The Nation's Pulse
Rusthoven, Peter J.
by Peter J. Rusthoven The Nation's Pulse While it is not uncommon today for newsmen to figure in the headlines themselves, the achievements of CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr in this regard...
...On the other hand, what you have done, Mr...
...Didn't the Times make a profit on that...
...Thus, the Times sees no real problem in the fact that confidential information was revealed, and indeed could hardly criticize Schorr on this ground and still be consistent with its own past behavior...
...Schorr's execution...
...This is no mere reporter, but some victimized prophet in a religious struggle...
...Meanwhile, a considerable media furor rages over the ethics of Schorr's behavior, and the embattled reporter himself has let it be known that "the joys of martyrdom are considerably overrated...
...As for self-correctives by journalists themselves, I fear that it is a pipedream to expect many of them...
...Having said this, however, I do not mean to suggest that the Schorr controversy is devoid of interest, for I think it is in fact a highly revelatory incident...
...First, the Washington Post revealed that Schorr was the vendor in the above-described transaction...
...32 The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1971...
...Nixon and his crew, since Schorr's name appeared on the White House "enemies list," and the fabled tapes revealed that the cover story for the investigation was a complete fabrication...
...It is hardly an accurate presentation, and quite likely a pernicious one...
...The current pother over whether Schorr should or should not have sold confidential government documents to the Village Voice presents, to my mind, no difficult nor even interesting moral question...
...Worsthorne's assess• ment is currently an accurate description of this nation's unions, but his language is certainly applicable to the secula prophets who dominate our airwaves...
...The individual characterization of Schorr is by far the more picturesque image, however, conjuring up visions of a lonely John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, or a beleaguered Thomas More, preserving his integrity despite the threats and blandishments of a Henry VIII...
...The idea of a timid Congress passing a bill of attainder is a nice image in itself, if a trifle inaccurate...
...The House, no doubt irritated that its every supposedly confidential word in the national security area ends up as a headline in some tabloid or other, thought that whatever "unconscionability" was lurking in the affair could be ascribed to Mr...
...Peregrine Worsthorne, in writing of British unions in the February issue of The Alternative, remarked that "their strength springs from a profound sense of moral legitimacy, the like of which is nc longer shared by any other institution...
...And aside from all else, they are preaching, if you will, false doctrine...
...The debate between those journalists who support and those who criticize Schorr's actions is a good illustration...
...Presumably, had Schorr revealed the House report on CBS News, the Times would mark him blameless...
...Subsequent exchanges between the paper and the correspondent, however, have made it clear that the Times is concerned less with the "secrets" than the "selling...
...The problems with having the news media—particularly the networks—as our "spiritual directors" are not difficult to point out...
...Schorr's recent activities must stand condemned as criminal and probably immoral...
...Schorr was the target of a thorough federal investigation ordered by the President and/or his aides, which, when the story came out, was justified with the laughable assertion that the object of scrutiny—hardly a friend of the Nixon White House—was being considered for a government post...
...but in putting the Pentagon Papers out in book version, we were merely reprinting what had already appeared in our newspaper...
...the stories they cover and the views they express are remarkably homogeneous...
...ABC, CBS, and NBC, for all their sober homilies about the oil companies and ITT, are without doubt the most powerful corporate oligopoly in America...
...CBS has in turn suspended its errant Washington correspondent from all reporting duties pending the outcome of the investigation, although it continues to pay his salary and reportedly plans to stand behind him at every step...
...General network coverage of the CIA and Angola "stories" is, in my view, a considerably more striking illustration...
...Clearly, The Nation is perfectly at ease with Schorr's self-portrait as a martyr The Schorr incident, of course, is but The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1976 31 one example of the media's apparent self-image as the high priests of our secular age...
...There are but three of them...
...do not know if Mr...
...and (what is most frightening) they supply well over sixty percent of the populace with all or most of its news...
...To The Nation, Congress' action against Schorr comes "dangerously close" to being a Constitutionally-prohibited "bill of attainder...
...The defense of Schorr proffered by the pompous little band at The Nation strikes a different note on the same scale...
...His latest escapade as newsman-turned-newsmaker involves, of course, his sale of the confidential report on the CIA by the House Committee on Intelligence...
...Schorr's choice of religious metaphor in describing his condition as "martyrdom" is not in the least accidental, but is rather a fairly accurate reflection of how our journalists—particularly those on television—perceive themselves...
...How,asked Schorr in defending himself, can you attack me when you sold the Pentagon Papers as a paperback...
...Schorr himself is pictured as "a lonely figure against the array of the government's powers, [who] has challenged the whole system of government secrecy, taking on both Congress in its timidity and the executive branch in its arrogance...
...During the Nixon Administration, Mr...
...I suspect that in the end, one can hope for little more than greater awareness among the citizenry that the media is itself a powerful interest group, with an unattractive set of biases and predilections, whose pronunciamentos should be viewed at a minimum with a healthy measure of skepticism...
...It is equally clear that there are established governmental institutions in our republic which have been entrusted with the responsibility to determine what information belongs in that category, and that their decisions in this area, right or wrong, are not subject to review by private citizens...
...he is instead a strayed priest, an individual who merits censure for transgressing the strictures of his Order...
...The Nation probably wants to say "bill of pains and penalties," since the punishment in a bill of attainder is death, and no one has proposed Mr...
...After obtaining this document by as-yet-unspecified means, Schorr selected an esteemed and responsible journal—the Village Voice—as his partner, promptly peddled his (or rather, the Committee's) wares for publication, and thereby demonstrated at one stroke his beliefs in free enterprise and the people's right to know...
...In particular, I believe Mr...
...They are neither chosen by nor responsible to any electorate, yet they can (and oft times do) wield more influence on a given issue than any group or individual with the possible exception of the President—and sometimes, more than he...
...I have few suggestions on how to deal with this problem...
...by Peter J. Rusthoven The Nation's Pulse While it is not uncommon today for newsmen to figure in the headlines themselves, the achievements of CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr in this regard are little short of remarkable...
...The newspaper's criticism is rather that Schorr has somehow acted improperly in terms of the moral standards of the profession itself He is no simple sinner who has revealed classified documents (and, indeed, he may not have sinned at all...
...The New York Times, for example, has editorialized against Schorr, accusing him of "selling secrets...
...Ah, replied Editorial Page Editor John B. Oakes, that was completely different...
...Accordingly, his name was referred for investigation to the Our Messianic Media Committee on Official Standards, and there is vague (though probably desultory) talk of canceling, at least for a time, his Congressional correspondent's privileges...
...Schorr (quoth Oakes), is "to traffic in the news" (emphasis added...
...At some point during the developing saga of Watergate, this explanation was shown to be one of the relatively minor perfidies besmirching the record of Mr...
...It is clear to all but the most foolish or naive that the national security interests of this country demand that some information remain confidential, particularly in connection with foreign intelligence-gathering operations...
...Alas, on this occasion huzzahs from all sides were not forthcoming...
...Herr Schorr bore up under the strain with just a touch of self-righteousness and a slight air of wounded dignity, and subsequently cashed in on his small celebrity by writing the introduction to the Dell paperback edition of the Senate Watergate Report...
...Schorr, a reflective fellow who understands that there are limits even to such principles as the people's right to know, huffed that this information was "off the record" and labeled its revelation by the Post "unconscionable...
...Unless one accepts the rather fatuous contention that the press is some kind of de facto fourth branch of government, with custodial care over what the citizenry should be told, Mr...
...As Edith Efron noted, after forcing herself for a two-week period to get all of her news from the networks, the nation as reported on the evening news comes across as a repressive quasi-police state, permeated with corporate and governmental corruption, morally bankrupt, economically in ruins,and largely racist...
...Of course we make money from publishing the news...
...Doubtless, any gov ernmental correctives would prove worse by far than what we must live with now...
...In March, I described in this space ("Angola: Applying the 'Lessons' of Vietnam") how Walter Cronkite had introduced CBS coverage of the war in southern Africa with virtually a direct statement that the network considered Angola a Vietnam-in-the-making, and that CBS would do everything in its power to prevent our getting involved this time...
...Correspondent Schorr has moved on to bigger if not better things since his highly-publicized run-in with the now-fallen President...
...they do not see themselves as helpers, devoted to providing the populace with information upon which it can make informed judgments, but as spiritual directors, charged with leading their parishioners to the City of God...
...John Roche, hardly as conservative as I, was also struck by the coverage presented by CBS and the other networks, and subsequently responded as follows in the pages of TV Guide: "I suddenly realized that the networks live in an ecclesiastical universe, that they have taken as their goal the quest for Salvation...
Vol. 9 • May 1976 • No. 8
