“Newt Minow was an esteemed and inexhaustible source of wisdom and insight about the role of television and radio broadcasting in American society. His deep understanding of the ways in which the media could most effectively serve the public interest shaped the Corporation’s grantmaking during his time as a trustee, chairman, and later as an honorary trustee. Newt’s vision helped further our shared goals of supporting democratic engagement and promoting peace and security.” — Thomas H. Kean, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Carnegie Corporation of New York
The board of trustees, president, staff, and the entire Carnegie Corporation of New York community extend their deepest condolences to the family of Newton N. Minow, former chairman of the Corporation’s board of trustees and lifetime honorary trustee, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts to improve the quality of American broadcast television. He died May 6 at his home in Chicago at the age of 97.
Appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, Minow famously called American television programming “a vast wasteland” and worked for the next 50 years to identify ways it could and should change to better serve the public interest. “When television is good,” he wrote, “nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.” He later said his greatest contribution was persuading Congress to pass legislation that led to the creation of communications satellites and to what became IntelSat in 1964, the intergovernmental consortium that controlled them until 2001.
Minow was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926. After serving as an army sergeant in China and Burma during World War II, he received a bachelor’s degree in 1949 followed by a law degree the next year, both from Northwestern University, where he later became a lifetime trustee. After clerking for Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson (1951–52), Minow worked as administrative assistant to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. He served on Stevenson’s two presidential campaigns and practiced law before being named to the FCC.
Minow was a partner in the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin from 1965 until his death. He was a member of the board of directors for CBS Inc., FCB Global, and Encyclopedia Britannica, and served as board chairman of both the Public Broadcasting Service and the Rand Corporation. He was also Annenberg Professor of Communications Policy and Law at Northwestern University. Minow published a number of books on the media and other subjects as author or coauthor, including Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest (1964), Presidential Television (1973), A Digital Gift to the Nation: Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital and Internet Age (2001), and Inside the Presidential Debates: Their Improbable Past and PromisingFuture (2008).
Minow joined the board of trustees of Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1986, serving as chair from 1993 to 1997, and in 2007 was named an honorary trustee of the Corporation, one of only two people to receive that signal distinction. He oversaw creation of the Carnegie Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children, whose 1994 Starting Points report raised national awareness of the importance of supporting early child development. The 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future became a framework and agenda for reforming teacher education nationwide. As chairman, he also oversaw the establishment of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, which produced more than 40 scholarly and policy documents addressing ways to advance world peace.
In 1991, Minow reviewed developments in television since his startling 1961 statement and was not impressed, surveying the media landscape in How Vast the Wasteland Now? In a 2011 speech at Harvard, he summed up his thoughts after 50 years of thinking about television: “Too many deals with covering controversy, crimes, fires and not enough with the country’s great issues.” For his prescient wisdom and many achievements, Minow received a dozen honorary degrees over his lifetime, and in 2016 President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Minow was married to Josephine Baskin Minow from 1949 until her death last year. He is survived by their three daughters, Nell, Mary, and Martha, a current trustee of the Corporation, and three grandchildren.