Nixon v. the Vultures

Richard Nixon and the press have had each other to kick around for so long that the combat is sometimes treated as if it were a comfortable old joke, like the Laugh-In sock-it-to-me bit. But the issues involved deserve serious consideration. How much do the personal tastes and politics of newsmen color their treatment of a controversial public man? Where lies the boundary between analysis and advocacy? Is the press recklessly tearing down public confidence?

These questions are at the core of a new book, President Nixon and the Press (Funk & Wagnalls; $6.95). Author James Keogh, 55, a journalist and Nixon watcher of rich experience, wrote This Is Nixon in 1956. He was TIME'S executive editor before joining the Nixon campaign in 1968 and then for two years he was the White House assistant in charge of the research and writing staff. Afforded an excellent view of both sides of the fence, Keogh has written what amounts to the latest installment of the President's brief in the argument. In fact, he sometimes sounds more Nixonian than Nixon, conveying a sense of bitterness that the President himself avoids, at least in public.

Big Six. The Administration took office, Keogh reports, expecting an unfair shake, and Nixon himself warned his Cabinet appointees of the twisted coverage to come. As Keogh perceives it, those fears proved more than justified. He exempts some publications and individuals from criticism, such as U.S. News & World Report, FORTUNE, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, Columnists Max Lerner and Joseph and Stewart Alsop, NBC's Herbert Kaplow and ABC's Howard K. Smith. But he indicts big journalism generally--not for a liberal conspiracy, as some do, but for a "condition of conformity" that bends the news to fit liberal preconceptions. He expends most of his ammunition on six influential offenders from the East: the New York Times and the Washington Post, TIME and Newsweek, NBC and CBS.

These he charges with down-playing stories favorable to the Administration and inflating negative news, with blind skepticism toward presidential policies and governmental authority generally. Nixon is not the only victim, Keogh argues. The public is led to believe that there exist simple solutions to serious problems if only the President would listen to Tom Wicker and Eric Sevareid. Blacks are told that they have an enemy in the White House. Youngsters become accustomed to hearing that troublemakers are admirable. "If the U.S. declines," Keogh concludes apocalyptically, "history will not let American journalism escape its large share of the responsibility."

Some of Keogh's arguments hit home. Columnists Tom Braden and Frank Mankiewicz accused the Administration of retreating in the campaign against hunger; the same day the White House sent a message to Congress asking for an extra $1 billion for federal food-distribution programs. Marquis Childs mentioned that Nixon got his news daily from a one-page digest; the summary is always much longer, and on the day of the Childs column it was 51 pages.

Group-Think. It is also true that reporters covering a particular field are always in danger of groupthink. They consume the rich diet of each other's prose and spend time together both on and off the job, particularly in Washington. Keogh gives some unsettling instances of publications repeating each other's views and sometimes errors. A number of newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, for example, more or less accepted the assertion that lawmen around the country had murdered 28 Black Panthers. Repeated references to these killings seemed to support the charge of an assassination cabal. The New Yorker finally debunked the notion with an investigatory article.

It must be granted as well that the majority of newsmen probably find liberal Democrats more congenial than Nixon Republicans. Keogh quaintly suggests that one reason for this is a residual gratitude to the New Deal and the labor movement, which pushed up editorial wages. Actually, the people who bother Keogh the most are more elitist than trade-unionist in outlook, and there are far more valid reasons than wages for the liberal sentiments among the press. Especially in New York and Washington, many journalists concerned with national affairs are attracted to the academic and artistic worlds, which are heavily Democratic. In the U.S. there has always been a traditional journalistic affection for the underdog, and liberals are usually more successful than conservatives in playing the underdog's champion. Newsmen are not exempt from the widespread disappointment about failure to solve problems from Viet Nam to Harlem. Many have been wondering if in the past they have been too uncritical of the official line--any official line. Besides, there is no doubt that the newsmen lack personal rapport with Nixon. But they are not alone in this; even Nixon's supporters admit that he has had the same problem with the public.

Famous Crack. Ultimately, Keogh's thesis falters because on balance Nixon's press has not been all that bad. He has drawn a good deal of criticism, sometimes unfair, but he has had his innings as well. A number of his major initiatives, including welfare reform, revenue sharing, and his approaches to Moscow and Peking had full coverage and favorable comment.

Much of what Keogh impugns as misplaced "advocacy" is the press fulfilling its duty to analyze official statements and to attempt to forecast their real impact. He complains, for instance, about wrongheaded and misleading reporting of Nixon's integration policy, but all he proves is that many observers simply disagree with and distrust the Administration where race is concerned. Though he does not quarrel with the press's right to interpret, Keogh questions interpretations that differ with the Administration's on important matters.

He also overlooks Nixon's tendency toward overblown rhetoric. This sort of thing positively challenges journalists to make unhappy noises. Keogh is only mildly critical of careless or inflammatory remarks made by Nixon and others; he concedes that the President's reference to Charles Manson being "guilty" while the murder trial was still in progress was unfortunate, but he dismisses Ronald Reagan's famous "bloodbath" crack concerning campus uprisings as merely maladroit. As for the glorification by the press of rebels and their causes, Keogh again cites some disturbing examples, but in the end it may well be argued that the very fact that dissent found a hearing in the "respectable" press did a great deal to diffuse and disarm it.

In Keogh's scenario, Nixon comes across as an almost defenseless innocent surrounded by hostiles. When reporters were determined to ask tough questions after going four months without a televised press conference, Keogh says, the "vultures were circling ominously." The conference itself was a "break.-the-President session." This notion does not square with the facts. Any President has enormous resources in communications: quick access to prime-time TV, a vast public relations machine in the White House and executive agencies that can suppress news or slant it. Soon after leaving the Nixon Administration, Daniel P. Moynihan raised some of the issues that Keogh discusses, but Moynihan conceded: "In most essential encounters between the presidency and the press, the advantage is with the former. The President has a near-limitless capacity to 'make' news which must be reported."

Nixon has not hesitated to use that capacity for his own advantage. That is his right. He and his partisans also have a right to rebut any and all criticism; they have not been reluctant to do so. The press needs to be "kept honest," and to be reminded that it has great powers which it does not always wield responsibly. But to argue that it should abandon or greatly modify its adversary relationship with political leaders and public institutions is wrong in the framework of American democracy. If the press has weakened public confidence, the best tonic is not to cry "Vulture!" but to exert strong, wise leadership that proves the naysayers wrong.

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