WASHINGTON REPORT: 'Darkness at Noon'
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT DARKNESS AT NOON Not in the ominous sense that Arthur Koestler used the phrase, but, nevertheless, this year's presidential campaign is being reported with more heat than light....
...Or, as a middle way, assign them major roles with the political reporters now covering the campaigns...
...He is among the best and brightest in the business...
...We were able to gather around the water-cooler at work secure in the knowledge as to which candidate is most despised by William Loeb, the talented hater and overrated publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader, the only statewide circulated daily newspaper in New Hampshire...
...The New York Times, which raised hell with the CIA's faults awhile back, has so far been inclined to cover the candidates in a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, fashion...
...Four years later, we're in the midst of another presidential campaign and not much has changed-at least, not after the first two of 31 presidential primaries have taken place...
...Long stories about campaigning in the lives of the candidates can be unfair as well as boring...
...In place of pieties about fairness, why not have all three major networks carry the same candidate interview program on the Sunday before Election Day...
...No news can be fair coverage...
...Overall, the coverage of the campaigns in the two states seemed like a rerun of an old grade-B motion picture starring John Wayne...
...Repetitious stories about whether Carter or U.S...
...After the last presidential election, four years ago, reporters promised to repent...
...SISYPHUSstate...
...We were told, depending on which newspaper we read, which candidate purchased the most radio campaign "spots...
...On TV and in Sunday analytical articles, they acknowledged their excessive emphasis on campaign techniques and personalities...
...SISYPHUSS...
...to become a bit cozy with the Mayor and/or Council members after a few years assigned to City Hall or become the amanuensis tor the local police chief if left to cover crime news for say, five years...
...No reporter, however honored and capable, is superior to the "beat" (assignment) he covers, often for most of his career...
...His monthly column was uniformly of high caliber...
...Many years ago, Joseph Kraft wrote a monthly public-affairs column, The Easy Chair, for a monthly magazine...
...An insistence upon frequent stories, however "thin" in substance, cheats readers, however capable and knowledgeable a reporter, or columnist, is...
...If not, there may be some widespread finger-pointing from outside the trade that may bode ill for what Thomas Carlyle called the "Fourth Estate...
...Even the most conscientious and able of political reporters find themselves after awhile becoming part of the political trade...
...A problem is that many, many political reporters don't understand major issues -and their nuances...
...It is acceptable to take a point of view that positions on issues by a candidate may become known through the prism of personality, as long as it is understood that the most articulate candidate is not necessarily espousing the most sensible positions...
...Just as a congressman is no better experienced after ten years in office, so with political reporters...
...the same can not be said for the other columns...
...We were told which candidate spent the most time in New Hampshire...
...It's time for a change, one, it is hoped, that will be adopted by newpaper editors...
...In addition, a system of rotation has another asset...
...This is not to disparage Kraft...
...Perceptive editors move other staff reporters around to different assignments from time to time on the grounds that a reporter, as human being, is apt, in spite of him-or herself...
...Representative Udall of Arizona or Senator Bayh of Indiana -or someone else-will win the New Hampshire primary should have been "spiked" (not printed...
...Issues-state, regional and national-became obscured in the doing, they conceded...
...Instead of insisting that each day's editions during an election campaign require news stories, why not skip those days when the reporters covering campaigns report to their editors that "there's not much doing...
...They gathered at, Harvard and appeared on both public and commercial television to flay themselves a bit...
...Two days before the New Hampshire primary, one network, on its regular Sunday forum program, had only one contestant as guest, although another did have several contestants on its counterpart program...
...But such a demand upon one's abilities is too much after a few years for even the most talented...
...A few years ago, he became a syndicated columnist producing three columns a week for client-newspapers...
...There is another problem about campaign coverage...
...The superficiality of a candidate's position on major issues, foreign and domestic, would be brought to light in a prompter and more comprehensive way, if, for example, the Washington Post assigned Bernard Nossiter, a foreign correspondent, Timothy O'Toole, who covers science, and Morton Mintz, whose prize-winning stories and books have exposed the hazards of consumer products, ranging from the automobile to lipstick...
...Or, correspondingly, the New York Times recalled Richard Halloran from Tokyo and put him to work with Peter Kihss of its metropolitan staff on this year's presidential campaign...
...They lose perspective and, so to speak, write incessantly about the trees and not the forest...
...Instead, let the voters decide...
...Prior to the New Hampshire primary late last month and the one in Massachusetts early this month, we learned a lot about the candidates' personalities (and those of their families...
...It won't happen again, voters, they promised...
...With exceptions, political correspondents start writing into their news stories their biases and prejudices after a few years of covering campaigns (or covering Congress or the White House for twenty years, as happens...
...It wasn't supposed to be this way...
...We read and heard a lot about the strategies and tactics of their staffs- and the ambitious jockeying among them as to who would be the primary advisor of each of the various candidates...
...This suggests alternative coverage -or, at least, a pilot program to see if this alternative would work...
Vol. 103 • March 1976 • No. 6
