Washington Report: Post-Watergate Reconstruction-Media
Sisyphus
1970 election; $350,000 to bribe Chilean legislators to vote against him when the election had to be submitted to Congress, $5 million for later "destabilization" activities, and $1.5 million...
...The Allende government had many flaws and might well have fallen on its own...
...At least, Frank Blair of the NBC "Today" show is honest about it--he openly reads the news dispatches on camera...
...Alan Otten of the Wall Street Journal recentlyt wrote: "While the press is on a jag of self-satisfaction and self-congratulations, there is an unhappily large number of Americans who aren't overjoyed by the Watergate exposures---in fact, they're annoyed, angry and hostile...
...Editors, amid drinks and smoke of their annual self-congratulatory conventions, insist their job historically has been to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted...
...Subsequent revelations disclosed that Mr...
...He, or she, sits in a newsroom, accepts notes over the telephone from a reporter and then, without first-hand knowledge, rewrites the notes into a story for publication...
...The news media are in trouble...
...We shall see if press people turn away from divvying up with politicians free news and free publicity in time to reform formats of coverage before public opinion unfairly shackles them with restraints believed permanently long ago cast off...
...The reverse is, in fact, the rule...
...So much for non-intervention...
...policy toward India, how can he effectively counter such fears...
...And this brings us to the press associations, AP and UPI, the so-called "wire services...
...as things are now, however, the United States is held responsible in the eyes of the world for the bloodthirsty junta that overthrew him--a regime characterized by the execution of literally thousands of Chileans, the systematic and widespread torture of political prisoners, the ruthless suppression of ihe press and all political opposition...
...It's happened that a wire-service reporter has covered four hearings in one morning...
...Even the best of the newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times among others, run weekly financial and real-estate seetions that are straight shills for the most base motivations in those economic sectors...
...The 1947 Hutchins Commission's report on freedom of the (American) press is a dusty curiosity in libraries...
...Otherwise, it will suffer additional distrust, even disrepute, on the part of Americans...
...Mears is a good reporter...
...The AP boasts that three million words of copy move each day through its vast automatic teletype circuits to more than 1260 dailies and 3350 radio and TV Commonweal: 53 stations in the United States...
...However, the prevailing pattern may be typified by the one-ownership morning and afternoon newspapers in Worcester, Mass., either of which may be thoroughly read in about seven minutes---even if the lighting's bad...
...A news editor often will prefer a wireservice story over that of his newspaper's own reporter's coverage of the same event if the latter's is not in conformity with the wire-service story...
...The Presidential is the most widely known_9 In December, 1929, with the stunning October stockmarket crash reverberating throughout the country, President Hoover held a press conference...
...It might be termed a consensus approach to the news--after all, the original Section 2 of Article I of the Constitution stated a consensus attitude-that a Negro was three-fifths of a white person for purposes of allocation of seats to states in the House of Representatives...
...The product is notoriously unreliable...
...Yet, its freedom is as bountiful as its sense of responsibility is in short supply...
...Prepublication censorship was quite properly demolished two centuries ago...
...He equates us with the Russians...
...SISYPHUS O 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ROY SCHEELE THE GAP IN THE CEDAR I n memory o f my f a t h e r I saw this much from the window: the branch spring lightened into place with a lithe shudder of snow...
...Television and radio performance is dismal...
...The press peddles crime and catastrophe--padded with good-will editorials, sometimes simply rewrites of editorials originally appearing in the New York Times...
...We can let those, who delight in profound philosophical debates, wrestle about where to draw the line between freedom and responsibility, liberty and license...
...Nor is it another favorite b~te-noire of critics---the prevalence of communities in which the only newspaper(s) is owned by one publisher...
...Consequently, he attends one where he finds a witness' press-release, incorporating his testimony...
...In any case, he said, the CIA efforts were made only to preserve anti-Allende newspapers and opposition political parties--a line Secretary of State Henry Kissinger apparently sold him...
...Many of the wire men are repositories of information they can never convey...
...And wire-service reporters emphasize superficial conflicts...
...The persistence of two Washington Post reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, is not to be undervalued...
...All this was in addition to a determined effort to cut off credit and tighten the economic screws on the Allende regime...
...I thought there was a difference, and the difference is what it's all about...
...But when Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan says reports on CIA activities in Chile have confirmed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's "worst suspicions and genuine fears" about U.S...
...they can cite that of Walter Mears, the AP political reporter, not Broder or McGrory or Reston...
...The press is misleading itself in the wake of Watergate...
...At the same time, the wire-service reporter is drilled to remember that at any minute of his working day there's a client newspaper going to press...
...the Allende regime had many faults, they say, but opposition papers and political parties were never suppressed...
...Aside from anything else, this argument has an odd ring coming from an Administration that enthusiastically supports all kinds of repressive, fiercely right-wing regimes which totally disregard political or press freedom, from the Greece of the colonels to South Korea today--not to mention the totally oppressive regime that has succeeded President Allende in Chile...
...At present, a monthly tabloid-sized publication, [More], seeks to monitor the media, but, instead, tangles itself up in intra muralisms that interest press people, but are unfathomable-to laymen who wish to know what's wrong...
...Despite the harm that has been done, however, some good can come out of this disreputable affair if only Congress will now insist on thoroughgoing, effective and continuing supervision of the CIA's operations...
...Prospects for improvement are discouraging, because, if for no other reason, editors are more snarlingly sensitive to criticism than those in any other occupation-except, perhaps, bankers...
...Newspapers have no such excuse...
...The downfall of Nixon isn't being greeted joyously everywhere...
...They bleed editorially from time to time for the poor, while accepting deceptive advertising placed by food and furniture stores and running colorphotos of baked Alaska and other expensive recipes on their "women's pages...
...Contrary to George Seldes, it's not that advertisers control news-columns, although their footprints are not uncommon in newsrooms...
...The role is mistakenly symbiotic, not adversary as it should be...
...Moreover, the wire-services' coverage of Congress, for example, is deficient...
...A consensus approach, reflecting one or more major orthodoxies among readers, is reinforced by ill-informed editors, lazy reporters paid low salaries and standard news-coverage techniques that shape the content of the news itself...
...Occasionally, reporters refuse to be bound by such rules originally designed to oblige the reporter without embarrassing his source...
...At his Sept...
...Occasionally, there is mentioned 18 October 1974:54 a need to reevaluate the whole constellation of newscoverage in Washington, whether by wire-services, the Post, the Times or the Washington bureaus of daily newspapers...
...The larger the audience, the more inoffensive and inconclusive the article must be...
...Nonetheless, highlevel efforts to justify and cover-up continued...
...With few exceptions, newspapers are community bulletin boards for the middle-class----or, more precisely, for the orthodoxy of their middle-class readers...
...Wire-service dispatches are the staple of American newspapers...
...But that occurred 45 years ago, comes the ehaUenge...
...Program directors try to disguise the readingby-rote...
...nor is it to be overlooked that both were inexperienced reporters who uncovered pieces of the scandal, while for month-after-month big-shot newspapermen in Washington scoffed or ignored them...
...The failings of this technique often overcome the advantage--the technical one of speeding coverage of an event into print...
...16 press conference, President Ford made a disturbing defense of ClA activities in Chile, citing national interest and saying that the Russians did the same thing or worse...
...Washington correspondents, assuming even the best of intentions by officers of government, should remember an observation of a British government official to reporters: "You think we lie to you...
...Billy Graham said today (on-the-record...
...A reporter finds himself covering more than one Congressional hearing...
...Ford...
...Tens of thousands of words conveyed from their Washington bureaus to the home-office in Manhattan where unknowing editors select those stories to be included in the next issue and turn morasses of words over to rewrite men to be reworked into easy-flowing narratives...
...The deeper controversies become slighted because they violate the consensus-syndrome...
...4 Off-the-record rule under which the Rev...
...So are other wire service reporters covering national news such as Walter Leubsdorf and Steve Gerstel...
...3. God's in his Heaven, it can be reliably reported (an extreme form of the back-grounder without attribution...
...With such disclosures, it would seem that the CIA cat was irretrievably out of the bag...
...Ford was either misinformed or disingenuous in taking this line on CIA activities in Chile...
...Unfortunately, the fabled critics of the press are dead or retired--Liebling, Seldes and Hollenbeck...
...As Senator Frank Church of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee commented after the Presidential press conference: "It seems he declared that the United States respects no law other than the law of the jungle in its dealings with foreign countries...
...Days go by without either the Washington Post or the New York Times printing an AP (or UP/) story on page one...
...But as Timothy Crouse points out in his book about the 1972 Presidential campaign reportage, Boys on the Bus, the AP and UPI stories on major matters--politics, civil rights, labor disputes, etc.--are overly cautious: "There is an inverse proportion between the number of persons a reporter reaches and the amount he can say...
...Another deficient news-gathering method is that of the news-conference...
...Their "news" programs, from which most Americans obtain their knowledge about current events, mostly consist of a pretty voice reading stories provided for a fee by the two major national news-gathering associations, the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI...
...However, when you discover that, you make even a greater error...
...only a few of their practitioners understand this...
...When certain leaders of foreign nations previously expressed concern over covert activities of the CIA, it was easy to dismiss such fears as paranoid...
...However, the press seeks additional protection from Congress in the form of a so-called "press-shield" law...
...Why not take CIA-man Colby at his word and put an end once and for all to bad business like that carried out in the United States' name in Chile...
...A David Broder may stumble, a Mary McGrory may mislead because of a journalistic "love-affair" with a public personality, or a James Reston may go stale...
...In the moment it took the tree to recover that trembling something went wide in me--there was a rush of wings, the air beaten dim with snow, and then I saw through the swirling...
...No, a major problem, perhaps the major problem, is more elusive...
...His stories become coverage by press-release, plus a snippet of testimony shared by an understanding reporter able to remain throughout hearings...
...The practical problem, considering the foul mood of Americans toward newspapers, radio and television, is simply to promptly reform their technical operations and format coverage...
...The difference in approach is, as in reasoning, inductive rather than deductive...
...It's not so simple as a conspiracy of economic interests...
...But for all but a handful of newspapers the wire services are the only source for news beyond their immediate circulation "bylines...
...But we don't lie, really we don't...
...Competent news-coverage is in a class with Samuel Johnson's observation when told about there being a woman minister in the neighborhood: the wonder, he said, like that of a dog walking on hind-legs, is not that it's done well, but that it's done at all...
...They laud "Brotherhood Week" each year on the editorial pages, while employing no black reporters in the newsrooms...
...There are other flawed practices, one of which is the ground-rules reporters, individually or collectively, accept as a basis for interviewing a political personnage in Washington: 1. God's in his Heaven, Rev...
...But in 1974, a recent televised press conference of President Ford's shows a worsening of the format--individual reporters strutting on camera as they asked questions . . . disjointed questions about the Nixon pardon _9 . . no informed questioning about the dolorous economic condition...
...The AP reports that 25 to 30 percent of its domestic news each day carries Washington date-lines...
...WASHINGTON REPORT POST-WATERGATE RECONSTRUCTION-MEDIA The press functions like one continuous unfulfilled New Year's resolution...
...The schools have all the intellectual content of "a training school for A&P clerks," as A. J. Liebling once wrote about the one he attended, Ferhaps the most prestigious, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism...
...A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it," James Madison remarked, "is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both...
...In response to one question, he reported that Christmas retail purchases were running at a volume comparable to the previous Christmas season's level...
...Responsible publishers in Providence, Louisville, Atlanta and Eugene (Ore...
...Readers of the "better papers" and viewers watching only educational TV and/or radio don't comprehend the shoddiness of most newspapers, north, south, east and west--although the opinion-ridden, columnist-laden New York Post does provide for interested New Yorkers an example of the severe shortcomings of papers elsewhere...
...Its performance during the corrupt Nixon Presidency suggests the press should either claim less or perform better...
...Journalism schools emphasize irrelevant accuraciesJ how high is the steeple...
...If you don't learn how to write an eight-car fatal on Route 128 (Boston), you're gonna be in big trouble," Mears says...
...But primarily it was the persistence of Congressional committees and federal judges and juries that exposed the corruption of the Nixon Presidency...
...But there is one excuse for radio and TV--each is primarily designed to entertain, not inform...
...post-publication censorship has dissolved as a result of the Sullivan and Pentagon Papers cases involving the good, grey New York Times...
...There have been tons of newsprint spent over what's wrong...
...Newspapers are shot through with contradictions...
...have demonstrated that pretty good newspapers ---fair and comprehensive---can be produced without competition...
...But such drawbacks are minor compared to the faults of most reporting...
...He scurries off to his other assigned hearing, unable to stay for the more productive questioning of the witness...
...in actual fact a good part of the American money secretly funneled into Chile went into financing the strikes and demonstrations that preceded and ultimately helped to bring about Allende's downfall...
...After all, they are weaned on fires and accidents...
...Whatever bird had been there, chickadee or sparrow, had so vanished into air, resilient, beyond recall, it had to be taken on faith to be taken at all...
...Another deficiency, seldom analyzed, is the role of the "rewrite" reporter...
...We agree with Senator Church...
...Additional practices compound inadequate news coverage--reporters who collect news-sources as lawyers collect clients, reporters huddling after joint interviews to make certain they all agree on the "lead" of the story each will write (comparable to price-fixing among corporations), and editors who lurch from issue to issue for prime coverage, a sort of interest-spasm of the day approach...
...2. God's in his Heaven, an authoritative source said today (not for attribution...
...The editors in New York have reworked Woodrow Wilson's definition of news as "the atmosphere of events" into a formula: news is what the editor says it is...
...More people read his dispatches than any other reporter's...
...It is hard to see them as anything but a national disaster...
...In fact, there's less "cooking" of the news these days...
...There was apparently only one other question from reporters--as to whether the newly-elected President of Mexico would sleep at the White House during his forthcoming visit...
...President Hoover replied that he didn't expect that to happen...
...Inadequate staffing is, then, aggravated by time pressures...
...You think we tell you the truth...
...350,000 to bribe Chilean legislators to vote against him when the election had to be submitted to Congress, $5 million for later "destabilization" activities, and $1.5 million more for assistance to antiAllende candidates in the 1971 elections...
...In fact, relatively few readers are aware of these three talents even exist...
...In any case, however, those who know the Chilean situation take strong exception to President Ford's explanation...
...Commonweal: 5...
...The press, until the ghettos erupted and the traffic jams worsened, ignored among other major stories: *Migration of an estimated three million Americans from farm to city between 1957 and 1964...
...They are joined on the left by those who recall the press's glamorization of Presidents, the press's self-censorship of our bombing of Cambodia and more than faint indications that working reporters voluntarily, and sometimes for pay, help the CIA and other 000 intelligence agencies...
...CIA Director Colby recently told Congress that concentration on intelligence-gathering and abandonment of covert operations like those in Chile "would not have a major impact on our current activities or the current security of the United States...
...Creation of slovenly white suburbs by means of federally-funded housing and interstate highway programs designed by Congress to favor private interests...
...What Congress giveth, it can taketh away, the press lords 18 October 1974:52 should keep in mind, afflicted as they are by delusions of moral grandeur...
...Blacks share the distrustful mood...
...After the fact, what is one to say about the CIA efforts in Chile...
...It will not be easy to undo the harm that the CIA has done to the national honor in this latest unsavory episode, nor is the matter helped by such inept defense as that given by Mr...
...And, of the 20, nine dealt with the so-called "Zebra killings" in San Francisco and two about Hank Aaron's home-run achievements: Customarily, Presidents and their assistants and the reporters assigned to the White House are locked in fond, not deadly embrace...
...UPI's Frank Eleazar knew more about the House of Representatives than the combined staffs of the Washington Post and the New York Times' Washington bureau...
...The Washington Post, in a recent series, noted that during the first 19 weeks of this year, nearly 1500 newsitems were broadcast on the CBS Evening News, but of these only 20 focused on black problems...
...The failing is tremendous as practiced by the weekly newsmagazines...
...Graham tells reporters that God's in his Heaven, but reporters can't print it in any form or shape...
Vol. 101 • October 1974 • No. 3
