Pressure on the Press

...Reviewed by Maurice Obstfeld The Nixon Administration has scored a great victory in its battle with the press...

...For, aside from this section, there is little else to commend the book...

...Ungar does rightly point to one tangible result of the Pentagon Papers case: Both the Times and the Post have since become less timid in their relations with the government...

...Recently, Richard Salant, the head of CBS News, summed up the situation when he commented on the frequency of self-censorship in his department: "I think it's something that's increasing...

...The tendency is to say, 'Oh well, this isn't the ideal one to fight, so let's let this one go.'" Even the notion that the press has a duty to "safeguard the national interest"—as the New York Times thought it was doing in 1961 by emasculating Tad Szulc's story on the imminent Bay of Pigs invasion—seems now to have become a secondary consideration, superseded by the pure and simple fear of government retaliation...

...Each published Jack Anderson's revelations on the covert U.S...

...they are merely mentioned as asides to the drily factual presentation...

...And it can hardly be reassuring to journalists that William Rehnquist, who helped formulate the Justice Department's arguments against the press, now sits on the high bench, and will assist in determining the applicability of prior restraints in future clashes between the government and the media...

...Ungar has done his research diligently enough, collecting most of the facts in the dispute, but he presents them unimaginatively in plodding, unadorned journalese...

...More recently, the Times ran two articles by Pulitzer prize-winner Seymour Hersh on the Peers report—a confidential and rather explosive Army study of the Mylai massacre...

...We are given a history of the Pentagon Papers, a biography of Daniel Ellsburg, who leaked them to the press, and a rundown of Senator Mike Gravel's efforts to make the documents public under an umbrella of Congressional immunity...

...Editorial page editor John Oakes wanted to avoid printing the texts of the top-secret documents—more than half of the Pentagon study...

...But the New York Times and Washington Post, the two giants in their field, are clearly exceptions...

...Similarly, the Washington Post, which first obtained the Papers after a Federal District Court restrained the Times from printing its articles, did not easily arrive at a course of action certain to incur the wrath of the Justice Department...

...Finally, a day after the first article appeared, when John Mitchell asked the newspaper to kill the series voluntarily, a number of top executives urged compliance so that the Times could avoid antagonizing the Administration further?at least until after the issue had been resolved in court...

...A Post staff writer himself, Ungar interviewed reporters, editors and top executives at the Times, the Post and other major newspapers to piece together his vivid, well-documented account of the behind-the-scenes deliberations and debates that show how important decisions are made under intense government pressure...

...Far from being automatic, the decision to run the series was reached only after three months of soul-searching, heated argument and legal consultation...

...Because of the threat of reprisals, the exercise of self-censorship has now become widespread...

...For most newspapers—and all of the broadcast media, who depend on the FCC for their licenses—government intimidation and the concomitant penchant for self-censorship continue to grow...

...Some Post lawyers and executives favored postponing publication until after the Times case had been settled, and it was even decided at one point to notify the Attorney General that the Post had obtained the Papers, allow him two days' grace, and only then go ahead with a series on the documents...

...The newspapers' 6-3 Supreme Court victory in the Pentagon Papers case was, after all, a very fragile one, with most of the justices arguing that prior restraint of publication could be justified under some circumstances, instead of basing their opinions on a literal interpretation of the First Amendment...

...Sanford J. Ungar's book, The Papers & The Papers, offers a stepby-step account of how the two newspapers finally reached the conclusion that the Pentagon Papers could not be ignored...

...Unfortunately, Ungar's fascinating account of the decisions to publish the Pentagon Papers fills just about one-fifth of The Papers & The Papers and prior to its publication had already appeared in Esquire...

...tilt" toward Pakistan during the India-Pakistan war...

...I don't think we've seen the climax of it, and I don't think it's passing...

...By unleashing Vice President Agnew to fulminate against newspapers that buck the Administration's "official fine," threatening antitrust action against the major television networks, subpoenaing news photographers' unused film, hauling reporters before grand juries and investigating their relatives, friends and bank accounts, President Nixon and former Attorney General Mitchell have succeeded in shaking people's faith in the First Amendment and blunting the edge of journalistic initiative...

...Yet these are precisely what would attract one to a book on the affair...

...In this setting the Times' publication of the Pentagon Papers, the massive Department of Defense study of America's involvement in the Vietnam war, takes on particularly dramatic overtones...

...We learn, for example, that Harding Bancroft, executive vice president of the Times, "was concerned over the possibility of revealing codes and of diplomatic embarrassment to the country"—two arguments later adduced by the Justice Department in its attempt to squelch the Papers...

...The larger questions, however, the host of legal and political issues raised by the battle, are never deeply explored...

...A more fitting final line might have been Nat Hent-off's remark that "faith in the First Amendment is not nearly enough to make it work...

...I think it's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse...

...The Times' legal counsel advised against publication, warning of an energetic and probably successful court fight by the government...

...Many of the same hesitations cropped up in the debate at the Washington Post...

...In the end, Ungar relates, Katherine Graham, the newspaper's publisher, acceded to her reporters' demand for immediate publication...

...In his singularly inappropriate closing sentence to The Papers & The Papers, Ungar says: "What the newspapers did gain was a new knowledge of and faith in the First Amendment...

...Chief Justice Burger to a public denunciation of news media "Know-Nothingism...

...Editors and reporters are more likely these days to hesitate before printing or broadcasting information that might annoy the White House or provoke Mr...