Presswatch / Summertime Follies

...The same week, Time nailed him, too...

...Evans wrote that Meese was the victim o f " a ritual of destruction" in Washington, a '~process'" under which " a strong supporter of the President" was being "expertly targeted for removal from the government" through leaks to the press...

...Loft0n and~Evans were Steamed about these stories...

...telling conservatives that their supply-side economic program' 'didn' t work" and"now we have to try something else," namely raising taxes...

...Nisbet offers piercing and unexpected insights on each of more than seventy subjects...

...How would the press respond, for instance, if doctors claimed that an adverse court ruling now made it financially impossible to treat the lame and the halt...

...The most blatant conflict came on August 12, the day Albert R. Hunt, the Journal' s political reporter, wrote about the Massachusetts governor's race and the editorial page cited other-campaign items...

...It isn'~ all that diffficult--reporters are notoriously susceptible to stroking so long as it is combined with enough accurate information on which to base a story...

...Not only does supply-side economics work, the editorial suggested, it sells...

...But the problem with their knee-jerk defense of Meese is that the attacks, while perhaps exaggerated, are true in many instances...

...The overarching fact is that he hasn't mastered the trick of getting along with the press...

...Meese himself, Evans said, was a genial fellow and team player who was above responding in kind...

...In the news section, Robert W. Merry wrote favorably about Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, the author of the tax bill...

...My position is that no future book should ever be published on any of the subjects touched...

...With the exception of the juror's story, all this is standard procedure when a court decision or legislative measure threatens the privileged status of the press...

...The ruling against the Post came on a suit by William P. Tavoulareas, the president of Mobil Oil Company, and his son, Peter...

...It went on to mention three Republican candidates for governor--Richard Headlee in Michigan, Clarence Brown in Ohio, and Lewis Lehrman in New York...

...None of this may be Meese's real failing in Washington, though...

...Surveying "ominous developments from the White House, Congress and federal and state courts," the editorial insisted that "only one conclusion is possible: The First Amendment is in jeopardy, imperiled by constant attacks from the Reagan administration, Congress and the courts...

...The oddest story came a week later in the Post, written by reporter Kenneth Bredemeier, whose daily coverage of the 21-day trial was excellent...

...Such overkill never works, and it didn't this time...

...While the Reagan White House has managed m largely purge supply-siders from the federal government, they still seem to be winning elections out in the countryside--even the depressed parts of the countryside," the editorial said...

...Well, the Meese affair isn't quite that simple...

...The Times itself went further in an extraordinary follow-up story...

...In a "Periscope" item in the July 12 issue of Newsweek, Meese 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982 was described as "an insider on the o u t s , " a man who "continues to exasperate other senior Reagan deputies with what they see as Meese's sloppy management of the domesticpolicy operation and his insatiable appetite for far-flung speechmaking...

...Voltaire, Burke, Mencken, and now Robert Nisbet...

...Meese's deputy, James E. Jenkins, sent an eight-page 'letter to the Chicago Tribune complaining heatedly about Neal's story...

...As conservative columnists John Lofton and M. Stanton Evans noted over the summer, he has been under attack in the press...

...King didn't figure inthe editorial, but some of his supply-side brethren involved in campaigns did, and all were mentioned favorably...

...What a bloody wonderful book...

...IPB I t C o n f l i c t between the news columns and editorial pages isn't exactly uncommon in American newspapers...

...Maybe they were still numb from being struck by shock waves...

...But not often does it burst into the open as palpably as it did in the Wall Street Journal during the summer, with supply-side economics and the Reagan tax increase the source of the jostling...

...Yet a claim of the same questionable ilkhas emerged in the aftermath of the $2.05 million libel verdict last July against the...

...Naturally, the usual sources were rounded up to denounce the verdict...

...Meese, after all, /sas lost power...

...Stinking, rotten, lousy journalism," Lofton fumed, suggesting that a loyal Reaganite was " b e i n g stabbed in the back with impunity...

...White House dissatisfaction with Meese has reached a point where his senior colleagueshave discussed forcing him out," Neal reported...

...William P. Clark has come to the White House as national security adviser and swiped Meese's responsibility for foreign policy...

...And there was another...

...A l - though it could be just a singular example involving just one newspaper or one jury, the $2.05 million libel v e r d i c t . . , against The Washington Post Company has sent shock waves through the journalism profession," the Times said...

...The award, the Post reported, was "the largest ever against the newspaper...

...Clearly, it didn't think the "ghock waves" were unwarranted...

...Once, the persistent complaint among reporters had been that Meese was inaccessible...

...If Ronald Reagan had endorsed an unaltered, ten-year extension of the act in 1981, it would have passed Congress easily and pleased the civil rights community no end...

...Merry also has the distinction of writing an entire story about the tax hike without characterizing it as a tax increase...

...Prejudices A Philosophical Dictionary Robert Nisbet $17.50 at bookstores Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982 25...

...With great skepticism, to say the least...

...True, there are some legitimate threats, such as the growing inclination of judges to bar reporters from their courtrooms...

...Not a single journalist was quoted, though...

...Dole was " a wily legislative pro," Merry said, and "many believe it [Dole's tax scheme] makes sense politicallyand philosophically...

...And Meese has been associated with some unfortunate presidential decisions, notably the fiasco over extending the Voting Rights Act...

...And Evans was correct that Meese is a friendly man who doesn't usually play the Washington leak game...

...That was a shot across the bow...

...Baker, in contrast, has always ._9 been both accessible and informative...

...Md the perfect author...

...Lofton'was r i g h t in asserting that Meese was being criticized behind his back...

...by Fred Barnes suit against the National Enquirer, and a jury's $26.5 million award, later reduced by a judge to $14 million, in a s~hit by a former Miss Wyoming against Penthouse magazine, The P o s t ' s legal defeat has touched [off] worrying, among journalists that it may be growing more hazardous to publish criticism of rich and powerful people...

...These verdicts only serve to discourage the news media from thoroughly investigating the questionable practices of government and large corporations...

...William F. Bucklm, .it...

...Take that, AI Hunt...

...As if responding to Merry, the editorial page fired back by saying, "When politicians feel it is necessary to try to disguise a tax increase as a 'tax reform' we know they think they can't sell it on its merits, as payment for a service the people want and will willingly support...

...The committee's approach was vividly displayed in the June-July issue of its publication, News Media & The Law: "The First Amendment in J e o p a r d y , " it proclaimed in the headline of its lead editorial...

...On the other hand, Meese hasn't always been a conservative holdout...

...Shocking and disturbing," echoed the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press...

...Hunt noted that Governor Edward J. King was "the 'most ardent supply-side economics politician outside of Washingt o n . . . . . Many of the most prominent supply-side devotees, including economist Arthur Laffer and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, are unabashed admirers of Gov...

...Not a chance...

...It's a dazzling book that's by turns hilarious and somber, but ahvavs engaging...

...I~ashington Post and been treated with reverence...

...But when the press or one of its representatives or trade groups indulges in the same, the instinct to skewer is not-somysteriously stilled...

...Reverently...

...When he began to see more of them, they complained he was uninformative...

...King's record...

...No economic boon there...

...But Meese was the main White House aide arguing for softening the 1965 act...

...Coming in the wake of the $1.8 million judgment won by Carol Burnett, the actress, in her Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the'Baltimore Sun...

...Meese has denied saying that...

...Respectfully...

...It was a "$100 billion revenue bill" and a "t100 billion tax b i l l , " the result of what happens when "Congress reshapes the tax code...

...Consider how the press would react if doctors argued that it was just too risky to continue ministering to the poor because the pay wasn't enough to balance the possibility of a malpractice suit...

...On top of those failings, the Meese team took a heavy-handed approach in responding to the attacks...

...Hunt wrote that the economic boom in Massachusetts in the 1970s was "more tied to other factors beside's tax cuts, most knowledgeable observers believe...

...But Meese is as inept at schmoozing reporters as Baker is adept...

...Slowly the ability of journalists to gather and report the news is being chipped away by politicians and judges . . . . Ultimately, the public's right to know and be informed about the business of its government and court system is threatened by paternalistic politicians and judges who think they should decide what news citizens should be able to read and hear...

...Hysteria, paranoia, tendentious reasoning, all are routinely skewered by reporters when some special interest--a professional or business organization, say--displays them...

...Congress, given time to think about changes, responded by hardening the act, broadening it in a way that many conservatives believe will lead to proportional representation by race...

...And there is noth!ng to justify the sky-is-falling hysteria of groups like the Reporters Committee, whose steering panel includes some of the nation's most well-known and respected journalists...

...In the C/sicago Tribune on July 4, White House correspondent Steve Neal was even tougher...

...I think it was the wrong decision," an unnamed juror was quoted as saying...

...The decline of Reagan's longtime aide stems from several illconsidered decisions, an inefficient management style and a travel schedule that has kept him away from the White House at key a~oments...

...James A. Baker III, the White House chief of staff, was once Meese's equal, but his aggrandizing tendencies have lifted him to a higher plateau...

...The day before Alexander Haig resigned as secretary of state, Meese.assured reporters that there was ;.no friction between Haig and the Whke House~ This led to the Time disclosure that Meese didn't learn of the decision to let Haig go until " a n hour after Reagan had made the resignation public...

...Now consider again if doctors argued that adverse malpractice rulings were slowly chipping away at their ability to heal...

...The sixmember jury--Post attorneys had asked for trial by jury, not by judge alone--awarded the senior Tavoulareas $250,000 in compensatory damages and $1.8 million in punitive damages...

...They charged that stories in the Post in 1979 had wrongly indicated that the father used Mobil funds to establish the son in an oil shipping firm...

...But there aren't many...

...That's reserved for when the press's own perceived interests are at stake...

...What a perfect idea...

...Upon learning of the verdict, lawyers who specialize in defending the media in libel cases said they think juries are increasii{gly willing to punish the press for its conduct through large punitive damage awards, which could in the long run affect the media's willingness to investigate and report on complex stories," the Post said in its account of the j u r y ' s decision...

...Later, an editorial complained that "the one thing that the Dole bill is most sure to produce is lower cash flow as more of business pays more taxes...

...9 _9 _9 Poor Edwin Meese III, the presidential counselor...

...I t ' s been worrying me and worrying me...

...We could move to a new level of low-risk journalism," said Floyd Abrams, a New York lawyer who represents the New York Times and NBC...

...Four of the six jurors, he reported, had initially wanted to decide the case in favor of the Post, only to cave in latei- under pressure from two other jurors...

...One of, our great social thinkers illuminates some of the vexing issues of our time--froln abortion and alienation to crime and punishment, racism, war and rew)lution...

...The claim: that the press, now that the Post has been zinged financially, will be so fearful of cosdy libel judgments that it will shy away from tough investigative reporting which might touch the rich and powerful in America, precisely those who can afford to pursue libel suits...

...He was quoted in the Was/oington Times in August as...