Print Journalism

We All Have our Pulitzers. I mean, Scotty Reston has his two, Abe Rosenthal has his and I have mine. The New York Times has won more than any other paper, and The Washington Post has its collection. So we are the good guys, the ones with the credentials, certified public and professional, the ones who do more and better and oftener than anyone else. The recognized champs. And Agnew and Mitchell and Nixon himself and all their cohorts--they're the bad guys, the ones who want to vanquish the white knights, the inheritors and continuators of the tradition of Milton and Voltaire and Tom Paine and all the others.

You listen to Agnew putting the press down, telling the editors and writers where to head in; you see Mitchell gang-busting with his lawmen (the subpoenas to Earl Caldwell, the injunctions against the Times and the Post, the grand jury on Ellsberg and Neil Sheehan and his wife, Susan); you remember the President's dark and angry ranting ("You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore ... "). They have to be bad guys. Doesn't the case of the Pentagon papers prove it? The Times challenging everyone, publishing the truth because "the people have a right to know"; the Post picking up the torch when Mitchell silenced the Times with a restraining order; The Boston Globe picking up when the Post was silenced; then the Chicago Sun-Times, the Knight papers, The Christian Science Monitor. We have to be the good guys. Right?

I wish it were so. I really do. But it's not a case of black and white, right and wrong, open and shut. It's been a long time since the press was a white knight in this country; and though there is a lot of wind in Agnew, there is some bitter truth as well. There is a case to be made. And that is why, amid the hoopla and self-congratulation over the Pentagon papers and the successful--if limited--victory over the Government, the press has been doing more soul-searching, more deep analysis than it's done in a long, long time. Not all the conclusions are easy to sleep with.

But first let's level about the present Administration and its role in all this. Is it true that Mr. Nixon and his aides--chiefly Agnew in charge of agitprop and Mitchell in charge of what we might call the U.S.A. K.G.B.--are trying to fetter the news media? Are these men, in the pattern of Stalin, out to destroy the free press? Well, neither Nixon nor Mitchell is exactly what you would call permissive. Nixon has long felt that the press was something less than enthusiastic about him, and who am I (continued on page 122) to say his feelings have not been justified? Mr. Mitchell is a great law-and-order man, by his own rather self-serving definition. And he sees the world in rather apocalyptic terms: The United States, if Mrs. Mitchell accurately reflects her husband's views--and there is no reason to think she doesn't--stands on the verge of Bolshevik revolution, and media like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS and others seem to the Attorney General to echo the shout of the rabble a bit to the left of Lenin's Iskra. In this moment of peril, he doesn't hesitate to defend the republic with such methods as come to hand, whether they be preventive arrest, prior restraint of a newspaper's right to publish, wire tapping, no-knock entry and arrest, the use of subpoena powers to compel reporters to testify about their stories, to turn over their notebooks and picture files, threats of investigation by the FBI or Federal grand juries, secret searches and seizures and other forms of intimidation.

Given Mr. Mitchell's premise--a grave and unprecedented danger to the republic--a case might possibly be made for suspension of the right of habeas corpus, the institution of a Napoleonic system of arrest, detention and trial and the repeal of the Bill of Rights. The fact that by so doing we would ourselves be destroying the republic ("Sorry, sir, in order to save the city we were compelled to destroy it") is a factor that might have to be taken into consideration. But few would agree with Mitchell's doomsday premise. Not even, in all probability, the President himself.

Let's put the Administration brief in another context--more understandable, more defensible. Every President, beginning with George Washington, has had an uncomfortable relationship with the press. John Adams got Congress to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts to give himself a club with which to bludgeon unruly editors. (He quickly got his comeuppance, and the laws that authorized prior restraint of publication were thrown out.) Lincoln, in the darkest days of the Civil War, suppressed some papers and arrested some editors, but he had to cope with a press that makes Nixon's look pantywaist. F. D. R. cozened reporters as did no one else, but he hated many of them and his worst feuds were with publishers. He used every instrument in a versatile repertoire against them, not excluding the FBI and Federal grand juries (against his archenemy, the Chicago Tribune). Harry Truman openly despised the press. Eisenhower rated reporters slightly below buck privates, and that is low. And L. B. J. attempted to manipulate reporters, their editors and publishers as he had long manipulated the Senate. When his stratagems failed, he tried bullying and finally cut himself off from almost everyone but William S. White.

Here is one modern President's view of the role of the press:

In times of clear and present danger, the courts have held that even the privileged rights of the First Amendment must yield to the public's need for national security.

Today no war has been declared--and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack....

... This nation's foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery or espionage....

I am asking the members of the newspaper profession and the industry in this country to re-examine their own responsibilities--to consider the degree and nature of the present danger--and to heed the duty of self-restraint which that danger imposes upon all of us.

Every newspaper now asks itself with respect to every story: "Is it news?" All I suggest is that you add the question: "Is it in the interest of the national security?"

Who spoke these words? Roosevelt on the eve of World War Two? Truman during the Cold War? Johnson as Vietnam escalated? Nixon when the Pentagon papers were published? No. Those are the words of that idol of the press, the late John F. Kennedy, in the anger and chagrin of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. It shocks some of us to be reminded that even Kennedy was cut of the same cloth as Nixon so far as the press is concerned. It is well known to those of us in the press that Kennedy didn't hesitate at wire pulling and arm twisting, even blackmail, in his dealings with the press. Perhaps Kennedy did it with a little more style. That is how we remember it. But doesn't our memory play us tricks?

Take the Bay of Pigs. After the essential facts had been dribbled out in other newspapers, including those of Miami, for several months, The New York Times finally got onto what was happening and a story detailing the plans and preparations was prepared for publication on the eve of the abortive intervention in April 1961. A short time before deadline, after consultations among the publisher, the managing editor and the Washington bureau chief, the story was altered: toned down from a four-column page-one head to a single-column head less prominently displayed, and a certain amount of fuzz was introduced, particularly so far as jump-off time was concerned. This was done by the Times on its own, for reasons of what it considered national security. The fact that the Times's information had all been published elsewhere, that Castro and his Cubans had to know what was happening if they knew how to read simple declarative sentences, that the only persons who didn't know what was happening were ordinary Americans--none of this deterred the Times from dampening a story that could have saved the United States from a diplomatic, military and psychological fiasco of significant proportions. A year later, Kennedy himself told the late publisher Orvil Dryfoos, "I wish you had run everything on Cuba."

He didn't feel that way at the time. Kennedy didn't swear out an injunction to halt the Times's Bay of Pigs story, as Nixon did on the Pentagon papers; but that wasn't because he didn't violently object to the publication even as watered down by the editors. He simply didn't have a chance to halt the story; it was in print before anything could be done.

I'm not going to belabor the point of Presidents and the press. All I want to do is to put the two into context. They have an adversary relationship; always have had and always will. How a President deals with this problem is a matter of style. They all tackle it and they all blunder. So what Nixon, Mitchell and Agnew are up to is the same old game. It's up to the press to fend off Presidential pressure. We are big boys; at least I keep hoping we are. If we can't handle ourselves up against a Government crunch, maybe there's something wrong with us. Maybe we've gotten a little sissy over the years.

I said earlier that Nixon, Mitchell and Agnew are onto something about the press, whether or not they understand exactly what it is. The fact is that the press isn't in good shape around this country. We talk a lot about the crisis in confidence, about the challenge to American institutions, and they're very real. Go around the country a bit and listen to the people talk. Do they believe the Government? You know they don't. They don't believe Nixon and they didn't believe Johnson. But do they believe the media? No, indeed. And that, I hate to admit, goes for The New York Times as well as for the local Bugle. It goes for Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Time magazine and the regional radio station. Almost no institution in the country, from the church to the barbershop, has escaped the wave of skepticism.

It would be very convenient--and it would fit the devil theory of history--if we could say that all this has come about courtesy of Nixon and Agnew. But that is hogwash. No doubt Agnew (continued on page 254)Print Journalism(continued from page 122) lacks confidence in the press and hopes that lack of confidence is widely shared. But that lack of confidence existed long before he came along and for a variety of reasons, including the conduct of the press itself.

There are serious professors and scholars who think the roots of the contemporary situation lie in the Cold War--the way it was managed by Truman, Acheson and Dulles and the way the press put its shoulder to that wheel. Maybe. I won't argue. But I'd like to concentrate on the three big drives of the postwar years to discredit, terrorize, intimidate and/or subvert the press--and the way the press behaved in these times.

First and most impressive was McCarthyism, although McCarthy was only one agent among many including Senators --notably, James Eastland--and not a few powerful Government bureaucracies and some private ones. The campaign, always carried on under the star-spangled banner of patriotism and having as its ostensible goal the elimination of subversive influences, was in reality aimed primarily at the more independent voices in the country and especially at certain newspapers like The New York Times, some of the broadcasters and a potpourri of small fractionated media, largely on the liberal and radical fringe. Through intimidation, terrorism and blackmail, an intensive effort was made by the radical right to silence not only the left but all other strains of what it considered disagreeable opinion.

It's not generally recalled today how successful this effort was. The Times, as one of the chief targets, fought back stubbornly and, in the end, victoriously. But it's a measure of the viciousness of the assault that it should have been openly directed against our number-one newspaper--a conservative and respectable publication that has served for generations as a world-recognized symbol of integrity and honesty. What of the rest of the glorious fourth estate during the assault on the Times? Surely it rallied to the side of its great leader. Surely it closed ranks against the threat to its ancient liberties. Surely it picked up the gauntlet cast down by the new inquisitors.

Nonsense. A survey in 1956 by Irving Dilliard, then editor of the editorial page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed that of 190 major U. S. dailies, some 35 papers criticized various aspects of Senator Eastland's effort to conduct a "Red hunt" against The New York Times. One hundred and twelve others took no editorial position whatever on the Eastland inquiry. In New York City, the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram and the Daily News preserved a discreet, apathetic or fearful silence. And no fewer than 33 important papers actually supported the heresy hunt, many of them with vigor, including two of the Times's competitors in New York, both since deceased --the Mirror and the Journal American, both Hearst properties.

It is the majority, however--those who aided and abetted the inquiries with their silence--who raise the question of whether the press itself has not played a major role in the impairment of public confidence. If the press is not willing or interested enough to speak up for itself--if it fails to defend the right to report and criticize regardless of Government policy--then why should the public render it confidence? Isn't the public justified in believing there is something wrong, that the press is not truly dedicated to telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I think it is. And I think it is precisely this natural and inevitable public reaction on which Agnew has so skillfully capitalized. The public distrusts the press because the press, as a whole, has failed to fight for and justify public confidence in itself.

The second major assault on the independence and integrity of the news media was launched by Kennedy and carried to a disastrous conclusion by Johnson. The new and refined policy that emerged from the Bay of Pigs was best articulated by Arthur Sylvester, public-relations chief for the Defense Department under both Kennedy and Johnson at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when he was criticized by reporters for suppression of news, misleading information and outright deceit. Mr. Sylvester said: "[The Government has] a right, if necessary, to lie to save itself when it's going up into nuclear war."

To be sure, this policy had been tried before. But never had it been stated so bluntly nor carried out with such sophistication. As a result, there was no press exposure of the missile crisis, although both The New York Times and The Washington Post uncovered the fact that missiles had been positioned in Cuba. Each paper knew of the Government's moves to cope with the situation and each kept silent because the President was shrewd enough this time to ask the publishers to hold back the information "in the national interest." Once again, who was fooling whom? Didn't the Russians know they had the missiles there? Didn't the Cubans? Wasn't it the American public that was being fooled by not being given the information their Government, the Russians and the Cubans all had?

The doctrine of news management was further refined under Johnson. It was again defended by Sylvester as the Government's right to lie, although he always winced at its being stated so baldly. This led with sure and inevitable steps to a complete breakdown of public confidence in the Government and to a considerable extent in the press, as the people watched the widening gap between the reality of Vietnam and the reports and predictions of Johnson, McNamara and Westmoreland ("The light at the end of the tunnel," "We have turned the corner," etc., ad nauseam).

The persistent affirmation that U. S. planes were bombing only steel and concrete was creating the greatest public relations crisis of the Vietnam war just as I got to Hanoi on Christmas Eve 1966 and reported the simple fact--long obvious to anyone who had ever been to war or seen bombing--that our planes often hit houses and civilian targets, killing men, women and children. From whom was this secret being kept? From the Vietnamese who were killed by the bombs or watched their houses destroyed? From the pilots who flew the planes or the commanders who ordered the flights? The only ones who didn't know were the U. S. citizens who were paying the bills and suffering the consequences of the endless war.

Because of his management of the news, the roof fell in on Johnson, and no one was able to make suitable repairs. Yet even after the revelations about the bombings, public confidence in the press dropped once again. Why--the question was reasonably put--hadn't it reported this before? The answer was that the press hadn't questioned the Government, hadn't done its job.

Did this exposure of "the Government's right to lie" produce a violent press attack on the Government? Did newspaper after newspaper then assign its best reporters to dig up what was actually going on? You know the answer. It produced nothing of the kind. Instead, even outstanding newspapers like The Washington Post turned handsprings in an effort not to get at the truth of what the Government had done but--with handout material from the Pentagon--to try to discredit my reports and my reporting. True, this odious effort wasn't carried very far. It was a little more than either the Pentagon or a complacent press could really accomplish. But, once again, the press had come off something less than a tiger in defense of its rights and of the public's right to know. There must have been readers who began to think it looked more and more like L. Frank Baum's Cowardly Lion.

The third great assault on the press is that which has been waged, off and on, since Nixon's election. It's only because this has been much more open, much more of a direct legal and political challenge that it has aroused more vigorous reaction. After all, it's hard for even a thoroughly tranquilized press not to react when it's hit with a subpoena, an injunction or a court order. The Pentagon papers produced comparative unity among publishers--with the notable exceptions of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, The Detroit News, The San Diego Union and a few others of strongly conservative bent. Yet there was less comment from newspapers over the narrow legal basis on which the Supreme Court victory rested and Times counsel Alexander Bickel's legalistic arguments--which some felt even impaired the scope of First Amendment protection--than there was among civil libertarians.

Once again the question was raised: If the press itself is not zealous in fighting Government for the fullest expression of its freedoms, why should the public not begin to wonder if the press fully deserves those special privileges and protections of the Constitution? It is a serious question. In countries such as the Soviet Union, where government management of news is total, public confidence in government truth and newspaper reliability is nil. "If it's published in Pravda," the saying goes, "it can't be true."

That our own press is no more living up to its principles than Pravda is to its name--it means truth in Russian--can be seen in the wildfire rise of a whole new stratum of media. These fall into two sometimes overlapping categories. One is the underground press, now to be found in almost every part of the country, usually edited by young, often very young and frequently irresponsible journalists who flail at all establishments and conventions--including "over ground" newspapers and the electronic media. The other is the so-called journalism review, usually edited and published locally by working newspapermen and directed at criticism and exposure of the sins of the establishment media. They are often ignored by the big press, but they serve an obvious public function by telling people things the big press doesn't tell all of or, often, at all.

This doesn't mean that the public necessarily welcomes and embraces efforts to tell it like it is. The know-nothing element is remarkably strong. Reporters in the Goldwater campaign were criticized and sometimes threatened by readers for "writing down what Mr.Goldwater was saying." And not a few of the thousands of letters received by the Times after publication of the Pentagon papers insisted that the facts should not be printed, that there was no need for them, that the citizenry didn't want to hear these things, even if they were true--or perhaps especially if they were true.

Just as it is entirely possible for Government to corrupt the free flow of the news by the use of the many weapons in its armory, it is also possible for the press to contaminate itself by being intimidated by the threat of those weapons, by being weak and cowardly, by putting commercial interest first, by blind partisanship. And the corrupting process is just as fatal to the reader as it is to the reporter. There are no innocent bystanders.

This, perhaps, is why many of us in the press feel that, in a sense, the frankness and gaucherie of Agnew, the openness of Mitchell's legal assault, the undisguised hostility of Nixon--all this may serve a useful purpose in compelling the fourth estate to face up at last to its responsibilities.

What is at stake was well said by Walter Lippmann in the aftermath of the Eastland case: "The sacrosanct principle of the First Amendment was not adopted in order to favor newspapermen and to make them privileged characters. It was adopted because a free society cannot exist without a free press. The First Amendment imposes many duties upon newspapermen who enjoy the privileges of this freedom. One of the prime duties of free journalists is that they should, to the best of their abilities, preserve intact for those who come after them the freedom which the First Amendment guarantees."