The Evil Eye

By long tradition, reporters compete with each other. But nowadays they are making common cause against an interloping Johnny-come-lately--the TV newsman with his heavy equipment, hot lights and haughty ways. As the political campaign draws them increasingly to the same assignments, news reporters across the U.S. are showing growing resentment at the TV-men (some of them ex-newspapermen), who seem to be getting in the way more than they ever did before.

TV Hunch. Politicians bestow their brightest smiles on the TV camera, and prefer separate conferences on TV, which affords them not only direct contact with the voter but tame, often planted, questions. When TV shares a general news conference, says New York Times Midwest Correspondent Richard Johnston, the session turns from "an attempt to get at the real news into staged nonsense." Apart from crowding, heat and noise, experienced newsmen bristle at TV's vapid questions, often designed only to get a commentator into the act.

At a Chicago conference on his return from the Florida primary, Adlai Stevenson was taken aback by a TV man's vague question: "What about Harriman?" All Stevenson could find to reply was, "Well, what about him?" When the skilled questioning by a reporter brings a reply that makes news, TV gets the benefit; the news can be telecast long before the reporter can get his story into the paper.

"The modern newspaper reporter," says a Chicago wire-service veteran, "walks with a stoop--the TV hunch. Any time he straightens up, some TV man screams at him to get out of the picture." John Drieske, the Chicago Sun-Times political expert, was once asked by a TV man to move from his front-row seat at a news conference. Drieske was wearing a white shirt, the man explained, and a colored one would look better. Even when the reporters get their own conference, they can feel the TV sting. After Stevenson's Minnesota defeat, reporters squeezed into corner waiting for TV to finish shooting his prepared statement. As they started to question Stevenson, the TV crew made so much noise packing to leave that tart-tongued Columnist Doris Fleeson finally cried: "If the second-class citizens could have some quiet, please ..."

The camera's hypnotic eye and the overbearing mass of cables and equipment win priority almost everywhere. Policemen barred reporters from the scene of a recent Los Angeles train wreck while TV cameras prowled after a trench-coated commentator interviewing survivors as they came out of the wreckage. When Marilyn Monroe returned to Hollywood after a year's absence, officials at the airport held reporters back until live and filmed TV crews got their fill. Hollywood's annual Academy Award ceremony, says the U.P.'s Aline Mosby, is "Now entirely geared for TV--it's a TV show and not a news event any more."

Blind Spot. How do reporters strike back? In Manhattan, one enterprising newsman carries a child's metal "cricket" toy; it fits snugly into a pocket and emits loud rhythmic pops that drive sound technicians to desperation. In Chicago, a veteran journalist sprinkles his news conference questions with profanity ("Damn it, Senator, what the hell are we gonna do about the farm surplus?"). Another complies willingly when asked to pose for a reporter-at-work shot, then scrawls large obscenities into his notebook under the camera. In Los Angeles, ingenious still photographers--who are on the reporters' side--have found that a stroboscopic light flashed directly into a live camera will usually blind the TV tube momentarily and then throw a ten-minute glaze over the evil eye.

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