Conspiracies and Accidents
Rivers, William L.
Conspiracies and Accidents by WILLIAM L. RIVERS Someone once said that the world is divided into those who believe that our troubles are caused by accidents and those who believe that they are...
...And yet a moment's reflection suggests that a book such as this must prove its case, and it cannot do so without lengthy quotations...
...If the reader reacts to this book as Cirino apparently hopes, he will be outraged at the thought control wielded by the proprietors of the media...
...There are other flaws, most of them excesses springing from Cirino's own outrage at the media, that must have figured in the rejections by publishers...
...One reviewer has all but dismissed Aronson's book because it leans heavily on quotations...
...For ten days every daily followed the issue...
...Don't Blame the People, by Robert Cirino...
...He knows that much of what seems to be conspiratorial agreement among publishers is actually a compound of stupidity, hypocrisy, and cowardice mixed with greed...
...It is more than likely that the result would have been the same if the survey had been extended to cover all 1,753 newspapers in the country...
...It is unlikely that Aronson's valuable book will reach a much wider circle...
...Finally, it is unlikely that anyone knows whether "every daily" of the 1,753 that are published in this country followed the issue for ten days...
...A question forces its way forward: All the columnists and commentators...
...It is not that Aronson is altogether wrong in his indictments of the publishers, the columnists, and the commentators...
...341 pp...
...degree—and yet he has unearthed and documented dozens of cases of shabby performance that were unknown to me...
...Next, since Cirino is referring throughout to U.S...
...With "to a large degree" duly noted, it is difficult to read the record that Aronson provides without endorsing his charge...
...But in failing to qualify such passages, he invites the reader who knows of exceptions to dismiss the book...
...The emphasis is Aronson's, and so is the misleading speculation...
...there are not thousands of dailies published in the United States...
...In the early days of the Republic, Presidents privately financed newspapers and editors who would do their bidding...
...They may begin with the fact that Don't Blame the People is conspiracy theory of an especially savage kind...
...Aronson contends that the Cold War began when the Germans and the Russians signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that ended their hostilities in 1918...
...If one did not believe in accidents, it would be easy to suspect a conspiracy...
...and Aronson writes provocatively...
...Mary McGrory of The Washington Star, to name only one columnist, has been at President Nixon's throat for months...
...He never paints anything like a sinister picture of a cabal of publishers meeting with high officials to subvert the people's «s interests...
...An editor who is considering a manuscript for publication cannot simply correct such matters...
...What this speculation obscures is that several publishers oppose the Vietnam War, and one, for example, John S. Knight, has been one of the most consistent, unyielding, and vehement critics of that war...
...These three sentences are alive with what might delicately be called exaggeration...
...308 pp...
...So much of Aronson's writing is clear and cogent, and so many of his insights are valuable that one occasionally does wish for long, unbroken passages of the author's writing in place of some of the quotations...
...Bobbs-Merrill...
...I can guess at least a few of the reasons...
...His charge received banner headlines at the top of Page One in thousands of dailies...
...First, neither Cirino nor anyone else knows whether "every news commentator in the country" commented on Agnew...
...The safe course is to reject the manuscript with regrets...
...Similar hints of conspiracy crop up here and there in The Press and the Cold War...
...He charges that the press has lacked candor, curiosity, and courage, and that it "has to a large degree become a voluntary arm of established power...
...In the end, in fact, most of Aronson's points are well-taken...
...Indeed, he has written a kind of reference book on the faults of the mass media...
...In addition, both authors are not only passionate critics, they act on their convictions in a way that makes the rest of us seem to be mere spectators...
...This society needs energetic and perceptive critics of the media...
...He should have gone on to define the difference between the conspiracy theorists and those who only sound like them...
...There are a few similarities, among them the fact that both James Aronson (The Press and the Cold War) and Robert Cirino (Don't Blame the People) write clearly and, for the most part, interestingly...
...2.95 paperback...
...Why, then, was Cirino forced to establish Diversity Press to bring out his book...
...He is basically right...
...Perhaps that is as it should be, but it is doubtful that anyone who swallows this book whole could possibly know that thousands of dedicated reporters and editors work painstakingly to present whatever approximations of the truth are possible for fallible humans...
...Conspiracies and Accidents by WILLIAM L. RIVERS Someone once said that the world is divided into those who believe that our troubles are caused by accidents and those who believe that they are caused by conspiracies...
...That record is long and fact-packed, but it is by no means old or boring...
...newspapers, it is not possible for banner headlines to have appeared in "thousands of dailies...
...That would have made it easier to explain how these two indictments of the news media can seern so much alike at some points even though they are wildly different...
...Consider this passage in Don't Blame the People: "Every news commentator in the country had something to say about Agnew and the issue he raised...
...Cirino, who is a secondary school teacher in Southern California, demonstrated the passion of his concern by borrowing the money to publish his book after the manuscript was rejected by twelve publishers...
...he must wonder as he reads them whether many of the statements and charges in the manuscript that cannot be checked so easily are similarly faulty...
...In this book about the press and foreign policy he hints at conspiracy by citing a survey of thirty-nine U.S...
...Like The Press and the Cold War, Cirino's book is about the press and foreign policy—and the press and censorship, meat inspection, auto safety, hunger, and almost any other subject that comes to mind...
...Cirino charges "suppression" so often—apparently not knowing that items can be omitted as a consequence of ignorance or hurry— that he makes clear his belief in conspiracies rather than accidents...
...We are all wounded when one critic dooms himself to a narrow circle of readers...
...Today the press serves the Government without pay...
...In the course of showing how the shock troops of American journalism have served in the Cold War against Communism ever since, he weaves into his analysis a staggering succession of paragraphs from newspapers...
...If one occasionally wishes that his charges were not so sweeping, it is nonetheless obvious that his general propositions are generally true...
...After working ably for the conventional press—the Boston Transcript and the Herald-Tribune, Post, and Times in New York—Aronson followed his beliefs into radical journalism and devoted nearly twenty years to scratching out a living as one of the co-founders and editors of the National Guardian...
...I have been writing about press performance for more than a decade— beginning well before Cirino received his B.A...
...Not only is Knight one of the most visible and powerful publishers—his company owns newspapers in Detroit, Philadelphia, Miami, and other cities—he opposed the Vietnam venture from the very beginning...
...The Press and the Cold War has been out for six months, but few newspapers and magazines have reviewed it...
...Compared to the single purpose and the thematic style of Aronson's book, Don't Blame the People is scattershot...
...What saves The Press and the Cold War from easy dismissal is that Aronson has workedy too long in the world of journalism and knows too much to be guilty of making the simplistic charges of conspiracy that are so fashionable among other radical journalists...
...Aronson writes, "The highly paid columnists and commentators, with private access to governmental news sources which they are determined not to endanger, cater to the national interest by underscoring the > findings of the local press...
...The Press and the Cold War, by James Aronson...
...Why did twelve reject it...
...The differences begin with the fact that Aronson is not a genuine conspiracy theorist, although he sometimes reads like one...
...Nor could such a reader be aware that a professional ethic has become so strong in journalism that many proprietors would not dare to order a story slanted or suppressed...
...And if the CBS documentaries, "Hunger in America" and "The Selling of the Pentagon," really served the Government, it is difficult to explain those strangled cries from Washington officialdom when they were broadcast...
...This is unfortunate, and not only because one wishes that a writer with Cirino's energy and conviction would be better rewarded than he is likely to be...
...Thanks in part to the troubled times, in part to the charges made by Vice President Spiro Agnew, the news media are a hot subject, and it would seem that many a publishing house would welcome a manuscript that is written clearly by an indefatigable researcher...
...It is all over the place, and with carefully researched cases...
...Diversity Press (Box 45764, Los Angeles 90045...
...Aronson does prove his case, or most of it, with a book that is essential to any assessment of the role of the press in foreign policy...
...newspapers which showed that "not one newspaper advocated the withdrawal of American troops although millions of Americans had expressed themselves in favor of withdrawal...
Vol. 35 • May 1971 • No. 5
