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...
...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...
...he is instead a strayed priest, an individual who merits censure for transgressing the strictures of his Order...
...The debate between those journalists who support and those who criticize Schorr's actions is a good illustration...
...In particular, I believe Mr...
...It is hardly an accurate presentation, and quite likely a pernicious one...
...The New York Times, for example, has editorialized against Schorr, accusing him of "selling secrets...
...The idea of a timid Congress passing a bill of attainder is a nice image in itself, if a trifle inaccurate...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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 stories they cover and the views they express are remarkably homogeneous...
...Correspondent Schorr has moved on to bigger if not better things since his highly-publicized run-in with the now-fallen President...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...First, the Washington Post revealed that Schorr was the vendor in the above-described transaction...
...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...
...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...
...Of course we make money from publishing the news...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...and (what is most frightening) they supply well over sixty percent of the populace with all or most of its news...
...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...
...And aside from all else, they are preaching, if you will, false doctrine...
...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...
...Alas, on this occasion huzzahs from all sides were not forthcoming...
...The defense of Schorr proffered by the pompous little band at The Nation strikes a different note on the same scale...
...To The Nation, Congress' action against Schorr comes "dangerously close" to being a Constitutionally-prohibited "bill of attainder...
...but in putting the Pentagon Papers out in book version, we were merely reprinting what had already appeared in our newspaper...
...Schorr (quoth Oakes), is "to traffic in the news" (emphasis added...
...General network coverage of the CIA and Angola "stories" is, in my view, a considerably more striking illustration...
...Doubtless, any gov ernmental correctives would prove worse by far than what we must live with now...
...During the Nixon Administration, Mr...
...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...
...On the other hand, what you have done, Mr...
...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...
...As for self-correctives by journalists themselves, I fear that it is a pipedream to expect many of them...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...There are but three of them...
...The problems with having the news media—particularly the networks—as our "spiritual directors" are not difficult to point out...
...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...
...How,asked Schorr in defending himself, can you attack me when you sold the Pentagon Papers as a paperback...
...Schorr's execution...
...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...
...Ah, replied Editorial Page Editor John B. Oakes, that was completely different...
...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...
...do not know if Mr...
...Presumably, had Schorr revealed the House report on CBS News, the Times would mark him blameless...
...This is no mere reporter, but some victimized prophet in a religious struggle...
...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...
...Schorr's recent activities must stand condemned as criminal and probably immoral...
...32 The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1971...
...I have few suggestions on how to deal with this problem...
...Didn't the Times make a profit on that...
...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...
...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...
...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...
Vol. 9 • May 1976 • No. 8
