Sweetheart of Sigma Delta Chi

While the New York newspaper unions were getting their lumps from Publisher Jock Whitney, the Washington press corps was taking an equally sharp pasting from a former colleague. Speaking with the experience of 35 years as a reporter, Presidential Press Secretary Bill Moyers' new assistant, Robert H. Fleming, denounced the sloppy performances turned in by so many of the men he now has to deal with. In a speech to the Washington chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, Fleming got his collected gripes off his chest.

Bleeding Ulcers. High on the list of things that irritated him, he said, was a comment in the Saturday Evening Post by Columnist Stewart Alsop: "The President's passion to know everything and to control everything makes him an immensely difficult man to work for, which surely accounts in part for the bleeding ulcer of the ablest of his aides, Bill Moyers." Said Fleming: "I would suggest it would not have been hard for Stewart Alsop to know, as I knew well before I went to the White House, that Bill Moyers' grandfather died of an ulcer, his father almost died in December of an ulcer, his brother has two-thirds of a stomach gone from an ulcer, but Bill has no ulcer. He had one when he was at the Peace Corps. The doctors have pronounced him cured. It is a minor fact, but I suggest there are no little facts in talking about the President."

Fleming's next prime target of opportunity was a letter to the editor of the Washington Evening Star in which Columnist Andrew Tully said: "Lately Moyers seems to be spending most of his time, when he is not running the war in Viet Nam or solving inflation, telling Washington reporters how stupid and even corrupt they are." Retorted Fleming: "Bill Moyers made two speeches about reporting, because he shares my belief that if the press does not produce enough criticism of itself, it will not maintain the important position it has. If Tully is as good a reporter as he would like to be, he would have found out that nobody who is important to the President spends 'most of his time' making speeches."

Flash Floods. "I have another one here from Doug Kiker, a Herald Tribune reporter who works hard," continued Fleming. "He wrote a pre-Easter story out of San Antonio: 'President Johnson is in a foul mood this Easter Sunday, apparent for all to see.' " But Johnson was on the L.B.J. ranch. "Kiker saw the President from 78 miles away. He has better eyes than I have. And stronger perception too." Among his other complaints, Fleming cited an Associated Press story out of Saigon by Malcolm Browne, who stated that the President had ordered the military to "win the war in '67 or else." Replied Fleming: "Absolute fiction."

To sum up, said Fleming, Washington correspondents "want comfort; they want transcripts; they want advance travel plans; they want jet-speed airplanes to jet-age hotels where they hope to have a leisurely, horse-and-buggy schedule. I don't blame them much; I'd welcome the same kind of life." But when they don't also take the time to dig for the truth, he said, they are abdicating their journalistic responsibilities. And "when they make pleas or demands, they belie their own importance as channels of communication--at least around the White House, where the channels can sometimes face flash floods on little or no notice."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.