coverage in 1979-80 was probably unfavorable. Those overworked "future historians" will have to decide whether that was a sound verdict. So I told my journalistic friends: Yes, the press-White House relationship does look different when you're sitting inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but more exactly, it feels different. It feels different, for instance, when a crisis bursts from out of nowhere. To the press, a crisis like the seizing of our Tehran embassy is a professional challenge and excitement. For the White House it is a complex and cruel problem that demands a response. Something has to be done about it, not just written about it. A diversity of competence Whether the taking of the hostages should have seemed to come "out of nowhere" becomes, for the press, a fascinating extra layer of the story. Was State at fault for not knowing the admission of the Shah to New York Hospital would produce this result, or the CIA, or Dr. Brzezinski, or the President? Did somebody in fact warn somebody else? Within the White House, needless to say, this extra layer of the journalistic story is a very painful extra dimension of the policy problem. When the hostages were taken, I daresay Washington journalists had all the patriotic concern of other Americans for the affront to national pride; they felt all the compassion of other decent people for the hostages and their families. (Compassion did not prevent some gross intrusions on the privacy of the hostage families.) For the press the hostages were above all a story, a very big one. TV and print-news organizations began redeploying foreign correspondents; the foreign-policy and defense beats suddenly became the hottest in Washington (replacing the state of the economy and the state of Ted Kennedy); newsmagazine editors were switching next week's cover. The journalistic adrenaline was pumping. What often struck the White House as reckless ness in the press arises out of the extreme competitiveness of journalism. Unfortunately, when you get into the habit of calling all journalists "they" or "the media," it is easy to forget what a diversity of approach, opinion, ethics (and competence) is represented in the Washington press corps and their employers. The profound difference between the White House - not just the Carter White House, anybody's - and the press is the difference between a story and a problem. And usually the tougher the problem, the better the story. Columnists and editorial writers, furthermore, could construct highly readable and convincing think pieces showing that if President Carter hadn't done A. and even Presidents Ford and Nixon Band C, this thing need never have happened. But within the White House, the problem was that A, B, and C, for better or worse, were done, and what do we do now? (If you start noticing, it is interesting how much punditry focuses on past folly rather than present solutions.) A further "unfairness," as felt from within the White House, is that you can go home drained and depressed, after a day or a week of no progress, or setbacks, against problems like Iran, but the press has had a perfectly satisfying day or week reporting the no progDELTA UPSILON QUARTERLY'
ress or setbacks. (James Reston is one of the few Washington correspondents who convey a consistently sympathetic interest in what it must be like in the maximum-pressure jobs, and what it must be like for the families of those officials.) When some minor but inflated one-day problem arises, the press at least gets a one-day story out of it. For the White House people who had to deal with it, it was a negative blip in the President's ratings and an irritating distraction from more serious work. Quite unconsciously, I am sure, ABC's New York TV station neatly summed up the situation in a recent full-page ad celebrating the tenth anniversary of Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel on Eyewitness News: "After ten years of international unrest, domestic crises, and economic woes, the thrill still isn't gone. Happy Tenth Anniversary, Roger and Bill."
I nside "the
bunker," the news corps zs commonly viewed as more negative and threatening than it is. Short of paranoia When people in the White House griped about the press in my presence, some of it was just friendly kidding around. "Your press won't pay any attention, but . .. " "Hedley's media will undoubtedly say ... " (Not a reference to the Time Inc. publications but to the whole industry.) Once, half a dozen of us were discussing a foreign-policy point that could stand more press attention, when the suggestion came up: "Why don't you try to get together ten or 15 responsible reporters - if there are that many .. . " I said: "Watch that." One Cabinet officer permitted himself a quick grin. Everybody else didn't hear. Beyond the kidding, the President and his inner circle had a basically low opinion of the quality of the press, a considerable mistrust of its motives, and an incomplete understanding of its role. The mood stopped short of paranoia. Jody Powell, frequently under outrageous provocation in his press briefings, was generally cool and often witty. He could be highly combative in behalf of his beleaguered President, but when stonewalling was called for, he was a master of saying nothing in a dozen different ways. Carter himself, along with the noted "mean streak," has a sharp senseofhumor, sometimes turned on himself, and a disarming willingness, at least in private, and on occasion, to concede that if the situations were reversed, he'd be doing what he just denounced the other fellow for doing, and the press for giving it so much space.
April, 1981
A few little episodes in the running skirmish with the press: • Carter ridiculed John Anderson as a "creation of the press." He has often admitted, however, that he himself benefited from "unusual media attention" during the early stages of his 1976 campaign. • In a speech in San Diego in October 1979, Carter deplored high interest rates and high inflation rates. He was then bitter because the press headlined and stressed only the attack on high interest rates. But it wasn't news that any public figure in the U.S. was against high inflation. It was news if the President seemed to disagree with the monetary policies of Paul Volcker, his recent appointee as Chairman of the Fed. Like presidents of corporations, universities, trade unions, the President of the U.S. bore a fundamental resentment that the press could declare which things were interesting or important in what he said. • Carter and Mondale operatives tried to get an unequivocal disavowal of any presidential ambitions from Secretary of State Muskie during the period when the Billy Carter furor seemed briefly to put the President's renomination in jeopardy. Muskie's statement was not quite Shermanesque. There was indignation in the White House that " the press pounced on the little openings." When it was observed that the Muskie statement invited the press to do just that, there was reluctant agreement. • Minor strains and misunderstandings among the allies were, in the White House view, constantly being "blown up" by the press. • After Carter made his celebrated remarks about ex-Secretary Cy Vance in Q and A after a speech in Philadelphia, there was anger that the press was immediately interpreting it as a slap at Vance and that this "news" overshadowed a serious foreign-policy speech. The full Q and A transcript showed the press had interpreted the remarks about Vance the only way they could be interpreted. It may be that Carter was genuinely surprised, and unpleasantly so, to find himself saying those things out loud, topping his own foreign-policy story with a hot "people" story. • When businessmen made speeches generally supporting Carter's refurbished economic-policy package last March, the press, according to the White House, would pick up the one criticism in those speeches there's always one or two - and of course always stress that. • Carter felt the press will always tear down any new idea -like some of his energy proposals. The press is always "trivializing" things. The press does indeed do some trivializing. But it is a strange misunderstanding of the journalistic mind to assume it resists new ideas. The press loves novelty - one of the synonyms for news. It is also true that when people or ideas have been up on a pedestal for a long time - the press maybe having had something to do with putting them there in the first place - then the press sometimes does like to knock them off. (Concluded on page 28)
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