Verse
Scheele, Roy
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. Competent news-coverage...
...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...
...You think we tell you the truth...
...But we don't lie, really we don't...
...But primarily it was the persistence of Congressional committees and federal judges and juries that exposed the corruption of the Nixon Presidency...
...However, when you discover that, you make even a greater error...
...The press is misleading itself in the wake of Watergate...
...The role is mistakenly symbiotic, not adversary as it should be...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...Blacks share the distrustful mood...
...The persistence of two Washington Post reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, is not to be undervalued...
...The news media are in trouble...
...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...
...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...
...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 downfall of Nixon isn't being greeted joyously everywhere...
...Commonweal: 5...
...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...
...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...
...only a few of their practitioners understand this...
Vol. 101 • October 1974 • No. 3
