A social activist and philanthropist, Lear is the driving force behind USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center and its media-related philosophies. Interviewer Elizabeth Segal asked some probing questions and elicited unequivocal answers. 

Q: Why sponsor a center dedicated to examining the impact of the media when you could have sponsored a center dedicated to better writing, better television production? There are a lot of things you could have sponsored. A: Well, I don't think there's any such thing as paying too much attention to or putting too big a spotlight on the impact of media in every aspect of our culture. Everything that's political, social, celebratory… There isn't any aspect of our culture that oughtn’t to be looked at in terms of how the media impacts them, even how the media covers what it pays attention to, what it favors by way of its concentration.

You've worked in the media yourself, yet it sounds like a lot irks you about its modus operandi, about the way it handles itself. There’s nothing that comes up by way of celebrity that isn't overplayed in the media. I don't know how many stories there are, from [a confessional book by] O.J. to Madonna's adopting a black child in Malawi, that get overplayed. [Meanwhile] there's so much about Iraq and our major American adventures around the world that we learn about incrementally much-too-much later.

And yet some would argue that people just want to know more about Madonna and less about Iraq, and that the media is just supplying them with what they want. Leadership is about leading. It’s not about polling and following. And I don’t believe that Big Media, which is the same as Big Business, is thinking about content in the least. It’s thinking about what will work to gain an audience to sell the product. And if violence works, if a lot of sex works, if women in miserable situations in dramatic stories works, that's what will play. [But] I think the writing, acting, directing, the so-called “creative” community pay a lot of attention [to content], because that’s the way they feed their children. That is what is demanded of them from the largest American corporations.

It sounds like issues of ethics and responsibility were paramount in your mind when you originally decided to fund the Lear Center. We are living in a time when [the media] wish us to celebrate the number of channels that cable has brought us. But really there are maybe three or four major corporations that control 90 percent of those channels. When you think about it that way, and you think about each of those multiple channels as being three funnels, and all of our news and entertainment information being passed through those three funnels to the peoples of the world, that’s far too few people making those ultimate choices.

The work you did as a TV producer was so ground-breaking. Would it be possible for someone to do something like that today, given the stranglehold that big corporations have on the media? I’m not still active in television, but I hear from people who are that they don't think an All in the Family, and certainly not a Maude could get on the air today. I just heard from my good friend Phil Rosenthal, who created Everybody Loves Raymond. He thinks with all the recent change in television comedy, even his show couldn’t get on the air today because it was a serious look at family life. As hilarious as it was, it wasn’t slapdash enough or full of fart jokes.

When I came to work in television, NBC had a symphony orchestra. The word “broadcast” was alive and well. William Paley and Leonard Goldenson considered themselves to be broadcasters. Inherent in that term was a sense of responsibility, which included the fact that their 7 o’clock news programs did not have to be profit-makers. They were loss leaders, and that was just fine. That was part of the responsibility of being broadcasters. That [attitude] went the way of all flesh as increasingly, public broadcasters started looking at their profit statements quarter by quarter, and every quarter had to be better than the previous quarter. I can’t think of anything that’s more against nature: Nothing in nature suggests that anything can grow forever. But that’s the way corporate America is designed today.

Do you have any hopes for what the Lear Center’s long-term legacy might be? I would like its impact to increase, and hope people will continue to be alerted to the areas [the center] is discussing: intellectual property in fashion and music, health and science issues, broadcasting issues... For example, the Lear Center is standing at the ready as the FCC gets close to making rules that are going to further the ability of station groups to consume more stations, more newspapers, control all the media outlets in a given city.

You surf the Web constantly. What are your favorite sites? Do you ever look at YouTube? Do you think it's the future of television? Oh yeah, I look at YouTube! The Internet is amazing. The only shot we have to be a truly democratic nation is the freedom individuals have, like on the Internet, to establish themselves and their points of view. But you could spend every day surfing the Net. It’s a real problem. There’s not enough hours in the day.

Elizabeth Segal is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer. Her feature article, “The Great Zamperini,” appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of USC Trojan Family Magazine.