Roger D. Fisher, a Harvard law professor who was a co-author of the 1981 best seller “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” and whose expertise in resolving conflicts led to a role in drafting the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel and in ending apartheid in South Africa, died on Saturday in Hanover, N.H. He was 90…
Although Professor Fisher mostly worked behind the scenes, he did create and moderate a series on public television called “The Advocates.” A court-style program that took on one policy issue at a time and examined it in detail from different perspectives, it ran for several years on PBS and won a Peabody Award.
A strong advocate for using the medium of television as a means to disseminate both legal issues and current events to a broader audience, Fisher proposed the Peabody Award-winning television program “The Advocates” in 1969. The program focused on “stimulating public participation, and understanding, by focusing on realistic choices that must be made in the future, by having both sides of the question presented, and by demonstrating the interest that public officials have in both reasoned arguments and the views of their constituents.” Fisher served as executive producer from 1969 to 1974, and then again from 1978 to1979.
In 1970, in connection with a segment of “The Advocates,” Fisher became the last Westerner to interview President Nasser of Egypt, and his questions elicited from Nasser an unexpected willingness to accept a ceasefire with Israel in the “war of attrition” then raging along the Suez Canal. Fisher brought the interview to the attention of Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson ’47 and thus helped stimulate what became known as the Rogers Plan (named for Nixon’s Secretary of State William Pierce Rogers), which ultimately produced a ceasefire.
“The Advocates” was a public television network presentation of KCET, Los Angeles and WGBH, Boston made possible by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Ford Foundation.
The purpose of the series was to stimulate public participation, and understanding, by focusing on realistic choices that must be made in the future, by having both sides of the question presented, and by demonstrating the interest which public officials have in both reasoned arguments and the views of their constituents.
Having a one hour time slot, the program topics varied depending on current news and concerns of the public. The program ran from October 5, 1969 through May 23, 1974; then again bi-weekly from January 26, 1978 through September 9, 1979.
The Advocates was a weekly public-TV presentation from 1969 through 1974, revived as a bi-weekly program for most of 1978-79. Co-produced by Boston’s WGBH and Los Angeles’ KCET, it was promoted as the “PBS Fight of the Week,” and while the fisticuffs were all verbal, it could pack a wallop. Many an intellectual hotshot left the arena with his or her ego bruised…
The format would work just as well today, on issues ranging from the credibility of global-warming science to the smartest way to deal with Iran’s nuclear pursuits. The Advocates could “try” the realities and misconceptions of “Obamacare,” or even the overall success or failure of the current President’s administration…
If the American public can cast votes by phone for their favorite performers on American Idoland Dancing with the Stars, why not use the same phone-vote system to get an indication of how citizens views various issues and controversies before and after they’ve watched courtroom-style testimony and cross-examination?
Who knows? Maybe the revenues from the phone calls could be applied to election costs or federal deficit reduction…
So, in summation (to adopt the courtroom tradition of closing arguments), somebody in the public television system — or, if PBS is too strapped for funds, somebody at TruTV or some cable news network — should consider reviving The Advocates.
In the late 1960s, after great success with her cooking show, The French Chef, Julia Child returned to France to work on a second volume of her cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
She became concerned with what she saw as the disappearance of hand-crafted foods during that progressive era of mechanization, and in 1970 she made arrangements for WGBH’s television crew to visit France and shoot The French Chef on location.
She wanted to not only show Americans the origins of her cooking techniques, but to document a vanishing way of life.
David Atwood was director of the WGBH crew who worked with Julia.
They made their way from Provence to Normandy, stopping to film the making of pâté pantin with a butcher in Plascassier, to feast on pressed duck in Rouen and suffer the heat along with properly made French bread inside a medieval bakery in Paris.
Atwood describes Child as the ringmaster of all the moving parts that went into filming the mini-documentaries and what a joy it was to work with her.
I am a media historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on a history of US-BBC co-production. WGBH is such a leader in this area, since the 1970s.
I would love to connect with those of you who might have worked on this aspect of WGBH operations, to hear about your experiences. Happy to chat either by email or phone.
Those of us from the ’70s should remember the late Topper Carew, the dynamic producer of “Say Brother,” among other accomplishments.
Around 1977, I wrote a song inspired by him called “Topper’s Bar.” (I told him of the song, but he never heard it.) Finally, about 5 years ago, I recorded “Topper’s Bar” as part of my CD called “Homeland.” I did not know, at the time of the recording, that Topper had died, so some of the lyrics are more poignant than I intended. I learned of his death before the CD came out, and I released the song to honor his memory.
Most of the instruments (except the brass) are played by two members of the Goo Goo Dolls – Mike Malinin (percussion) and Korel Tunador (keyboards, guitars). Listen very carefully near the end and you can hear a deep voice say “Say Brother.”
I would love to recoup some of the considerable cost of production, so please consider buying the song or, even better, the entire album of 12 songs. You can listen for free to a sample online at Amazon or iTunes or CD Baby or Spotify, etc., and you can buy the song or the CD at most of those same locations… or for $12 I’ll mail you a copy. Just search for either “Topper’s Bar” or for “Homeland Jeff Hutchins.” I would love your feedback on this effort to honor one of the best among us. Thanks!
Cast members of WGBH’s original ZOOM show (1972-1980) met recently with series creator Christopher Sarson in Marshfield MA for an evening of stories, music and lobsters (paid for by viewers like you).
Despite their current ZOOM Rap subjects like “trips to the doctor,” “mortgage payments,” and “the kids,” the Zoomers still keep in touch and manage to get together now and then.
Left to right Nina, Christopher Sarson, Nancy, Tracy, Leon, Ann, Joe and Tommy White.
Roger Fisher, 90, creator of “The Advocates”
From the New York Times
From the Harvard Gazette
From Vanderbilt Special Collections
From TV Worth Watching