The Realities of Journalism
PUMPHREY, M. L.
The Realities of Journalism Political Power and the Press By William J. Small Norton. 423 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by M. L. Pumphrey In Britain, too, the accuracy of newspapers is generally...
...Indeed, the significance of the government's efforts to prohibit publication of the Pentagon Papers was not the eventual vindication of the New York Times and Washington Post, but the fact that publication was stopped at all and that as many as three Supreme Court members cast votes in favor of prior restraint...
...George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both firm supporters of the First Amendment, did not manage to escape newspaper attacks...
...the two cases are analyzed in the light of the historical background of the clash between the Nixon Administration and the media...
...The traditional mode of reporting, with its supposedly factual accounts of battles fought, numbers of soldiers killed, supplies captured, territory gained, and objectives achieved fosters precisely the simplistic win-or-lose attitude that makes government duplicity possible...
...His book is thus rather partisan, and it is all the better for being so...
...True, the Sunday Times and the Observer have reported on the detention centers in Northern Ireland, and the Sunday Times has also printed stories on Army interrogation methods in Ulster, yet overt confrontations between newspapers and the government are normally avoided by both sides...
...It remains questionable, though, whether the approach dictated by daily, competitive news gathering is capable of dealing with the nuances of guerrilla warfare...
...He notes the expansion of press freedom during the '20s and '30s, and the coincident improvement in public-relations techniques used by the Executive Branch to control the output of information...
...One result of this indifference is that important subjects such as race relations, student politics, union negotiations, and of course "the situation in Ireland" rarely receive the kind of pointed coverage that could run afoul of official policy...
...The modern era has witnessed the ever-growing importance of the press secretary, "the skilled image-maker," the man whose job it is to sell the President...
...It is refreshing, therefore, for a British citizen recently arrived in the United States to find that the conflict between freedom of information and government secrecy is now out in the open here, and the subject of heated debate...
...Ultimately, he believes, the public decides the outcome of disputes between the press and the government, either by its obvious support of newsmen or by its indifference to official harassment...
...This enables the author to explain the reason for the breakdown in the triangular information flow (government-press-public) revealed by the Pentagon Papers, and to demonstrate the unprecedented nature of the prior-restraint order that held up publication of the documents for more than two weeks, until the case was decided by the Supreme Court...
...Even the trials of the underground magazines OZ and IT were based on obscenity charges irrelevant to the central question of press liberty...
...Finally, if the Chief Executive is prepared to run the risk of live exposure, he can today circumvent media middlemen altogether by going on television to deliver his message...
...For as Small observes: "The role of the press in the United States is the role of an auditor...
...Political Power and the Press concerns the events surrounding the publication of the Pentagon Papers in June 1971 and the broadcast of the CBS documentary, The Selling of the Pentagon, in July of the same year...
...A journalist can be placed in an embarrassing position because of favoritism or an impossible one by exclusion...
...War policy has always been the area most susceptible to direct and indirect news control...
...Though the average Englishman is aware, in principle, that freedom of the press is a necessary feature of a democracy, the issue, unfortunately, is not thought vital, and few people outside of the media give it more than token consideration...
...Reviewed by M. L. Pumphrey In Britain, too, the accuracy of newspapers is generally suspect, but there is little informed debate about journalism's role in a democratic society...
...He argues that the rise of "Agnewism" is a response to increasing suspicion of the communications industry and to the widespread ignorance of the media's function in a modern democracy...
...His ability to verify information can be impeded by the timing of a press release...
...The press is to give an accounting of what the government does and to interpret its meaning...
...Perhaps the greatest revelation of the Pentagon Papers was the fact that a series of successive governments saw it as their right and duty to withhold the truth about Vietnam from the public...
...One can only reaffirm the "haunting truism" with which Small ends his book: ". . . no other freedom is safe once the first freedom, that of free speech, is lost...
...Small traces the course of modern White House press relations from their early days before the turn of the century down to the machinations of Richard Nixon...
...The challenge thrown down within a decade by John Adams made clear that the struggle is an ongoing process, and the balance of forces a delicate one...
...Not only can the President choose what stories to release, but how and when to circulate them...
...Relations between elected officials and the men committed to disseminating the news have seldom been smooth in this country...
...It was John F. Kennedy who first employed television as an instrument of personal politics, and who subsequently perfected news management...
...The part played by William McKinley's secretary, George Cortelyou, following his boss' assassination, or by James Hagerty after Eisenhower's heart attack in 1955, indicates the power implicit in the office...
...The potential avenues opened up by this mistrust are alarming...
...With the development of the mass media, moreover, the battle has become exceedingly complex...
...But the First Amendment, written by men who could already look back on the landmark 1735 trial of editor John Peter Zenger, does not automatically guarantee freedom ol the press...
...The reporter covering the White House is at a distinct disadvantage...
...A statement can be on or off the record, attributable or nonattributable, in the form of a handout or an off-the-cuff remark...
...But Small does not merely rehash well-known details...
...It would seem that a more sophisticated, interpretive journalism than Small is willing to allow is needed to cover such conflicts...
...William J. Small, CBS news director and bureau manager in Washington, is a participant in the struggle...
...Still, by focusing on two contemporary confrontations in the day-today struggle for freedom of the press, Small has provided an excellent insight into the realities of American political journalism...
Vol. 56 • March 1973 • No. 5
