itself, The Open Mind can claim several seminal moments of the fledgling medium. It convened the first broadcast interview<\/a> with King in February 1957, just as the pastor from Montgomery, Alabama, and leader of its bus boycott was starting to emerge on to the national stage.<\/p>\n Among its other groundbreaking broadcasts, Malcolm X<\/a> was a guest in 1963, Gloria Steinem<\/a> spoke on feminism in 1983, and George Soros<\/a> described the joys of being a billionaire giving away his money in 1997.<\/p>\n Malcolm X appearing on a roundtable discussion edition of the PBS programme The Open Mind, entitled Race Relations in Crisis, on 12 June 1963. Photograph: Pictorial Parade\/Getty Images<\/p>\n After the younger Alexander Heffner succeeded as host he carried on the tradition, with conversations with Bernie Sanders<\/a> on inequality a month before the Vermont senator announced his first presidential run in 2015, and John Fetterman<\/a> talking about rust-belt populism while the now senator from Pennsylvania was still mayor of Braddock (population 1,700) in 2017.<\/p>\n Richard Heffner set out the vision of the show at the very beginning in eight carefully chosen words. You will still find them to this day emblazoned as the catchphrase on its website<\/a>: \u201cA thoughtful excursion into the world of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019ve been testing all these years,\u201d the younger Heffner says. \u201cI think that founding mandate holds up: to be open-minded, to provide a platform for experimentation when it comes to our evolving moral values, to be receptive to the idea that we are protean.\u201d<\/p>\n Public media has been especially vulnerable to Trump\u2019s assault on the press, which he demonises as the \u201cenemy of the people\u201d<\/a>, because it has historically been partly dependent on federal funding. In July, Trump in effect ended government support for public broadcasting, slashing more than $1bn<\/a> from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which duly voted itself<\/a> out of existence earlier this year.<\/p>\n In Heffner\u2019s analysis, Trump\u2019s attack on the CPB was a thinly veiled attempt to destroy public broadcasting itself. In that regard, he is confident that the president has failed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea that if you kill CPB you can kill PBS, that has proven not to be true. PBS is thriving, with a thriving viewership, and where Trump has left a hole in funding, private and philanthropic foundations are stepping in.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markThere continues to be tremendous complacency in AmericaAlexander Heffner<\/p>\n In this brave new world, Heffner argues, independent producers are all the more important in thwarting Trump\u2019s attack and resisting the capitulation that has been displayed by some commercially controlled networks such as CBS<\/a>. The Open Mind has never drawn federal funds, basing itself on the support of foundations and individuals committed to exploring public policy as a means of bolstering democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are continuing to seek out the integrity of news that\u2019s not based on shareholder profit, and that\u2019s why there will continue to be a hunger for what we do,\u201d he says. \u201cMost corporate media players are under constant pressure to appease their shareholders, and that means mergers and acquisitions that have to be approved by federal regulators.\u201d<\/p>\n