Presswatch/Rules of the Game

...It was to be called onThe Alternative Influence By Philip F. Lawler Their ranks are small, but alternative news organizations play a significant role in determining the news America reads and watches...

...The plot isn't without holes, either...

...This happened with Improper Conduct, the documentary that brilliantly lays out Fidel Castro's record of oppression in Cuba...

...Nor do reviewers routinely dismiss a movie that emerges as a box-office hit as "the first homegrown fascist film since The Fountainhead...

...Nor does TRB normally take time in his column in the New Republic to mention a movie, much less attack one as exemplifying "the worst kind" of patriotism, appealing to "nativist sent i m e n t , " and signifying that Hollywood "can swerve right just as fatuously as it swerved left fifteen years ago...

...Washington Monthly "FOREIGN POUCY ...provocative...

...Payment enclosed [] Bill me [] Bill my credit card: American Express, VISA...

...The movie "resembles" a type of German movie in the years before World War II that extolled tough, virile mountain climbers, "later to become Hitler youth...

...by F r e d Barnes published by the American Film Institute and is probably the most influential film magazine in the country, sought to erase the effect of those reviews with a sweeping attack on the film and the two Cuban exiles who produced it...

...My own trips to Cuba before and after Mariel (in 1980) and my contacts with a number of lesbians and gay men there suggest a very different reality from that constructed by the ~migr~s in Improper Conduct," Rich insisted...

...This means they stress one event or one announcement or one appointment or one photo opportunity each day--and only one...

...That sounds plausible, I have to admit...

...The real story...

...They ~-ure out "the line of the day" at a private morning meeting that will later be "fed" to supine reporters...

...The litany of evil in the film is so extreme, so motivated by personal animus, that it is self-defeating, particularly in its endless and absurd comparisons of Cuba and Nazi Germany...

...That rock was ,the British system of law, which secured basic human rights for all and freedom in every sphere of life...

...City _ _ State Zip . . . . . . . . . THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 29 Vietnam, Watergate, and related attempts to manipulate the media changed the way in which the press corps reports the presidency . . . . Although the media have traditionally been independent and critical of government, media attitudes now are unrelentingly adversarial...

...It's one thing for a movie to be critical of swinish North Vietnamese soldiers, as The Deer Hunter was a few years ago, so long as the movie also makes the point that the Vietnam war had a devastating impact on Americans...

...Sometimes a movie slips through the critical net...

...The objection to Red Dawn is that it is anti-Communist-and unabashedly, aggressively, and noisily so...

...Hedrick Smith New York Times FOREIGN POLICY / NUMBER 56 FALL 1984 $L00/ 3 Nicaragua: America's j ' / Diplomatic Charade Rt~v Gutman THE SUPERPOWERS: FREEZE OR FLUX...

...In any event, American Film, which is Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...

...With the press as hard-charging adversary, manipulation is not a realistic goal for any President...

...MasterCard (circle one) # . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Expiration Date . . . . . Signature Oulside USA add $5 surface annually, $20 air annually...

...At best, the "joint declaration" will provide a bit more time to review one's personal options before what one British conservative calls the "countdown to Communism" begins...

...Allow four to six weeks for delivery...

...i SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL HONG KONG: BEFORE THE ANSCHLUSS by Miriam London and Ta-ling Lee A gloomy quip circulated in Hong Kong about the recent negotiations in Peking over that colony's future...

...Gays can be found throughout the island's cultural and political scenes...

...For other critics, however, a double standard applied...

...But if he's lucky and good, he might achieve survival...

...And it wasn't offered up by dyspeptic aides from the Nixon Administration or by conservative zealots from Reagan's White House...

...specific "guarantees" of a way of life now slipping away...

...In fact, Peking's basic decision to resume absolute sovereignty and administrative control over Hong Kong after the expiration of the British lease to the New Territories in 1997 seems never to have been negotiable...

...But the majority of its residents make clear in various ways their fear and distrust of Peking...

...What in heaven's name does Hertsgaard expect...

...What these nationalistic students do not realize, an intellectual emigrant from the People's Republic said last summer in Hong Kong, is that "first there must be regard for human dignity...

...Foreign Policy Is Your Business "FOREIGN POUCY . . . t h e epitome of quality press...

...Republicans have taken as a campaign theme that anyone who disagrees with them is un-American...

...He had no tail...

...Which brings us back to Red Dawn...

...FOREIGN POUCY ...a must for expert and amateur alike...

...Washington, D.C...

...TRB argued that it represents patriotism of an exclusionary sort...

...He said that since I once covered the White House for a newspaper, I would naturally contend that White House reporters don't allow themselves to be manipulated...

...Typically, however, a number of students at Hong Kong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who generally graduate to become a high-salaried and influential elite,--are ~ left-leaning and naive...

...The Alternative Influence by Philip F. Lawler is the first book to probe the inner workings of nine such groups from across the political spectrum...

...i s Soviet cheating so widespread that the United States should abandon all existing arms agreements...

...The press is not a neutral conduit of information, particularly where Presidents are concerned...

...They are beguiled by the "logic" of Chinese nationalism, which requires that the role of the British as "colonial masters" must end and Hong Kong "return to the motherland...

...Lawler raises prow/cative questions about the television networks involvement with several of these organizations--ties that are little known and not well understood by the viewing public...

...About half of Hong Kong's residents have in the past personally experienced and chosen to escape Chinese Communist rule...

...Before the elation could settle, however, China made public a correction: The accord was not even to be termed an "agreement," as Sir Geoffrey had misled everyone at his Hong Kong press conference to believe, let alone that most binding of international contracts, a treaty...

...Improper Conduct is simply a "revenge film" put out by two film=makers, cinematographer Nestor Almendros and director Orlando Jimenez-Leal, with ties to the Cuban "~migr~ Right," Rich said: Sure, Rich conceded, there was once a period of unpleasantness for homosexuals in Castro's Cuba, but that's all over now...

...That the President and his pals wouldn't want to coordinate their message...

...Francis of Assisi types who aim only to inform the public...

...5 6 Ross H. Munro Did Washington "guarantee" that its negotiations with Nicaragua would fail...

...Anyway, Rich claimed, the film-makers don't care about homosexuals...

...they're just using them to nail Castro...

...Secretary of State, 1977-1980 "FOREIGN POLICY ...prestigious...

...Despite the frothing reviews--or maybe because of them--Red Dawn has touched a popular chord...

...Anyway, all these scary, neverending tales about White House plotting against the press overlook something...

...Many among them understand to the point of pain the difference between the two systems and find unbearable the prospect of being reabsorbed by a country where, as one of them put it, "people are less than human beings and where one word from Deng Xiaoping is stronger than law...

...Notice the mention of Triumph o f the Will, the pro-Nazi film made fifty years ago by the German director Leni Riefenstahl...

...Reporters in Washington aren't a bunch of St...

...Others do not deceive themselves...

...British attempts to gloss over the formal designation of the accord-what's in a name?--hardly reassure those in Hong Kong who remain coldly aware that, as it is, the colony's fate rests on words, and words alone, to be interpreted ultimately by whatever sovereign Chinese Communist regime happens to be in power...

...Folks happen to like a film in which Communists, not some evil cabal of Americans, are the bad guys...

...Now they are further asked to have faith that Peking is "legally bound" to mean what it does not agree to say...

...Some residents of the colony who cannot accept their own sense of doom and helplessness have become fixated on the details of the bilateral accord initialed on September 26, seeking more Miriam London is a researcher in Chinese and Soviet studies...

...Only then can one talk about Chinese dignity...

...U.S...

...Leftist films might be criticized for their artistic failings, but never for the tilt of their political message...

...16.75 cloth, $6.50 paper (plus $1 each shipping) Universit.~ ~ of Order from: America The Media Institute --~ 3017 M St., N.W...

...But movies with a conservative message--not that there are many of them--are likely to be judged as fatally flawed because of their political slant, no matter what their artistic worth...

...Guess what Biskind, who edits the magazine that ran Rich's pro-Castro rantings, says about John Milius, the director of Red Dawn...

...and Curtis A. Hessler, are young liberals who served in the Carter Administration...

...It got favorable reviews in both the European and American press, perhaps because its emphasis on Castro's cruel treatment of homosexuals links the movie to the trendy issue of gay fights...

...How Reagan Seduced Us," the headline read, with "Inside the President's Propaganda Factory...

...Maybe a slew of movie critics protested this trend, but if they did, they managed to mute their complaints enough to keep me from hearing them...

...Admittedly, it is hokey in parts, clumsy in others, and poorly acted in still others...

...The people of Hong Kong have had no direct say in this accord, although both British and Chinese officials claim to have heeded public opinion and represented majority interests, as each side chooses to view them...

...A local financial daily, Hsin Pao, voiced the question underlying the unease: "Once Hong Kong becomes 'internal,' will Peking keep its p r o m i s e s . . . ? " 30 THE AMERICAN: SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984...

...The entire issue of homosexuality is ultimately a means to an end: the attack on Fidel Castro and, throagh him, Cuba itself . . . . The film is mediocre propaganda, lacking the stirring montage of Triumph of the Will, and predictably conservative in its talking-heads format...

...And they don't care if every movie critic of every newspaper and magazine in the country tells them otherwise...

...During the last 35 years, while the China mainland was swept arbitrarily from one state of disastrous turmoil to the next, Hong Kong became ~ stable Chinese city-state, a house on a rock...

...That in a world free of rightwing conspirators, routine White House meetings would be held on the South Lawn, with press and public invited to sit in...

...Please enter a one-year subscription (4 issue_, o r only $15 - $5 off the regular newsstand price of $20...

...The author, Joseph Spear, whose book The Presidents and the Press I'd recently reviewed in the Washington Journalism Review, wrote to the W JR and said I am "a gored ox and cantankerous naysayer...

...On the smear level, you can't do much better than that...

...What the breathless article reveals is that Reagan and his minions are always eager for public support...

...O u t s i d e r s who view Hong Kong as a sort of glittering capitalist excrescence, to be gauged only by i t s economic indicators, miss the point...

...Send to: FOREIGN POLIC Subscription Department Box 984 Farmingdale, NY 11737 GUARANTEE I understand that full refund is guaranteed if I cancel on seeing the first issue...

...For taking this dissenting position, I was zapped by the author of a book propagating the manipulation myth...

...Why, he and his aides "have assembled an extensive propaganda apparatus that does most of its work out of sight...

...Milius sees himself as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Reagan administrat i o n , " he wrote...

...Newsweek "FOREIGN POLICY offers diverse but authoritative perspectives on issues of immense and immediate significance ." Senator Howard Baker, Jr...

...Tough criticism of the press, huh...

...I was one of the six hundred delegates to the annual film festival in Havana last December, and we were all invited to the Palace of the Revolution to meet the Commandante," Rich wrote...

...The pressure on reporters covering any politician, and especially the President, is rarely from the pol or his aides...

...As TRB noted, Hollywood took a sharp turn to the left about the time of the student revolts and anti-Vietnam demonstrations...

...But I will make one concession: I am losing the argument over manipulation...

...Christian Science Monitor "FOREIGN POLICY consistently attracts the most impressive authors on current affairs...

...To my knowledge, the only one to comment critically on Hollywood's drift to the left was Richard Grenier of Commentary, who last year drew an interesting distinction between "soft left" movies like The Big Chill and "hard left" ones such as the pro-Sandinista Under Fire...

...But that's the rap that Peter Biskind, the editor of American Film and critic for the Washington Weekly, laid on Red Dawn...

...Rather, it's from the reporter's peers and editors to zing the political figure relentlessly...

...In Hong Kong, as in other places in the past about to be swallowed up by a totalitarian power, welcomers and optimists, both real and hypocritical, have already appeared and the first rustle of activity among accommodators and opportunists is plainly discernible...

...Worse, they regularly pursue the old political rule of not stepping on your story...

...The "breakthrough" episode has thus ended by raising even more disturbing questions not only about British weakness and dissemblance, but about the actual strength of the accord on 1997, which, on Chinese insistence, is to be ratified willy-nilly before the end of this year...

...Once the accord has been initialed and made public, Hong Kong cannot amend it in any way, but rather, as Sir Geoffrey and the British Secretary for Home Affairs, Denis Bray, have euphemistically put it, must consider it as " a whole...

...What is it about this movie that touches off such hysteria in the press...

...In the plainer English of the South China Morning Post, the people of Hong Kong have "two stark choices" - - " t a k e it or leave i t . " For the illusionless in the colony it matters little...

...How can private banks save the world's financial system...

...As the Far Eastern Economic Review further revealed on August 23, the British afterwards "meekly concurred" that this was so and "conceded that their original intention was to have the document called an 'agreement,' but they failed to sway the Chinese, who adamantly refused to enter into any 'agreement' with Britain which would dictate how Peking should administer Hong Kong, its own territory, after 1997...

...2 4 America's New Edge Dimitri K. Simes 4 4 Eastern Europe's Doves Robert English 6 1 Trade Controls That Work William A. Root / 8 1 Without Governments Debt: Reform / Charles F. Meissner 9 4 Presidential First Use Is Unlawful Jeremy ]. Stone THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE 1 1 3 Foreign Policy On Deadline Lloyd N. Cutler 129 Wasting The Propaganda Dollar John Spicer Nichols COMPLIANCE DIPLOMACY 141 Moscow Is Cheating Colin S. Gray 153 Both Sides Are Hedging Michael Krepon 17 3 Dateline Manila: Moscow's Next Win...

...Milius, after all, disclosed to Human Events that he is a supporter of Ronald Reagan...

...But I think the appeal of the movie has nothing to do with what type of patriotism it reflects...

...We had a President who didn't do this--Jimmy Carter-and he was pilloried as incompetent...

...20007 202-298-7512 ly a "joint declaration...

...But it is something else to show Communist troops in an unfavorable light, while lionizing the American guerrillas who resist a Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan invasion...

...I, too, can testify: He had no horns...

...there is a world of parties and networks that exists outside any bar scene...

...TRB meant that as a slur on the movie...

...Here is how two former administration officials put it: "Whatever else may be said, for the President the media environment of the early 1980s is strikingly different from the early Sixties...

...Yet that's what Vincent Canby, the easily aroused film critic of the New York Times, wrote about Red Dawn...

...Plausible but wrong...

...That's what RedDawn does, and that is against the rules...

...It was primarily the many wishful seekers of firm assurances, ripe for self-delusion, who were swept into euphoria by British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe's August 1 statements to the international press, which were widely reported as a "breakthrough" in the talks, meaning the definite achievement of a "legally binding" agreement, preserving "all the rights and freedoms" now enjoyed by the people of Hong Kong...

...This is unacceptable...

...Anybody who's picked up a copy of the Washington Post or most any other paper in the last fifteen years knows that...

...Ta-ling Lee is professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University...

...The word for "negotiate" in Mandarin is tan-pan, literally to "talk-decidei" According to the local wits, it was the British who were talking and the Chinese who were deciding...

...they are known in their communities...

...7AS 1 Yes, FOREIGN POLICY ls my business...

...Cyrus Vance U.S...

...Things have certainly changed for homosexuals...

...They try to put the best face on whatever they do...

...They know that such guarantees are a pipe dream...

...But he made an exception in the case of Red Dawn...

...Name (PLEASE PRINT) Address...

...The' 'real story behind the film's making has yet to surface in any of the rapturous appreciations," declared B. Ruby Rich...

...An old tactic is at work here: tarring any conservative offering with the Nazi brush...

...As Rich told it, the real story is that Castro is a great guy and homosexuals are treated just swell in Cuba...

...Is current NATO doctrine constitutional...

...But the dominant form of exclusionary patriotism is political, and the main 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 pursey,ut is the Republican party...

...Few, if any, presidents have been as successful as Ronald Reagan in influencing what the press reports about him," wrote Mark Hertsgaard, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies...

...provocative.., readable...

...But it's not these flaws that get much criticism...

...I n the department of myths of the American press that never die, the Number One ranking is held by the old canard that Presidents successfully manipulate reporters to get favorable coverage...

...RULES OF THE GAME Not often is a Hollywood movie denounced for airing the "cockeyed nightmares of those on the lunatic fringe, the self-styled patriots who might even embarrass the members of the John Birch Society...

...The freshest piece of evidence for this is a front-page piece in the Village Voice, that oracle of chic leftist thinking...

...We're told that the Communist invasion began with illegal aliens from Mexico blowing up a SAC base--an appeal to nativist sentiment made especially ugly by its complete illogic," he wrote...

...The authors, Ben W. Heineman, Jr...

...And he brings to light the curious web of relationships among certain politically motivated groups...

...My view is not quite the opposite, but almost, namely that Presidents try manipulation but usually fail pathetically at it...