Letters
LETTERS Wick on WORLDNET Mark Schapiro’s article, “Is Anybody Out There Watching,” in your October issue appears to be based on a misunderstanding of USIA’s daily WORLDNET transmissions to...
...EBERSOLE Houston, Texas Complaint department Having waited for some time for The Washington Monthly to publish an article on the Gary Hart phenomenon and his place in the future of the Democratic party, I fairly tore the October issue open after seeing the title of your article, “Why Gary Hart Lost .” Expecting an unforgiving, but fair analysis of the Hart campaign, I cannot express the disappointment which overcame me when I discovered that “your” article was nothing more than bits and pieces of three previously published books on the 1984 campaign...
...It is the interactives which are meant to achieve placement on regular commercial and public networks (although not meant to compete with the work of European correspondents in Washington) and WORLDNET material is used extensively by European networks...
...Tom Goldstein makes the point in his book that reporters must abide by higher standards of accuracy than they now do...
...Who’s got the right stuff Your piece on Chuck Yeager and the associated adventures in Pakistan [“The Right Stuff in the Wrong Place,” Edward C. Ingraham, October] was funny, irreverent, perceptive and the sort of thing that the Foreign Service is supposed to breed out of any individual...
...EDWARD I. KOCH Mayor New York, New York Nicholas Lernann replies: I didn’t make up the story about Mayor Koch and the Post editorials...
...The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was first manufactured in 1917 and was used by the services until some time after the Korean War...
...They were sort of a cross between a rifle and a machine gun, heavier than a rifle but with more firepower, lighter than a machine gun but with less firepower...
...C.R...
...having an inordinate tendency to concentrate on my own material, I very rarely write letters like this...
...It is unbelievable that this able, intelligent public servant should have metamorphosed in a few years into the cartoon character that Mr...
...We do not expect them to be interested in attending the transmission of our daily newscast and documentaries, which, as explained above, are meant for direct pickup by cable systems...
...The evidence is clear that more and more people around the world receive their information and form their opinions based on what they see on television...
...Schapiro quotes representatives of the BBC and West German television to the effect that they do not use WORLDNET material...
...In sum, Mark is simply off the mark...
...WILLIAM E. MCGRATH, JR...
...The examples in it reminded me of something that has stuck in my craw for many years...
...I didn’t do this, and I apologize...
...We are also providing the show “America Today” to the International Hotel in Geneva and the SAS Hotel in Copenhagen...
...Goldstein’s book...
...I suppose the army found this out in 1917, the first time anyone tried to use it in the field...
...I think its abilities in this regard are exaggerated, but Ingraham obviously is of a special rugged fiber...
...These programs are primarily directed to journalists who, in turn, do stories for their newspapers, radio stations, and television networks...
...We are currently reaching cable audiences in the U.K., Luxembourg and the Netherlands...
...Either he or-more Likely-a member of his staff could dictate an editorial to Bruce Rothwell, editor of the Post’s editorial page Rothwell, who died in 1984, took it down in shorthand, and most of the time the Post would run it as dictated .” Goldstein cut about a page of material, including this, between galleys and the final version of the book, so Mayor Koch is right that the story doesn’t appear in the book...
...Now, with the great revolution in technology affecting television (satellites, cable, DBS, video home recorders), there are opportunities for reaching an enormous foreign audience...
...Just a few examples that come to mind: West Germany’s ZDF network used ten minutes of the September 12 interactive with Ambassador Robert Oakley on the subject of terrorism, and BBC-TV ran a six-minute excerpt from Treasury Secretary Baker’s April 24 WORLDNET and a five-minute excerpt from a March 21 WORLDNET featuring Senator Richard Lugar and Congressman Dante Fascell...
...That includes all the papers of New York...
...I do know that combat soldiers generally (no pun) loathe procurement officers and perhaps that is the trouble...
...If we were to wait until cable is fully developed and audiences for it already formed in Europe, then it would be too late to secure placement of our programming...
...Here’s the pertinent passage from the galleys: “Koch certainly liked the Post, and it was convenient for him to enjoy its undiluted support...
...I do not know General Yeager, but I do know Joseph Farland, former ambassador to Pakistan, whose reputation is similarly manhandled by the writer...
...We take pride that ours is the first government to create an international satellite network, and both our allies and adversaries are paying us the compliment of imitation...
...The article not only lacks the objective reporting one would expect from an experienced foreign service officer, but there is a kind of basic sneer that shows through almost every paragraph...
...But we wish we had some excuse...
...It is a difficult challenge because it means our ideas, policies and society must be explained visually, yet not superficially...
...My point is that the continued manufacturing and purchasing of useless gewgaws isn’t new...
...I do occasionally seek editorial support for my policies, or for pending legislation in the City Council or State Legislature, by bringing the facts to the editorial writers’ attention...
...It is a pity that Mr...
...The good men tend to stay out of procurement...
...Germany will shortly come on line, to be followed by other West European countries...
...Otherwise, he would have met European journalists at the embassies covering WORLDNET...
...Therefore, it is no surprise that there were no French visitors at the embassy in Paris on the days Mr...
...And with good reason-I have never done that and no newspaper would print such an editorial...
...Goldstein’s book...
...Its purposes are those of USIA itself-to explain clearly and gain support abroad for U.S...
...It didn’t work...
...Princeton, New Jersey The editors reply: The book excerpts, together with the article’s italicized conclusion, which was written by us, do express our views on why Hart lost...
...Journalists, as well as academics and government officials, are invited to attend the interactives at the embassies, and they do so regularly...
...Ingraham has created with such evident relish-out of assumptions, innuendos and ridiculously improbable scenarios...
...Schapiro was there...
...Ingraham’s obvious command of language and his knack for turning an amusing phrase should have been put to such a sorry use...
...The point applies equally to book reviewers who, perhaps for ideological reasons, invent canards instead of reporting the facts...
...But there’s a line of fine print on every galley proof that says all references from the galleys should be checked with the publisher to see if they are the same in the book...
...He was an intelligent, effective and forceful chief of mission who did an outstanding job in a difficult spot...
...The second hour of the transmission is reserved for the interactives-live press conferences with leading US...
...In his October review of The News at Any Cost, Tom Goldstein’s book about journalistic ethics, Nicholas Lemann invents a fiction about me and attributes it to Mr...
...We have always done that at USIA in traditional ways...
...The staff liked and admired him, and he treated us as colleagues, with consistent consideration and helpfulness...
...Memo of the Month,” “Tidbits and Outrages,” and “Tilting at Windmills I’ As usual, I wasn’t disappointed...
...There were not meant to be any...
...The first hour of the transmission is geared primarily to the burgeoning cable systems in Western Europe, not to the commercial or public television networks or audiences in embassies...
...Lemann says in his review: “[Koch] often calls the editorial page editor of Murdoch’s New York Post and dictates the editorials about himself, which run verbatim...
...By all reports his performance at our embassy in Panama was equally outstanding...
...He concludes there is a fuzziness about WORLDNET’s purposes...
...There must have been two million or so of the things manufactured over a 30-year period...
...CHARLES Z. WICK Director, United States Information Agency Washington, D.C...
...LETTERS Wick on WORLDNET Mark Schapiro’s article, “Is Anybody Out There Watching,” in your October issue appears to be based on a misunderstanding of USIA’s daily WORLDNET transmissions to Western Europe...
...We have also done WORLDNET interactives on cultural, scientific, and medical subjects for specialists...
...Also, during the past two months, more than two hours of WORLDNET have been used on the major national networks in Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Portugal, to name a few...
...policies and to improve international understanding of the United States as a nation, culture and society...
...Did someone at TWM have a fourmartini lunch...
...However, they do...
...Among those I interviewed for this story were USIA officials in Europe, who informed me that they were shifting their efforts to cable only after their unsuccessful attempts to sell the show to European public and commercial television networks...
...government officials or specialists...
...JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH Cambridge, Massachusetts I have just read with surprise and incredulity Edward C. Ingraham’s article in your October issue...
...I’ll bet army muskets were manufactured with flint holders for 50 years after the cap and ball system came in...
...Although the table of contents in the October issue was only 53 percent correct (7 of 15 page numbers incorrect), it didn’t prevent me from reading my three favorite items in the usual order...
...ERWIN L. WINTER Northridge, California The editors reply: No, not that day...
...Schapiro apparently did not attend a single interactive during his travels in Europe...
...Mark Schapiro replies: The subject of my article was not the two-year-old program of “interactive” interviews, which some European journalists describe as a success...
...Now I’ll start on the articles...
...Koch cries ‘foul’ Ah, sweet irony...
...JUANA A. VOGT Tucson, Arizona - Stupid planes, guns Thanks for Scott Shuger’s “The Navy’s Plane Stupidity” (October...
...Cable is just getting underway in Europe...
...it was in the galley proofs from which I wrote my review...
...I wrote about the new daily WorldNet programming of pre-packaged news and feature stories, to which the reaction has ranged from indifference to hostility...
...My thanks...
...While this letter is about the BAR, a million or so machine guns were manufactured with a fitting on the side which held a wooden ammo box in place, when the ammo box had been changed to stamped metal in about 1939...
...This story does not appear in Mr...
...Schapiro also seems unaware that the first and second hours of our daily WORLDNET transmissions are aimed at very different audiences...
...I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed reading anything more...
...The monopod was unstable and the gun fell over when it was fired...
...I don’t know what the answer is...
...Virtually all book reviews are written from galleys, and most are written before the hardcover book has even been printed...
...As any American or European TV network official can confirm, 10, 6, and 5 minutes are extraordinary amounts of time...
...In the late 1950s I had the pleasure of serving under Ambassador Farland in the Dominican Republic as head of USIA operations there...
Vol. 17 • December 1985 • No. 11
