Tidbits and Outrages
Tidbits and Outrages Nice Work, Ben! We are sure readers will join us in sending congratulations to Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of The Washington Post, on the brisk sales of Ius new...
...During a oneyear period, a total of 11 attorneys were appointed by the court to handle 657 felony cases and 636 misdemeanors for indigent clients...
...So was a dollop of pride...
...Zapple said, he was not aware of it...
...when Bradlee sold the paperback rights to the book, they went for half a million dollars...
...Soon after our article appeared, Broadcasting, the industry trade journal, ran a story in its June 9 issue headlined “Zapple Era About to End...
...We can’t help being struck by Peter Kenney’s comment, “If you start counting all the people in this town who take cigars and dinners, you would have a goddamn big army...
...I’m sorry it [the article] came out at this time,” he said...
...Finally, in a touch that suggested that Henry Luce was writing from on high, Time said that a group of Marines was “disappointed” when, rifles at the ready, they climbed aboard the Mayaguez and found that the sneaky Cambodians had disappeared only moments before...
...A Goddamn Big Army...
...Now reporters on the paper, who have for the last few years been pushed to the far extremes of investigative reporting by the Woodward-Bernstein model of the way to get ahead, must ponder the example of their boss, who, by releasing Ius memoirs of being too close to a politician, has made as much money as his reporters will in 20 years...
...The broadcaster who chose to remain nameless said “you always had to be nice” to Mr...
...Zapple a “fine public servant” who has always been “very fair...
...In the same week he was the subject of a lead story of the Washington Monthly portraying his service as less than exemplary...
...Superior Court...
...T‘hen, in May, excerpts from the book were published every day for a week on the front page of the paper’s Style section, an unusual gesture from a newspaper that virtually never serializes books...
...Zapple’s background and knowledge in broadcasting...
...The formal announcement of Mr...
...It is refreshing to know that an NBC vice president is so free to admit that Zapple is not an isolated phenomenon...
...The sentiment was echoed by Richard Jencks, vice president for CBS...
...In a special footnote, Time reminded its readers that the crew members of another captured American ship, the Pueblo, had been “savagely tortured” and “forced to sign false confessions that they had been spying for the CIA,” without making clear that the Pueblo actually was a floating espionage system and had come close to the North Korean shore...
...Said Peter Kenney, Washington vice president for NBC: “If you start counting all the people in this town who take cigars and dinners, you would have a goddamn big army...
...Zapple’s record against the Redburn article’s implications...
...Zapple said he had notified his employers as much as a month before the story appeared...
...Broadcasting officials whom Broadcasting talked to in Washington defended Mr...
...The Assembly Line While ordinarily sympathetic to the conservative viewpoint that the victims of crime deServe more protection than the criminals, we were dismayed by a recent report from the D.C...
...His knowledge of the industry and broadcasting will be missed,” Mr...
...The Founder Would Be Proud Amid tough competition, Time magazine has emerged as an easy winner of the “Remember the Maine” award for its coverage of the Mayaguez affair...
...In a brief statement Senator Magnuson said Mr...
...Zapple does have a reputation for being a “sponger,” but he did not find that unique in Washington...
...Nicholas Zapple, chief counsel to the Senate Communications Subcommittee for 25 years, five years longer than Senator John Pastore (D-R.I...
...First of all was Hugh Sidey’s now-legendary column, which set the proper tone of masculinityprovedthrough-victory with conunents like “House Speaker Carl Albert, five feet five inches tall, seemed at least five feet eight inches tall as he pondered American prestige on the White House steps,” and “The Mayuguez and the crew were ours again...
...But the Washington Monthly account, authored by one of the magazine’s editors, Thomas Redburn, called Mr...
...The judges of the Superior Court, many of whom are Nixon appointees with a prosecutorial bias, know that by swamping the attorneys with a grotesque overload of cases, they will encourage guilty pleas and prevent difficult briefs from being filed...
...has been chairman, announced his retirement last week, effective June 30...
...Redburn also said Mr...
...Enlarging on its thesis that the world was awed by American determination, Time quoted a newspaper called the Bangkok World as a barometer of Thai opinion, without bothering to mention that the paper is the English-speaking journal in Thailand and represents official Tliai viewpoints about as well as the International Herald Tribune speaks for France...
...In the June issue, this magazine published an article, “Wedding Presents, Cigars, and Deference,” about Nick Zapple, the chief counsel for the Senate Communications Subcommittee...
...Was Mr...
...Many of the facts in the story had long been known by lobbyists and reporters who cover broadcasting...
...For himself, Mr...
...Zapple has used his position at times to “go beyond the legislative intent of Congress” in writing reports on committee legislation, undermining the “more public-spirited provisions” of last year’s license renewal bill, for example, to favor the interests of broadcasters, “an already rich and important group...
...According to the story, Mr...
...Things got off on the right foot early this year, when Newsweek, which is, coincidentally, owned by the Post, devoted a full page of its National section to an enthusiastic preview of the book...
...It was the kind of promotional break :very author dreams of getting, and it has paid off...
...He said he knew no one else on Capitol Hill with Mr...
...Of course, our original article wasn’t just about cigars and dinners, but more serious abuses as well...
...The admirals and generals lifted their heads a little higher...
...If the story was being prepared at that time, Mr...
...Zapple to lessen the chance that he would have a “negative” influence on industry-related legislation, but on the other hand, “he never did do us much good in the way of legislation...
...But because of the peculiar journalistic mindset which assumes that anything which all reporters know is no longer news, these facts were kept from the general public until the twilight of Zapple’s career...
...chairman of the parent Senate Commerce Committee...
...Zapple said the Redburn article was a “hatchet job...
...It would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace his unique expert knowledge of the intricate field of broadcasting and telecommunications, coupled with his intimate knowledge of the legislative process...
...Zapple, with no flattery intended, “one of the more anonymous holders of power in Washington,” “almost the central figure” to people engaged in the politics of broadcast regulation...
...I stand on my record of 30 years,” he said...
...According to the story, Mr...
...Zapple’s retirement came from Senator Warren Magnuson (D-Wash...
...Zapple’s retirement hastened by the Washington Monthly account...
...The message was ringing around the world...
...Redburn added that “what seems to motivate Zapple is not the value of the gifts, but the recognition of importance and power they represent...
...Zapple has used his influence to make “constant, petty demands of the people he deals with...
...Jencks said...
...Another broadcast executive in Washington said Mr...
...The only sort of “disappointment” this calls to mind is that of Jolm Wayne in the movie The Green Berets, reassuring l i s squad that although the gooks slipped away from them today, they’ll have a chance to blow them apart tomorrow...
...Zapple accepted, even solicited, such gifts as cigars and steaks, champagne and a turkey for his daughter’s wedding, and a $1,000 silver service columnist Jack Anderson reported he received from a broadcaster in trouble with the FCC...
...Eugene Cowen, Washington vice president for ABC, called Mr...
...Zapple has “rendered very important service to the work of the Congress and the nation...
...We are sure readers will join us in sending congratulations to Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of The Washington Post, on the brisk sales of Ius new book, Conversations with Kennedy...
...In April, all of Bradlee’s subordinates at the Post were invited to a reception and given a chance to buy the boss’ book (at a $3.05 discount, as reported by the Washington Star...
...But Mr...
Vol. 7 • July 1975 • No. 5
