The Imperial Press

...Maybe they consult the Constitution, or the Jef’ ferson-Adams letters...

...The Fresno case seems to be a good example, because it’s hard to conceive, except in the m.ost exceptional cases, of the publication of grand jury testimony as being in the public interest...

...Professionals, once firmly established, tend to claim adherence to some noble higher principle that, by the’ way, allows them to greatly increase their own income and power while no one is looking, in a way that is often inimicable to the public interest...

...The whole system is undermined when its secrecy goes...

...At one point in the press conference Larry Larson of the Fresno Bee read a statement written especially by the Fresno Four “for this news conference...

...But the professionalization process is a tricky one...

...Protection of sources, First Amendment, people’s right to know, freedom of the press, freedom . of speech-these were the kind of weighty phrases being bandied about, and they all seemed to be very close-nearly identicalin meaning...

...The power of the executive branch of government was, necessarily, greatly increased to’ cope with the Depression and World War 11...

...it carries with it a lot of excess baggage and mumbo-jumbo...

...It is designed to encourage the passage of information from government officials to reporters, on the grounds that such passage, absolutely unhampered, will always work to the public’s benefit...

...therein lies its great strength...

...Much of the change is due to the applaudable efforts of the Newspaper Guild, and most of its net effects are indisputably good...

...If sources weren’t shadowy figures-if they were forced to speak up publicly and take their chances if they wanted to leak in the service of justice-the journalist wouldn’t be the glamor-boy he is today...

...Mulling it all over somehow conjures up in the mind images of a long series of newsroom civics seminars: The managing editor is toiling over the next day’s front-page dummy, deciding which arrangement of stories will most strengthen the spirit of freedom in his community, when his star reporter bursts in with leaked documents...

...On the whole, they’re most useful to the rest of us when they’re not afraid, or cautious, or prone to hiding their true opinions and not telling the boss when he’s doing something wrong...

...Earlier this gear this magazine got a manuscript in tQe mail suggesting that if privilege laws were enacted the Mafia might invest in newspapers in order to avoid testimony about their criminal activities...

...Journalists in this century, to put it simply, have undergone a phenomenal rise in status, a rise similar to the one doctors and lawyers went through in the last century...

...I am uncomfortable as a participant in events,” he said, “preferring to cover events...

...The reporters at the Schorr press conference might have said to that, ‘Sure, we recognize that there are leaks and leaks, but let us decide which ones are in the public interest and which ones aren’t...

...It’s clear that lately the government has gone much, much too far in the direction of secrecy, but the ideal alternative to that is not establishing the press as a unilateral, protected conduit of any secret government information it can get, with no restrictions...

...In the case of doctors’ privilege, for instance, the patient will become more frank, in order that he may receive better health care and be spared embarrassment about his ailments...

...The facts of the Fresno Four case are unclear (perhaps one of the Four will leak them in the public interest, but it’s doubtful) but it is known that a Fresno Bee reporter had a skeleton key to the courthouse where the grand jury transcripts were kept...

...If you believe nothing else believe this, that I decided to come here because I believe this matter is of such overriding importance, and because my conscience would not allow me to do otherwise...

...Everybody now recognizes that this has to some extent been the case with doctors and lawyers, so it was distressing, back at the press conference, to hear the comparisons that were being bandied about...

...Such is the mood of the press these days: earnest, weary from the long battle...

...Secrets That Have To Be Kept In the case of reporters’ privilege the equation is somewhat different...

...It overrides...

...And the need for confidential sources is an important test of our profession...

...These words are said humbly, even prayerfully...

...While other professionals’ privilege tends to keep more information secret, the press’ tends to make more public, and it therefore has a greater impact on the world at large...

...Amid all the press’ -self-promotion there’s been a dismption of balance, by which a set of indisputably good causes begin to expand and envelop some other, not so indisputably good ones...

...That seems a little farfetched, but you get the idea-it’s unwise to sanction anything reporters might do on the grounds that it’s part of their freedom of press...

...The public interest seems to have been a minor character in the drama, at least until well afterward when Congress came around with questions...

...We’ll do it in the newsroom civics class...

...The pursuit of the flashy headline can lead down some pretty dark alleys, ones only tangentially related to the public interest...

...The cause is America...

...Where would Woodward and Bernstein be today if Deep Throat had called a press conference...

...The press conference itself was held in one of the House’s own office buildings...

...Anybody can see that it’s a bad idea to protect leakers of the location of Polaris submarines, or missile silos, or troop movement orders-that, in fact, there should be some way that those leakers can be found and punished...

...The importance of reporters and the protection of sources seem, in fact, inextricably linked...

...Or should he be puliished like anyone else...

...Just leave it to us.’ Here again, though, self-interest plays a part, because the press is, quite commendably, trying to sell papers, which sometimes precludes consideration of the public interest...

...Custodians of Morality If you assume that it’s right that the government keeps some things secret, then the public’s interest is this: that what really needs to be kept secret be kept secret, but that everything else be made public...

...As Nicholas Von Hoffman pointed out not long ago, grand juries are secret for a good reason: they are preliminary legal probes, in which “any accusation, any gossip, any surmise about anyone is admissible...

...It’s not likely, for instance, that the press will mention this, but if sources weren’t protected, the reporters who so courageously protect them would be far less important themselves...

...The government-secrets problem is just one product of the imperial presidency...

...From Tradesmen to Professionals It’s not hard to see why the issue of reporters’ importance should be such a key one today...

...The civics class may not precisely exist, but it’s certainly the prevailing image these days...

...Under absolute reporters’ privilege, the press has what amounts to veto power over all three branches of government, and therefore, since by its own account it’s carrying out a q ua si-g o v er n m ental, Constitutionordained function, it becomes a sort of fourth branch with more power than the other three...

...The press should meet them courageously, but with some humility, too...

...The Imperial Press by Tom Bethell and Charles Peters The day before Daniel Schorr was to testify before the House Ethics Committee, the Newspaper Guild held a press conference to drum up support for him...

...In front of the room was a row of media celebrities, and facing them was a row of less celebrated journalists who were reporting on the affair...

...Anyone who looked at the Schorr case could see that Congress’ vote to make the Pike Report secret was perfectly ridiculous...

...The point, however, is that the government got to be that way through the commission of the very sins that are starting to appear in the press...

...Now, in response to all those horrors, we seem to be moving in the direction of an imperial press, produced by the Nixon era in the same way that the imperial presidency was produced by the Depression and World War 11...

...Still, watching the press conference, one got the sense that perhaps things were going too far...

...They hold a fevered conference, wrestling with their consciences to determine whether publication of the documents will be in the public interest...

...Difficult choices in reporting the news are inescapable...

...nothing but a wage-earning servant, as impotent and unimportant, considered as an individual, as a mill hand...

...If it’s the press that’s now the culprit, it’s not likely to start chastising itself...

...So, to cut through all the talk about Freedom and Amendments and The People’s Right we have this: there is a problem with the government’s keeping too much information secret, and the press proposes to solve that problem by putting itself in a position where a great deal of secret information comes its way, and it, instead of the government, decides what the public should or shouldn’t know...

...Precisely the opposite, in fact, is where the public interest lies...

...In adding up the pluses and minuses of total protection of sources, it ought to be remembered that the press’ interest is not in having the noblest possible government...

...He had just sort of leafed through it, he said, He knew it would make a nice, flashy cover headline, and that it would help the Voice, and on that basis he decided to publish it...

...The idea behind government is that it ought to be a disinterested party, counterbalanced against itself...

...There are far more obvious cases, too, where secrets have to be kept...

...The Four, who were briefly in jail for disobeying a judge’s orders by printing secret grand jury testimony, had gotten to the heart of the matter: “Sooner or later, we must make judges, congressmen, and others in official positions aware that newsmen, like lawyers, doctors and clergymen, adhere to professional ethics, which we cannot ignore...

...The events of the last ten years have given leakers a pretty good name, but it’s worth remembering that the precursors of Daniel Ellsberg were unsavory figures who, depending on their ideological leanings, gave defense secrets to the Soviet Union or the names of former Communists to Congressional committees...

...Under the hot flame of self-righteousness, all sorts of principles were coalescing, so that it was becoming impossible to tell them apart...

...To expect the press, as custodian of morality in government, to police itself ideally here, with selling papers, reporters’ status, and other self-interested issues so heavily at play, is asking too much...

...If Congress, or the President, or the courts, decide to keep something secret, and the press disagrees (which, given its interests, is extremely likely), then it simply publishes...

...but since privilege or no privilege, a sick person will see his doctor, the doctor himself is hardly affected at all by the arrangement...

...and once that power existed in its amplified form, it began to be abused...

...it reflects liberals’ assumption that the government can’t do anything involving civil liberties right, so we might as well give up on it...

...The more s e 1 f-righteous, pontificating press conferences it holds, the more fawning attention it gets, the more likely it is to slip into the same kinds of excesses it is trying to wipe out...

...the mentality that put guards around the White House and filled its offices with yesmen also decided that vast amounts of information about the government should be kept from Americans...

...In 1922 the literary editor of the Boston Herald wrote that “as a citizen, a workman, a human being, the journalist is...

...The Guild, the labor union for journalists, had rounded up Seymour Hersh, Carl Bernstein, Mary . McGrory, and various other big guns of the media, and it was clear that it considered the whole Schorr affair Serious Business...

...Finally Rather got to the point, which was that “the issue is whether we are going to preserve something essential in a democracy: freedom of the press, including the freedom to protect sources of information...

...It was good that the report was published because there was no reason for the informaTom Bethell is a contributing editor and tion it contained to be kept out of the public’s reach...

...There is no cross examination, no adversary questioning, no testing of evidence, no defense counsel...

...The effect of those privileges is only to help the person who has confidential information...

...This notion has Present-Day Mistrust of Government stamped all over it...

...It’s not, that is, without elements of priestification as well...

...What if, in fact, he simply let himself into the courthouse, stole the transcripts, and walked out...

...It wasn’t always that great masses of information were being held back from the American people...

...Only in the 1950s, in most instances, did general reporters begin to be paid more than the printers who worked downstairs in the pressroom...

...The Fresno Four and Schorr were right about the privileges that accrue to doctors, lawyers, and clergy...

...the chain of events is fairly recent, and can be easily traced...

...It was a solemn and aweinspiring affair...

...Insome cases, like Schorr’s and the Pentagon Papers, that impact is good...

...Amid all the high-flown talk at the House Committee hearings, Clay Felker, owner of the Village Voice, admitted that he decided to publish the Pike Report without really reading it beforehand...

...In the old days “the media” referred to a motley collection of $50-a-week newspapermen, not journalists (a journalist was some kind of a remote fop with a cane whom one never saw)newspapermen with green eyeshades and half empty liquor bottles next to the typewriter...

...Was that in the public interest...

...It’s understandable that nobody seems to be noticing this-the press usually notices people’s little pomposities and obscuring~ of issues...

...he wouldn’t be holding press conferences...

...Federal employees with damaging information about the government are most useful to reporters when they are most afraid of losing their jobs...

...On it went...

...This is not for the benefit of reporters...

...w Charles Peters editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly...

...But it ought to be clear by now that anything imperial is dangerous...

...it makes it easier for him to receive professional services...

...They’ve gone from being tradesmen to being professionals...

...The procession of important journalists at the press conference began with Dan Rather of CBS, whose comments were representative of both the tone and content of the afternoon...

...The fact is that reporters have a direct stake in the encouragement of a timid government service...

...In a similar vein, in another hearing room the next day at the actual House Committee hearing, Schorr had this to say in his defense: “For some of us-doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and journglists-it is an article of faith that we must keep confidential those matters entrusted to us only because of the assurance that they would remain confidential...

...The public’s right to know what their government is doing is a paramount concern in a free democracy...

...It is for the benefit of listeners and viewers and readers...

...If they decide to go ahead, well, damn the consequences...

...but in others, it’s not...