Is It Getting Too Sexy?
Ingram, Timothy
Is It Getting Too Sexy? by Timothy Ingram “I think it’s going to get incredible,” says Melvin Mencher of the Columbia School of Journalism, who was teaching seminars on investigative reporting...
...I don’t know of anyone other than Don Rickles who can be as disgustingly insulting, yet have the right touch for getting someone to respond,” says a former colleague...
...The Times editors at last had an obvious, undeniable hook for the story and Serpico’s charges were headlined the next day: “Graft Paid to Police Here Said to Run into Millions...
...This caused some grumbling among the reporters at hand, but individually they began to make their own arrangements to have friends in the audience fill them in later...
...A variant is to convince the source that you have heard an incredibly shocking tale about him but are uncertain whether to print it...
...the apprehension is that it may exaggerate the set of double standards under which many people publicly denounce political dirty tricks while glamorizing the dirty tricks of journalists who pressure middle-aged bookkeepers for information or filch private telephone or credit records...
...Harry Rosenfeld, then the Washington Post’s metropolitan editor, says that shortly after Howard Hunt became a suspect in the Watergate break-in, Rosenfeld could have obtained Hunt’s telephone records through impersonation...
...is obtained by dubious means...
...I don’t regret paying, not .a bit...
...In other words, the test would become: Did the reporter exercise the care of a reasonably prudent man in carrying out the investigation that produced the story and did he have reasonable grounds for the allegations in his story, even if the allegations turn out t o be untrue and defamatory...
...It is with these dangers that this article is concerned...
...Lewis sees nothing deceitful in his actions-all he was doing was remaining anonymous...
...When Srodes called in his exclusive, he says, the UP1 night editor told him the story would hurt UPI’s world-wide relations with the CIA and its ability to get other stories...
...When the movie comes out, I guess it’s going to get worse.’’ “The movie,” of course, is the Robert Redford All-star version of the Watergate case...
...Real “responsibility” means putting the paper’s imprimatur on the line as a guarantee that the stories it publishes are accurate-and that the paper will take the consequences if they are not...
...They were followed by articles about mismanagement, bidding irregularities, thefts, and skimmings...
...You then request the business office to double-check the numbers and dates of the calls and report them back to you...
...As journalism schools, including his own, bulge with would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins, and reporters on every paper in the country try to nail a prominent hide to the wall, “investigative reporting” has become the profession’s most popular-and most worrisomegimmick...
...There is, moreover, a practical problem-false premises can result in false information...
...Hersh’s technique is to wear down reluctant sources through tenacious pursuit by phone-often badgering, terrorizing, insulting...
...moreover, Helms would not be briefing the press on his remarks afterwards...
...Arch Moore was quoted as saying that the “land grab” was achieved with a “dummy corporation set up in the dark of night...
...The following tactics evolved : rn Feeding the Mills...
...The second rule of thumb is the natural companion of the first: the reporter must be willing to accept responsibility for his actions...
...The distinction doesn’t seem clear to many reporters...
...Developments in the law of libel during the 1960s tended to give some reporters the feeling that they could get away with less than the truth...
...for you...
...As one illustration of the circumstances that might justify it, consider this case: Jack Nelson, the Washmgton bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, once paid a Mississippi detective $1,000 for police files on two local informants...
...According to Ben Bagdikian, a former Washington Post national editor and ombudsman, this trenchcoat psychology could easily lead to frivolous exposes and shoddy reportorial practices...
...In eight years of listening to newsmen at American Press Institute seminars, the API’s Malcom Mallette says that “only a few have ever related situations where they’ve paid...
...Then we’d call the D.A., give him the tip, and ask, ‘Are you going to look into it?’ He’d say, ‘Yes,’ so we’d run a story the next day, ‘Grand jury investigating charges that...
...But if that guy calls back, I tell him, ‘Hey, shove it buddy...
...Simple as that...
...A recent case illustrates that danger: James Sprouse was the state Democratic candidate for governor of West Virginia in 1968, running a tight race against then- Co n gressman Arch Moore, now the governor...
...The town is a muckraker’s utopia, where palms are crossed and pockets filled at every political level...
...Dummy Firm Seen Proving Corruption...
...What’s with this guy...
...Then the public will have the necessary data to decide for itself whether the reporter’s calculation of ends and means was correct...
...Ray Hill is a hard-drinking Canadian, a bulldog of a reporter...
...In the summer of 1970 the Buffalo Evening News assigned Ray Hill and Dan Perry to the city of Lakawanna, just south of Buffalo, with instructions to “shake the trees and see what falls...
...Perhaps the most accomplished telephone technician is Seymour Hersh, now of The New York Times, who unearthed the My Lai massacre, and since has been generally regarded as the best investigative reporter in the country...
...Most reporters say they would hesitate to pay for news, and would consider the purchased information tainted...
...As James Polk of The Washington Star, who won a Pulitzer last year for his reporting on campaign spending, puts it: “The ethical question is clear...
...What happens frequently,” says James Doyle, the press aide for the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s office, “is that reporters call up and say, ‘Listen, I want to tell you such-andsuch...
...Denny Walsh, who joined Life’s investigative unit very shortly after its inception in 1967, insists that money was never passed to informants...
...It is also possible that the Supreme Court will revise the test by making it negligence instead of recklessness...
...The ethical rationale for misrepresentation, then, is that an individual has a right to keep his thoughts private and to know whom he’s talking to...
...I won’t go into how I find that...
...Life’s purchase of the astronauts’ stories had a more profound effect, which helped shape the public reaction to its later investigative efforts, such as the story of Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas...
...It reflects again the ineradicable journalistic belief that ‘ ‘res p onsi bility” consists of diligent quoting of official sources...
...Nelson says he did not feel uncomfortable because he was not buying the man’s word which might be altered or influenced by the money...
...rn Laundering Rumors...
...Helms made a number of policy assertions which would normally be considered beyond his purview, referring to the “morally bankrupt Kremlin leaders’’ and the futility of disarmament talks...
...There are many methods of investigation, some of which are clearly improper...
...or at 6 a.m...
...When we talked to the guy,” Hill explains, “we told him, ‘We can’t get you immunity for murder, but if you want immunity for this specific testimony, we won’t mention your name in the story and we will go to the D.A...
...the information may be wrong, or couched in terms that are misunderstood...
...Walsh swears, “I’ll never work anyplace else where every guy crossing the threshold holds his hand out...
...Mellace said there was never any concealment of the public records listing Sprouse as the land company’s president, and admitted he had found nothing to indicate Sprouse and his partners had any inside tip about the Forest Service’s plans...
...Also, for the conservative Buffalo paper, writing about Lakawanna was like writing about California: it was politically safe...
...I want to know what information you’re presenting to the grand jury-and I don’t want the opposition paper to know...
...We would tell them, ‘Interiiew X. He won’t speak to us...
...Once inside, Lewis took off his jacket, sat down at a desk, and occasionally pecked at a typewriter...
...The State Supreme Court upheld the verdict but reduced the amount to $250,000...
...Jim Srodes, then with UPI, was in Hot Springs for his honeymoon...
...It should be remembered, though, that the subjects of Hersh’s aggressive, often vulgar, approach are public servants...
...But the apparent effect has been open season for comment on the private lives of public figures...
...A second set of banners appeared the next day, reporting on a news conference called by Moore: “Moore Asks Federal Probe Into Sprouse’s Pendleton Land Grab...
...Malicious Intent The fifth and by far the greatest danger in investigative reporting is lack of fidelity to the facts...
...But he may also hear things the source would not tell the press because they are untrue: the source may be lying to impress a stranger...
...what we’re calling “investigative reporting” these days, and such examples show that, when deciding whether to publish or remain silent, reporters and editors are not asking the most basic question: Is it significant...
...At a certain point, however, the reporter crosses the line that separates enterprise from deceit...
...in hopes of catching him half-asleep...
...Before the ’story was published, a copy was delivered to Moore’s campaign aides, who distributed it to all daily and weekly papers for simultaneous publication throughout the state...
...Sometimes these calls will be timed to catch people off guard: phoning the subject at home in the evening after he has a chance to unwind from the day, and perhaps is loosened by a sip of Scotch...
...When reporters think they can safely go to the borderline of recklessness, there is a danger some will cross the line...
...He looks like a’ cross between TVs “Cannon” and Brendan Behan...
...A land staff officer at the Forest Service who had surveyed and appraised the Sprouse property reportedly showed Mellace land charts indicating that there were less than 100 acres in the parcel, worth no more than $50,000 total...
...In his anguish, he is bound to spill his side of the story...
...I tell him honestly I don’t know anything, and he’s yelling and screaming at me and going into tantrums...
...The transition from kidnappings and mutilated babies to the political inside story has been made...
...Instead, accompanied by the Moore PR man, Mellace went to see the property, and placed an appraisal value of $1,000 an acre on an estimated 400 acres remaining in the plot...
...Wearing white socks and looking very much the cop, Lewis simply accompanied the acting police chief past the 50 reporters and cameramen cordoned off from the Watergate complex by the police...
...Helms’ voice was booming through the room...
...There was evidence that the police never intended to take either Klansman alive...
...A journalist may pretend, for example, to know all about X in order to seduce his subject into confirming his information...
...The detective had told Nelson about the incident and what the police files contained, and suggested that Nelson give him “credit” for the documents...
...by Timothy Ingram “I think it’s going to get incredible,” says Melvin Mencher of the Columbia School of Journalism, who was teaching seminars on investigative reporting when it was still considered a grubby trade...
...Timothy Ingram is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...
...His activities went further than bargaining for information...
...Paying the Piper The fourth abuse of investigative reporting is the boldest of all-“buying” information...
...But like The Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate, after the grand jury was empaneled to look into the charges generated by the paper, the direction and momentum of the reporting changed...
...The reporters were not asking the committee for special favors...
...Nelson viewed it as a finder’s fee...
...Not all journalists are so moral...
...One fact was repeated four times in the articlesthat the land company had been set up one month before plans for the federal recreation project were announced...
...No newspaper has calculated the promotional value of “investigation” more closely than the Detroit Free Press, whose day-to-day coverage is mediocre but which pulls out all the stops on 10 or 12 investigative stories each year...
...He credits his investigations into suburban corruption with 23 convictions and one acquittal...
...Since Life had a vested interest in the success of NASA’s space program, the magazine would not be likely to encourage dogged and objective reporting and analysis of the space effort...
...The speech, as it happened, was a diatribe about the horrors of communism...
...A reporter conceals his identity in order to hear things the source would not intentionally tell the press...
...What is wrong with this practice is not just its dishonestyalthough that is no insignificant point...
...Al Lewis, The Washington Post’s veteran police reporter, for example, was the only newsman inside the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate on the morning the five burglars were arrested...
...A similar pose is used with credit companies to “re-confirm” a loan, or with airlines to check a passenger’s flight travel...
...but this was not included in Mellace’s story...
...some actually sent notes to the senators’ table...
...Rosenfeld says that Post executive editor Ben Bradlee vetoed the subterfuge...
...While the Klansmen were attempting to place a bomb in the garage of a prominent Jewish businessman, the police attacked with guns ablaze, killing one of the Klansmen outright and wounding the other...
...The stories are designed to win Pulitzers, and often do...
...So, if, instead of asking them to defend what they’ve done, you ask their help in explaining what they know about something so you can sort it out in your own mindwhy, then you get results...
...Okay...
...He eventually negotiated legal immunity with the prosecutor for a key source...
...For example, Hill and Perry located a local contractor who told them he had been approached in a contract bidding shakedown, but he was hesitant to be more specific...
...It was openly speculated that Life had kept several Justice Department employees on the payroll to get the information...
...Once his targets have been sent up the river, he takes pride in ensuring they remain there and are not paroled early through political dealings...
...The distinctionbetween the Seymour Hersh who announces he is a reporter and the journalist who masquerades as a cop, a waiter, or whatever, in order to trick his source-is significant, although the ethical guidelines are not always easily drawn...
...They could turn the coming wave of investigative reporting into a nightmare...
...Finding corruption, says Hill, is “like tracking a bleeding elephant through fresh-fallen snow...
...They’re leery of really getting a rap in the press and think if they turn the reporter off by being uncooperative they’ve got more chance of getting rapped-which is possibly true...
...This kind of cooperation between reporters and public officials is not wrong, but there is another that has far more frightening implications...
...Raking Muck A third abuse in investigative reporting is when reporters start working with the institutions of public power they’re covering, so that, in effect, they help create stories they will later report...
...And his speech...
...We see five that concern us the most...
...During the Senate Watergate proceedings, reporters phoned committee staffers after hours with tips or to swap information...
...a loudspeaker had been set up so that waiters would know when the speech was over and they could go in and clear off the tables...
...On the other hand, if the case is not complete, then the grand jury newspeg is a fraud-and, unfortunately, a most common form of fraud...
...but he’ll be able to tell you this and this...
...Because of its many pitfalls, the purchase of information-even more than the other investigative tacticsshould be a last resort, the journalistic equivalent of an act of war...
...The practical rationale is that the reporter may get stuck with bad information...
...If he tells you something else, he’s lying to YOU.’ That’s how we fortified our investigation all along...
...The added pressure to unearth the “big stories,” Bagdikian says, will make it almost impossible for reporters to resist pursuing the “easy fish,” the scandal stories where information...
...Hill would plea-bargain with a source in return for turning over evidence on higher-ups...
...Whether the courts move towards this test or not-in the view of many libel lawyers, it, rather than recklessness, has been the test most consistently implied by the concepts of “abuse of privilege” and “actual malice”-it certaidy should be the minimum test that each reporter and his editors bring to the decision of whether to publish a possibly defamatory story...
...Sprouse lost the election by less than 10,000 votes...
...Rules of Thumb I believe there are two rules of thumb which reporters should employ in developing a story...
...Helms’ speech was officially offtherecord and closed to the press...
...Mellace acknowledged in court that the sale was completely legitimate...
...But it was a hell of a story, Nelson says, and the man risked his skin to get the files...
...One of the most controversial of these arrangements was Life’s purchase in 1959 of the astronauts’ “personal stories...
...and the grand jury as a springboard to get our stories printed...
...they were acting as any outside citizen might, to provide information...
...The great danger of buying is that journalists may end up staging the news they have paid for...
...Editors want to look like investigative editors-but on the cheap,” explains Bagdikian...
...As for the $500,000 “bonanza,” the remaining property later sold for $34,500, with Sprouse’s share less than $14,000...
...six were finally convicted...
...Informants who talk to the press may have many ulterior motives: revenge, ego, ambition to destroy an opponent, public conscience, liking the reporter-but no motive is so suspect as the mercenary one...
...While they do have a right to privacy and a good night’s sleep, they must be prepared to answer questions about their official conduct, even when the questions come in unorthodox forms...
...But Walsh also says that because of Life’s reputation of paying for the astronaut story and other “exclusives,” every potential informant wanted a hand-out...
...It is best illustrated by an investigation that took place in upstate New York four years ago...
...Hill and Perry’s first stories were based on solid evidence, such as the canceled checks and vouchers showing that the school board had kept a dead man on the payroll for four years and had paid out $2,645 for a tractor that was never supplied...
...This would be fine if it meant a less deferential treatment of their public activities...
...Lakawanna, with its giant steel mills and rust-covered rooftops, is a polyglot community of working-class Irish, Poles, Italians, blacks, and Arabs...
...Although officially they are only observers, some reporters will feed questions and leads to the committee...
...And, when dealing with a man like Hersh, the officials have fair warning that he represents the Times and is looking for information he can publish...
...Russia and its satellites, in Helms’ terms, were “the bear and its pack of wolves...
...Ten days before the November balloting, the Charleston Daily Mail unveiled its e xp losive he a dlines : “Pendleton Realty Bonanza by Jim Sprouse Disclosed...
...The story had been brought to the Daily Mail’s political writer, Robert Mellace, by Arch Moore’s campaign manager and press aide, and Mellace said he relied on their investigative talents...
...The first is the rule of full disclosure...
...Ninety percent of these smaller newspapers have no tradition of this kind of digging, no editors with experience in it,” Mencher says...
...This is...
...The Fortas story,” says Walsh, “it was a disgruntled bureaucrat, a guy who saw something happening he didn’t like...
...Once he had the story, however, Srodes’ troubles had only begun...
...The same press which has a duty to fearlessly publish information about the performance of public officials also has a duty not to needlessly defame them...
...The Star’s Polk explains: “I think it’s more effective to identify myself asa reporter for a Washington paper because, frankly, it carries a little more clout...
...Within a year, as a result of articles by Hill and Perry, a special grand jury had indicted nine members and officers of the Lakawanna school board...
...They tell a good reporter to come up with a story in two days...
...A jury awarded Sprouse $750,000...
...We used the D.A...
...In an attempt to keep the momentum going, the reporters kept grinding out pieces, just to show that the story was still alive...
...In the aftermath of the Wilbur Mills episode, we seem certain to be treated to a “new candor” in the coverage of our public officials...
...We’d pick up a rumor,” says Perry, “such as a Mafia-owned construction company having received a special contract with the board...
...To give a classic Washington illustration, reporters who cover congressional hearings often chafe with frustration when listening to mushy questioning which leaves major gaps in testimony or whole areas of inquiry unexplored...
...He looked for all the world as if he was supposed to be working there...
...Forest Service would purchase most of the recently acquired property for a recreation area, and balloon the value of Sprouse’s remaining sector...
...They were found guilty of accepting bribes, approving phony vouchers for nonexistent school equipment, and shaking down local contractors...
...and the next day you read ‘The Watergate special prosecution force is aware of...
...Often they resorted to artificial exposes by the most dubious techniques...
...rather, the detective was leading Nelson to documents which Nelson could independently verify with the FBI and other sources...
...Aside from the question of whether government employees should be allowed to profit from recounting publicly-financed experiences, there was a more basic objection...
...The National Star, “America’s Lively Family Newspaper,” recently headlined “Two New Shocks in the Kennedy Saga” under the credit, “by Star Investigating Team...
...The series won a first place from the New York Publishers Association and was a finalist in the Associated Press Managing Editors awards...
...The story finally ran, Srodes is convinced, only because a Washington Post reporter to whom he told his tale that night had the Post make a client request to UP1 for the story-the gun-to-the-head for the wire services, where a client paper in effect says we know yqu have the story and we want it...
...Seducing the Source The first hazard of investigative reporting concerns the actual means used to collect the facts...
...If its editors are satisfied that the story is strong, the paper should be willing to put its own name behind the story instead of waiting to quote the grand jury...
...Angleton told a Post reporter, “I find Hersh’s prose offensive to the ear...
...Nelson says, “I think I could’ve gotten it for $250...
...According to Peter Maas’s biography of Serpico, by late April the story had not appeared...
...If reporters are dedicated to openness in government and openness in subjects they cover, then they can’t use covert methods themselves...
...Cleanup of Nearly $500,000 In View...
...Was this ethical...
...Whatever sins against the Republic John Mitchell may finally be called to account for, it is hard to imagine how the public interest is served by seeing the pilfered records of his checking account, which New York magazine published last year to prove that he had been short-changing Martha in their divorce proceedings...
...Even the tabloids are boasting of their tough muckraking approach...
...The stories implied that Sprouse and his real estate partners had relied on inside information that the U.S...
...A similar case occurred in the spring of 1969, when Richard Helms, then-director of the CIA, was scheduled to speak at a dinner meeting of the Business Council, an organization of some 150 top businessmen at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia...
...Clearly, we are in the midst of an investigative craze-a craze that has obvious potential for good, even as it presents a less obvious danger of harm to both the profession of journalism and the public at large...
...On a recent television talk show, a respected political writer said, “I dread the first time I spend a day with a politician and find out he’s a fag...
...Every little paper in the country and every reporter on a beat is going to want a scalp...
...Hill then persuaded the prosecutor to guarantee the man’s immunity in return for testifying before the grand jury...
...Careless defamation should be recognized throughout the world of journalism as a firing offense...
...one subject said afterwards...
...We know because we have two others in our backpocket who can verify it...
...That was the case with Life, in spades...
...the person may be careless in what he says because he doesn’t think he is speaking for the record...
...If the Daily Mail appeals, it is possible that the Supreme Court will find that Mellace’s behavior did not meet the Sullivan test of recklessness...
...Hersh makes one phone call after another, trading on fine bits of information, and then milking more with sarcastic bursts of “Ah-h, come awwn...
...He tricked me...
...Then Burnham met Mayor Lindsay’s press secretary at a cocktail party and let slip that the Times had a story involving police corruption in the works, and that it was dynamite...
...James Angleton, who resigned from the CIA last December the day after a Hersh story charged him with being the overseer of a “massive, illegal” domestic intelligence operation against antiwar activists, had one term for Hersh: “son-of-a-bitch...
...Private Sins If the first .hazard of investigative reporting lies in the way the facts are collected, the second is in their use: is a reporter justified in publishing damaging material about people or institutions, even if the facts are true...
...When he learned about the speech he went into the hall outside the dining room and twisted doorknobs until he found himself in the hotel kitchen...
...He arrived at that figure by asking a local motel owner his estimate, as well as a stranger he met in a grocery store while buying a Coke...
...As followers of last summer’s impeachment hearings have learned, such second-hand accounts are not always the most accurate...
...With a phone at his desk, he was able to provide the Post with a description of the office floor plan, details about the surgical gloves and lock-picks and jimmies used, and the name of the security guard who foiled the break-in...
...Harry’s colleagues referred to him as “the Heifetz of the telephone.’’ He would work a phone 12 hours a day, masquerading as sheriff, governor, sympathetic stranger, or whatever character fit the occasion...
...His approach is that of prosecutor...
...There was Harry Romanoff of the now-defunct Chicago American, a police reporter who, without leaving his desk, would assume a dozen different disguises in his pursuit of a hot lead...
...A lot of poor devils in public office are going to catch hell for simple mistakes...
...Too many reporters now think of themselves as virtuous Davids who can do no wrong bringing down overbearing Goliaths...
...Srodes simply stood there and started taking notes...
...It’ll hurt me, but I’ll write it...
...An accompanying editorial, comparing Sprouse’s candidacy to “asking the horses to clean their own barn,” asked: “More of the Shabby Same or Some Cleansing Change...
...If the contents of a closed-door speech are so significant that a reporter must disguise himself to gain entry, or if a secret report involves such a crucial issue that the reporter is willing to steal a copy, then he and the paper should be willing to disclose the means by which they obtained it...
...The Supreme Court said in the famous case ofNew York Times v. Sullivan, “The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory statement relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’-that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not...
...If the politician’s sexual taste affected the way he performed his job-if, like Hadrian, he abused public office for the satisfaction of private desire-then, it seems to me, the story should be written...
...He never told anyone he was a policeman, and presumably had anyone asked, he would have disclosed his true identity...
...Perry, then 25, had been a leader in a young-turk revolt in the city room, and assignment to Lakawanna was a convenient way to direct his fire outside of town...
...Then he ran the contractor’s story...
...Others, however, are well within the commonly accepted rules of this rough game...
...If the Times’ editors were confident in the story, there was no reason at all for them to have waited for the newspeg-nor should they wait on similar investigative stories...
...Most persons you start asking questions of want to explain what thgy do, and why...
...The reporter never interviewed Sprouse or any of the owners, or the real estate agent handling the deal...
...I know your number, and I don’t even want to talk New York Times reporter David Burnham had interviewed Frank Serpic0 and Inspector Paul Delise in February 1970 and had written Serpico’s story of corruption within the New York City police...
...rnQuid Pro Quo...
...The usual method of doing so is to call the phone company’s business office and, posing as the person being investigated, claim that you don’t recall making certain long-distance calls charged to you...
...It usually results in stories based on half-information and bad sources...
...Most reporters would agree his actions showed more enterprise than deceit...
...Two days later-to blunt the expected Times story, Mayor Lindsay announced that a committee was being formed to look into allegations of police corruption...
...In the mid-sixties CBS is said to have bid more than $30,000 for exclusive film rights to a planned “rebel army” invasion of Haiti...
...Not government people, but others approaching us every day in every way-letter, telephone, in personwith stories and a request for compensation...
...There’s more chance of error, that they’ll get caught with inaccurate information...
...Those who have experienced the Hersh treatment are usually either amazed by it, or appalled...
...Hill would turn information over to the D.A.s onlyin return for other information.“Do you want to play ball with me...
...Few reporters use trickery as freely as Romanoff, but many have been tempted...
...In his story, Nelson questioned an arrangement in which the FBI, in effect, hired murderers and agents provocateurs...
...Even when they do not, they give the Free Press a national reputation out of all proportion to its daily performance...
...Free Enterprise Angleton, not unexpectedly, considers such calls improper...
...At the opposite extreme is the reporter who hides his connection with a newspaper, and obtains a story under false pretenses...
...this confirmation, in turn, may reveal bits about fact Y, the checking of which may lead for the first time to Z. Generally the reporter approaches his source indirectly: “We have enough to run with now, but in the interests of accuracy I’d like your version of what happened...
...UP1 refused to use it...
...The network apparently had second thoughts when it realized that instead of buying coverage of an invasion it might be subsidizing one...
...After the 1966 mass murder of eight Chicago student nurses, he managed to get the gory details of the deaths from a policeman after introducing himself as the Cook County coroner, and to interview the mother of the suspect, Richard Speck, by pretending to be her son’s attorney...
...Hill fed recalcitrant sources straight to the District Attorney’s investigators...
...More traditional reporten, wary of the appearance of collusion, would list the unanswered questions from the day’s proceeding in their stories, thereby sending their message to the committee...
...The story Nelson broke was a complicated one: it involved the FBI, which had paid two Klu Klux Klansmen to set a trap for two other Klansmen, so that this latter pair could be caught in the act of bombing a home...
...Angleton said Hersh had awakened him one morning at seven to interrogate him about a story in that day’s Washington Post...
Vol. 7 • April 1975 • No. 2
